The Music

   Like many forms of musics, Disco is a combination of many different forms of music. Soul, Latin, and Funk music are the key components of this lost music. These three distinctive forms of music combined in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A product of the combination of the Latin and Black communities, this music would be prominent with the minority communities. Bands like the Bee Gees, Earth Wind and Fire, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, and others would rise to the top of the disco music charts.  

    Soul, very popular in the black communities of the 1960s and 70s, was the real base for disco. Soul has a focuses on heavy bass and vocals with accompaniment by different forms of percussion. The reason for souls success was the fact that it had it own television show. Called Soul Train, the television show catered to the minorities of the countries and provided them an outlet from the "white music". Soul Train first came on the air in 1971 and ran till 2006, holding the title of the longest syndicate television show of all time. Every week, the best of Americas black artists would perform the funkiest music around. Soon the music began to spread from the African-American community to the the rest of the country and would soon take over American culture.  
   A close relative of Soul, Funk was thrown in to the disco mix. Funk is a combination of R&B and jazz, that was again popular in the black community. Funk bands would have electric guitars, electric basses, piano, and drums. Sometimes, a funk band could even have a brass section that would play rhythm. Often, many famous funk musicians such as James Brown, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Peaches and Herb would cross over to Soul and disco music. Latin was thrown in so that Disco would be that much more dance potential.

   Disco was an intricate art form. A disco songs could have four or five instruments to an entire orchestra. Case and point would be Walter Murphy's Fifth of Beethoven album. Murphy needed an entire orchestra to record the album. This was Murphy's most famous record and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976. Some songs had dances named after them like the Hustle by Van McCoy and the Y.M.C.A. by The Village People. 
     Even across the ocean, Disco thrived. ABBA, a pop rock band from Sweden produced disco hits like Take a Chance on Me and Dancing Queen. Bands like Boney M. from Gemany, Dutch Snoopy, and Silver Convention embrassed disco and combined it with European flavor to create Eurodisco. The one song you may have heard of would be from Boney M. called Bahama Mama.
     From across the sea to across the nation, disco had everyone "...dancin' and singin' and movin' to the groove'n..."(Wild Cherry, Play that Funky Music)