Dance Music Owes Everything to the LGBTQ Community of Color
A space and a sound for anyone to express themselves freely
By Ned Shepard
The horrible attack on Pulse nightclub in Orlando was more than just an attack on the LGBTQ community. It was an attack on the spaces that provide sanctuary and shelter to those who do not have it in our society. As a DJ, producer and longtime fan of dance music, I feel that those of us working in the genre have a special obligation to support the LGBTQ community—and specifically, the LGBTQ community of color.
Our music owes so much to the gay clubs that first nurtured it, which in turn helped to create safe spaces that allowed a marginalized population the freedom to be themselves. It’s important that we understand the link between the origins of dance music and the LGBTQ community because, as Barry Walters wrote in Billboard, “The history of dance music in America and the history of LGBT folks — particularly those of color — coming together to create a cultural utopia was and still is inseparable. Neither would have happened without the other.”
The form of music that many people call EDM (electronic dance music) originally stems from house music, which came into its own in Chicago in the 1980s at a club called the Warehouse — the genre’s namesake—and later at clubs like the Paradise Garage in New York. These clubs and cities — along with their legendary DJ’s Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan — were playing music that stemmed from disco but had taken on a new form. This new genre mixed disco with elements of gospel, soul, funk, and even new wave and rock music. The club and the music originally catered primarily to gay men of color, but later became incredibly popular throughout mainstream culture in the 90s and 2000s. Eventually it became a global force that birthed rave culture and spread around the world.
I was born in 1982 and grew up in the New York City of the late 80s and 90s. I was too young to experience the Paradise Garage. In fact, most of the music that I listened to until I was 16 was hip-hop or rock, two other forms of music that also owe a great deal to NYC. I was oblivious to the club scene, and especially to the lineage of house music that was all around me, until the age of 17 when I discovered just what a treasure trove of dance music NYC really was.
There was Twilo, where I spent many late Friday nights and early Saturday mornings walking west on 27th to see the likes of Sasha & Digweed, Carl Cox, Junior Vasquez, and one of my favorites at the time, Paul Van Dyk. (True story: I waited in line for two hours to see PVD and was turned away at the door because my fake ID was terrible.) And there was Vinyl, where Danny Tenaglia played every Friday (no alcohol served, only good music) for ten hours straight, sometimes even longer. He was like five DJs in one; some of the best sets I’ve ever heard were spun on random Fridays in August by this guy who was old enough to have been my dad. Walking into those rooms, underneath the giant disco ball there was such a feeling of freedom. The crowd was very mixed, both racially and sexually, and there was a feeling that you could do whatever you wanted and be whoever you wanted to be.
On Sundays at Vinyl from 4pm to midnight, was a party called Body&SOUL, which featured three DJs who were heavily influenced by the Paradise Garage: Joe Claussell, Danny Krivit and Francois K. The crowd was much older, many of the people were former Paradise Garage denizens in their 40s, 50s and even 60s. They showed up in leotards, sweatpants, onesies, tutus and everything in between. People did cartwheels and handstands on the dancefloor, they danced in circles with each other and didn’t face the DJ. There was a feeling that you could literally express yourself in any way you felt, much like when you were a little kid. People would come over, give you a high five, or put their arms around your shoulder and join in on whatever you were doing.
All of these experiences were so important and influential to me musically and became the inspiration for me to learn to DJ and produce house music. But it also became my first real interaction with the LGBTQ community and more specifically, the LGBTQ community of color. The crowd at all of these places was mixed and on some nights mostly gay. Growing up as a white man who identified as heterosexual, I didn’t have any conscious prejudices towards the gay community, but lived (and participated) in a world where the words “gay” and “fag” were thrown around as insults. I also didn’t really have any gay friends, at least any who were out. But these clubs and others later in Berlin, Ibiza and Montreal became the place where I first made friends in the LGBTQ community. As a matter of fact, my first DJ residency was at Stereo in Montreal, which at the time was known as a gay club. We shared a love for this music and we congregated at the same places on the weekends, made the same pilgrimages to Ibiza and to the Love Parade in Berlin. There was something in this culture that was totally free that I connected with and learned from.
The house music scene started as an alternative, underground scene mostly consisting of black and latino gay men, that were not very accepted by mainstream society in the 1980s. The AIDS crisis had created a stigma for this community, and clubs like the Paradise Garage held some of the earliest benefits for the non-profit organization Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Most of the early pioneering DJs, producers and artists were people of color, many of whom identified as LGBTQ. While the 90s slowly began to change attitudes, there was still a feeling that those clubs and the music that filled its rooms — house or techno music — created a safe space. A space to be who you were, dress how you wanted to dress, fuck who you wanted to fuck, dance how you wanted to dance.
This freedom — which continued long after the Paradise Garage and the Warehouse closed their doors — was encapsulated in the sound of house music and completely palpable to a straight, white kid like me. It didn’t matter who I wanted to kiss or fuck or dance like or dress as either. The point was that just like everyone in the club, I could do whatever I wanted. Even if that just meant dancing in the corner by myself or sitting on the speaker with other random clubbers who needed a break. That freedom felt amazing. This spirit of freedom is infectious and it’s the same spirit I’ve seen at raves all over Europe, South America, and the rest of the United States. Aside from the law, there are no rules at a rave. You can have fun any way you like. This spirit, which I believe still exists today, stems from the fact that this musical culture is about freedom. It has no boundaries and no judgements. You can be who you are when you are listening to house music.
Two years ago I was able to meet one of my musical heroes, Nile Rodgers, while he was giving a talk at ADE (Amsterdam Dance Event). His music is at the cornerstone of both house and hip-hop, since both genres have sampled him quite heavily. Someone in the crowd asked him which genre he felt closer to, and he said “dance music without a doubt.” He said it was the genre of music with no judgements and total freedom. Everyone in the audience cheered because they knew exactly what he was talking about. There was an unspoken feeling that everyone who was drawn to dance music was because of this freedom.
Seeing the news that nearly fifty people had been killed at Pulse because of a targeted attack on the LGBTQ community made my heart sink. There was the immediate, awful feeling that one has after hearing about a targeted attack, but this felt really personal to me as well. There was something about the fact that they had attacked this club, which specifically that night was catering to people of color, that felt like an attack not just on the LGBTQ community but on all of our collective freedoms. It’s not just the people who were attacked, but also that this safe space that was violated.
Daniel Leon Davis, a regular at Pulse, said, “While a lot of people turn to churches, LGBT communities are often forced to use nightclubs as our safe haven, and Pulse was mine. Although I had built armor to defend myself from the hatred that was spewed to me when I came out (including some from my own mother), the reality was that I still hated myself because of my identity as a gay man. It didn’t help that I had grown up in a church that had conditioned me to hate myself for loving other men. Pulse was where I learned to love myself as a gay man. Pulse was where I learned to love my community. I met one of my exes at Pulse, and even had a friend come out to me at Pulse. Pulse was where I learned the power of femininity. It was where I saw my first drag show, and where I learned how to vogue. Pulse was not just my safe haven, but a safe haven for hundreds of LGBTQ individuals in Orlando.”
An attack on safe spaces in the LGBTQ community is an attack on the idea of what a safe space means for all of us. As Yara Simon writes on the Latin music and culture blog Remezcla, “Pulse was not just another gay club, but one that provides a safe space for the LGBTQ Latino community through such nights as their Latin themed night. A 2012 report on hate violence against the gay community found that LGBTQ people of color were 1.82 times more likely to experience physical violence. In 2012, 73.1 percent of anti-LGBTQ homicide victims were people of color — with black/African Americans accounting for 54 percent and Latinos for 15 percent, according to Colorlines.”
I feel that as a member of the dance music or house music or rave or EDM or whatever-you-want-to-call-it scene, we owe an enormous debt to the LGBTQ community. Specifically that debt is owed to the LGBTQ community of color for bringing this music to the forefront of our culture, being the backbone of this scene for so many decades, and providing a space and sound for anyone to express themselves freely.
It’s time for all of us to acknowledge the roots of our music, and more than ever we need to stand up in support and solidarity with our brothers and sisters of this community who have been deeply affected by this tragedy. We need to let them know that they aren’t alone, invisible or on the outside. We stand with them firmly to help fight sexual and racial prejudice and we support a culture of freedom to express who we are and what we want to be.
Ned Shepard is 1/2 of Grammy-nominated duo Sultan & Shepard.
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