Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco
To its detractors, disco was nothing but a pageant of glitter and Ultrasuede, but Shapiro's history emphasizes its roots in nineteen-seventies New York, where hippie idealism had given way to stagflation and gang warfare. While the city decayed, marginal communities—gays, blacks, Latinos—congregated in abandoned warehouses to commune on makeshift dance floors. Shapiro argues that disco was "glamour as defiance," a movement that promoted racial integration and aided the mainstreaming of homosexuality. His book ranges widely, from Nazi Germany, where Swing Jugend (proto-discogoers, in Shapiro's view) met covertly to dance to "degenerate" jazz, to the rooftops of the Bronx, where Latino gangs did the hustle. This dance step, curiously, found favor with the conservative columnist William Safire, because it required a partner, and thus responsibility.Copyright © 2005The New Yorker