Some people go to church, I go to the disco. I was baptized by Chicago house music back in 1983. Yes, I am a heathen, in the purest sense.
For those of us who live in it, those of us who were born in Chicago between 1964–1980, house music was an ever-present staple on Saturday night radio. If you were too young to get into a club, WBMX, Saturday Night Live, Ain t No Jive, Dance Party, featuring “The Hot MIX FIVE,” was the club. Me and my cousin Carol would turn up the radio and practice our best moves. Grandma Gert would peek her head in and sometimes come in to show us how to really get down. Sometimes a group of us were all hanging around, sitting on somebody’s car, in Markham, IL, and the mixes would start. All of us would be dancing in the street. It was a party.
By the time I turned fourteen, I was allowed to go out to Markham Skating Rink on Saturday nights. A friend named Derrick would shuttle carloads of us back and forth. There was a tiny little disco, with an even tinier dance floor in the back of the rink that played some of the best house music I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t really dance back then, but I had to be there.
Some of these dancers had Soul Train moves, I mean twists and kicks and the high jump kick and twirl! People made a circle, taking turns, one at a time, showing off what they could do. Sometimes they turned into battles, not as aggressive as break-dance battles, which were also happening then. These were more sensual and stylistic. I never reached that level, but there was a point, when a song dropped, where everyone got on the floor and the place was so small, there was no wall to stand on. You just got swiped up and you had to move something. Our bodies were so jammed together, it was easy just to follow the beat of the one in front and the one in back of you. Sometimes I was sandwiched between two boys and sometimes it was two girls. Yes, there was humping, but it wasn’t lecherous. It was just people, eyes closed, hips pumping, swaying, hands in the air, high on the rhythms in the music. You felt that beat from the ground up.
When an older friend, Johnny Williams, told me about this place underground that played the best house music he’d ever heard, I had to go. I was fourteen and the party didn’t even get started until 2 a.m., and it was in the city. It was The Muzic Box on Lower Wacker Dr. and South Water St. It was literally a long black box, with nothing but a strobe light, steam, and bodies moving. I had to sneak out. I went to the Muzic Box a total of six times, each time grounded for a month, but it was worth it. Eventually, I learned how to “spend the night at a friend’s house.” When I met Honey Dijon in high school, she took me to all the house music parties at The Playground, The Power Plant, Club LeRay, Medusa’s, and Smartbar. By that time, I was completely obsessed.
House music validated my experiences as a Black person, as an oddball, as a bisexual, and as a human being. The music put my pain into healing song. The songs reflected love lost, liberation, and freedom. The people, mostly Black gay men, were welcoming and supportive. They cared for me as if I was part of the family. Way too young to be in the club, they watched me to make sure I stayed out of trouble. I was pretty straightlaced. I didn’t smoke or drink. All I wanted to do was dance to the music.
When I found house music, I found something that my soul needed. I found a space where the anger and pain, the brewing sexuality and violence in me could be soothed. I found a place where the abandoned oddball, the freaky nerd, could be free and accepted. I’d lose myself and find my heaven in a black box in a basement with sawdust on the floor. The center of me, dancing on a speaker, dancing all over the room, with everyone and no one in particular. Just as comfortable in a silky dress as I was in cutoffs, a Fishbone T-shirt, and five-holed, steel toe Doc Martins. I was there for the music. To dance and sweat until it ran down my face like a sun-shower. Until my arms and legs felt like wet noodles. Stop. Drink water. Repeat.
Born in Chicago, house music is the granddaughter of gospel and soul, the daughter of disco and blues, the sister of jazz, funk, and new wave. Her children are techno, freestyle, jack, juke, trip-hop, EDM, trap, and all the others who claim her.
House music originated at The Warehouse circa 1977. It was created by Black gay men. Combining city innovations, southern roots, and African heritage, it was a culture within a culture, yet it was not exclusionary. If you knew where the party was, you were welcomed in. Come as you are. Wear what you want. Be as you are or who you want to be. At a house music party, everyone is a freak and all the more precious for it. House music is what we want to be in the world and how we want the world to be.
Originally, house music was not necessarily about resisting or restructuring the dominant culture. It was about creating a space where Black gay men and other gay men of color could be free, safe, and expressive among themselves. It was a communal space, a safe haven in Chicago, which was often oppressive and repressive of gay and Black people. White gay culture was not accepting of Black gay men, despite a common otherness. Black gay men were often required to present three forms of identification in order to gain entry into North Side white gay clubs. It was necessary for Black and Latino gay men to create spaces of their own. In doing so, they made spaces for all of us. The music quickly spread throughout Chicago, New York, London, and Detroit.
Different from house music in London or New York and from the rave scene, Chicago house music was not about drugs. The music is the drug itself, and in Chicago it is the drug of choice. The feeling of music moving through you is the kind of euphoria people who do drugs are trying to get. There is an almost surrealist style to the way people move: legs kicking in the air, spinning, back bends, grinding, jacking, and jerking. There is someone with a tambourine, a whistle, a hand drum. To an outside observer it may look ritualistic, tantric; these bodies, this communal art. The energy is so addictive. The release so complete.
House music is ecstatic, in the way a Black Baptist or African Methodist Episcopal church service can be. It is participatory. The bass pops pieces of asphalt up off the street and you feel the music before you even get to the door. The kick drum surges your heartbeat. The cymbals rustle the butterflies in your stomach. It’s rapturous and the waves overtake you. It is the church choir, a juke joint on fire, a sonic tattoo. House music etches itself into your skin. Bodies ribbon together in the savory heat.
Like church, Chicago house music was and continues to be a central force for social interaction, spiritual liberation, and community. For those of us who grew up in Chicago house music, it is very personal. You’ll hear the phrase, “Some call it house. We call it home,” and in Chicago that is the truth. To be called a house head is a badge of honor and a way to locate your own people. Like church, the Black church in particular, house music parties are accepting of all who come through its doors, hear the 4/4 beat, feel the bass coming up from the street into the soles of their feet, and find their body moving.
Like a preacher, the DJ is the leader. The congregation and the crowd feed the service. When the preacher’s sermon causes him to bounce on his heels, the congregation bounces with him and the vibrations shake the room. He calls out his refrain and the congregation responds with an Amen or a Yes Lord. As the choir sings, something within you is released in the rhythm and the assembly of voices. The creaking of the floorboards and the heat of the congregation swaying together, rocking side to side, hands clapping, feet stomping, creating a wave of sound and movement that takes a singular body and pulls it into the collective. At a house party, you will hear the same call-and-response, though it may be a collective, Oooh Shit, or an Alright, or a Hell Yeah. There will be hands raised in the air in praise and eyes closed as bodies move in unison.
If you listen to the lyrics in most house music songs, you’ll see that they are about love and finding peace and freedom. They are about people finding their way out of stereotypical roles, or bad relationships. It’s about coming out, yes, sometimes out of the closet, but in more ways than sexuality or gender identification. It’s about coming out of the walls society has built for us. Songs of triumph over the pain in the world. Songs of loss and grief and survival. Songs that truly represent the Black experience, the gay experience, the human experience, such as “Promised Land” by Joe Smooth:
Sisters, brothers. One day we will be free from fighting, violence, people crying in the streets. When angels from above fall down and spread their wings like doves. As we walk, hand in hand, sisters, brothers, we’ll make it to the Promised Land.
Many house music songs are actually gospel songs, such as “I Want to Thank You” by Alicia Myers, or “I Get Lifted” by Barbara Tucker. People are likely to get the Holy Ghost on the dance floor just as they would in the church aisles, often with the exact same dance moves. In church you shake your neighbor’s hand or hug your neighbor. At a house party, you dance up close, juke or jack your neighbor, or the nearest speaker, body pressed up against it, feeling literal wind from the vibrations of the sound. The Spirit is unleashed in the gathering. People who’ve never met one another hug, smile, give dap, dance arm in arm, sing in unison, and raise their hands in praise. This unifying energy is the essence of Chicago house music.
At a house party, someone either drags you out on the dance floor or the DJ plays a song that has you tapping your feet, and before you know it there are people dancing around you and you are swept up in the crowd. When you go to a house party, you are part of something, not just a bystander. You are part of the creation of the work of art happening at that moment. You are welcomed and encouraged to participate.
House music is a place, a state of being, but it is not tied to any particular venue. A house party can pop off anyplace. It could be in any neighborhood in town, an underground black box room with only a strobe light and steam, a hotel ballroom, an abandoned warehouse, a beach, or a car radio with seven teenagers dancing around it.
The party followed the DJ, no matter where it was. (We still call any house music function a party.) Sometimes a club didn’t even have a name, or it wasn’t quite a club at all, but a restaurant rented out on a slow night, turned into disco heaven. There was a place called Kings & Queens, which was an empty loft space on Lake St., that literally had a giant hole on the dance floor where you could see three stories down. We just danced around it. This spot only lasted a month.
Chicago house music traveled the world and came home to show us all the things she has in her bags. The first time I heard house music played by a live band, I lost it. It was a dream musical collaboration on the level of Kate Bush making a record with Prince, or Anthrax together with Public Enemy. There was Peven Everett and Tortured Soul (from New York) and the New Orleans brass band The Soul Rebels playing an entire set of Chicago-style house music. It was a whole new level of experience. The live drums vibrating against my body, the walls, the floor. An electric bass grooving a house lick. I was filled up and taken over as I watched the room explode with the kind of shared energy that can only be described as spirit.
“Oooh shit,” I said out loud, bouncing up and down, waiting for the bartender. A beautiful, hefty queen my mom’s age looked over at me. “Sorry,” I said, realizing I nearly screamed in her ear. She smiled, laughed, and said, “That’s all right baby. That’s what it’s all about.” She was bouncing too and gave me a big hug before she swished her way to the dance floor.
House music is constantly in motion and ever changing. It is a dynamic art form. It does. It makes. It becomes. It takes hold of your insides and finds brightness. It finds your pain and brings you joy. It finds your weirdo and brings out your sassy, your funky, your truest you. There is freedom and liberation and hope in this music. Created out of marginalization and segregation it continues to bring people of all walks of life together.
To say what house music is can never really be completely accurate because house music means something unique to every person who experiences it. But once it takes hold of you, it will never let you go. And I am truly grateful.