Disco: Soundtrack Of A Revolution

[DanaK]

PBS 3-part documentary series that premieres nationally June 25, but check your local listings as various stations are playing it earlier or later. It’s already premiered on one of my local stations and will be premiering on another local station starting Sunday

The series is about the rise and fall and enduring legacy of Disco

[Bastet]

The first part has already aired here, and I watched it tonight on the PBS app and enjoyed it.

I like at least a little bit of pretty much every genre of music, and while disco is several rungs down my favorites list, I like more than a little bit of it.  I understand and agree with some of the criticism, while finding some of it overblown, because I enjoy what I enjoy of it -- it's fun.  I like that this documentary started out by setting the social stage of the '70s, so that what disco originally meant to marginalized communities, rather than critique of its later mainstream popularity, is centered .

I'm a child of the '70s, but in LA, not NY or even Philadelphia, so disco was just highly danceable music (especially to a kid who had little dance aptitude) on the radio to me.  I later learned that discos were something of a haven for Black, Latin, and LGBTQ+ communities*, but I'm not well versed in the details to this day.  Producers had me when they started with the Stonewall rebellion, and how much of that was rooted in the simple desire to be able to dance with each other, then how the loft parties became clubs immune to police raids -- people took a risk getting there, but once they were behind those private doors, they were safe for the night.  I had no idea about restaurants, hit by the beef crisis, renting out their venues after hours as party spaces.

*How those communities wound up co-mingling, and how an underground dance culture became a distinctive sound, those are details I didn't know and the kind of thing I look forward to learning as this documentary plays on.

[Raja]

I was just thinking about disco recently. Now that the rioters are at least 65yrs I wonder how many still stay proudly in the disco sucks camp and will go on a documentary camera to say so.. When you count in the roots of disco  those  in the counter revolution movement/Chicago riot could be seen like their parents on camera 40 years later admitting they tried to keep Black kids in segregated schools.

[DanaK]

I’ve watched Parts 1 and 2 so far and it’s definitely interesting, especially how it all started