The History of LGBTQ+ Influence In Dance Music

Essentially developing dance music and helping to popularize the genre from its inception in the U.S. and around the world, the LGBTQ+ community has been a major contributor in dance music, as we know it today.

Anyone who calls themselves huge fans of electronic dance music, knows the true roots of house music and its distinctive relationship to the LGBTQ+ community and the Black and Latino communities that created dance music as we know it today.

The form of music that many people now call EDM originally stems from house music, which came into its own in Chicago in the 1970s and the 1980s, when disco was emerging as a sound. A well-known DJ, by the name of David Mancuso, regularly played records at his house in the Lower East Side of New York City. This eventually evolved into the legendary, invitation-only underground dance parties at The Loft. These private loft parties acted as a safe space for many gays and people of alternative gender-expressions in New York City at the time. The popular private events became the template for major discotheques and DJ culture, such as the Paradise Garage with DJ Larry Levan and Studio 54 with DJ Nicky Siano.

House, derived from an abbreviation of the Warehouse (a club in Chicago frequented by Black and Latino gay men) fused the symphonic sweep and soul diva vocals of 1970s disco, with the cold futurism of synthesizer-driven Euro-disco. A response to the anti-disco sentiment in the rock n roll world at the end of the 70s, an attitude directly rooted in anti-Blackness. House music became a protest against those who attempted to take away the LGBTQ+ and Black communities right to exist.

Other influences to dance music included the prestigious drag balls, where cross-dressing and transgender people, many of whom were Black and Latino, dramatically transformed dance music through vogueing and high intensity dance and performance tracks.

Eventually by the early 1980s, the urban gay clubs continued to support the disco sound that would transition into house and techno music. By the late 1980s, Chicago producers introduced deeper bass lines, combined with the suppressed sequencer of the Roland TB-303 synthesizer, which created a distinct “acid house” sound. With this new sound that was created, British DJs were able to create raves all throughout England. The raves brought newer, faster styles, which were filled with breakbeats, early drum ‘n’ bass, and early dubstep.

More than 40 years later, the LGBTQ+, Black, and Latino communities’ house origins are a long way from where the genre has started in the 1970s Chicago clubs. But because of those roots within EDM, they continue to inspire those who are changing the game within the DJ-driven culture. Because of these unforgotten pioneers, EDM has been out-pacing rock, punk, R&B, and hip-hop in popularity for quite some time now.