Where Did House Music Come From?

Chicago’s house music has created a cultural impact on dance floors worldwide by keeping people dancing since the 1970s.

The underground club scenes in Chicago in the late 70s to early 80s would be the location that birthed house music from the ashes of disco. House music’s aesthetic is found to be influenced by primarily African roots and LGBTQ culture.  The combination of a funky 4/4 bass beast, a tempo of 120 beats per minute, prominent high-hat fills, and passionate lyrics about spirituality, love, and celebration builds a complex melody that invites the body to dance, sing, and jump. 

Through the fall of disco and the rise of house music during the 70s going all the way to the 90s, music technology became more accessible, and current DJs would play with their curiosity by studying the foundations of disco and experimental electronic music. Before the internet, the locality of Chicago’s house music slowly evolved into other American cities, such as New York and Detroit, and eventually spread through word of mouth or by physically being there. In their respective cities, each of the artists popularized a new style of dance music by mixing different sounds from disco, funk, electro-pop, R&B, gospel, and techno.

Early innovators started with DJs Frankie Knuckles and Jesse Saunders from Chicago. Jesse is credited with producing the first original house track named “On & On”. Other innovators included Ron Hardy in Chicago, Larry Levan in New York City, and Ken Collier in Detroit.

Frankie Knuckles quickly established himself as the resident DJ for The Warehouse, a prominent underground nightclub based in Chicago. Eventually, Frankie would play a critical role in the 80s in developing house music and later become recognized as “the godfather of music”. The glorified DJ was known for his eccentric talent to remix (re-edit) songs using a reel-to-reel tape machine, while also adding a unique technique. Soon, the city of Chicago would even recognize The Warehouse as a historical landmark named “The Birthplace of House Music”.

Before the internet, the locality of Chicago’s house music slowly evolved into other American cities, such as New York and Detroit, through word of mouth or by experience. By the mid-1990s the house music that originally started in Chicago would soon morph into different subgenre sounds of house music, given the names acid house, trance, and drum and bass.

To learn more information about the birth of house music in Chicago, visit these additional sources for details: NPR / Carnegie Hall