Why Beyonce thanked the queer community for her record-breaking Grammys 2023 win

“I’d like to thank the queer community for your love and for inventing the genre.” @Beyonce #GRAMMYS pic.twitter.com/qHDEM3Itsq

— GLAAD (@glaad) February 6, 2023

She also thanked her uncle, who was gay and who helped raise her. In 2019, she said, “He was brave and unapologetic during a time when this country wasn’t as accepting. And witnessing his battle with HIV was one of the most painful experiences I have ever lived.”

Disco and House music reigned in the 1970s and of late, their popularity has rebounded with a slew of modern artists taking inspiration from the genres. We take a look at the genres’ history – and the LGBTQ community’s role in pioneering them.

What kind of music does ‘Disco’ refer to?

The word ‘disco’ originally referred to the French term ‘discotheque’ and meant a place in the 1960s where music was played. This became shortened to refer to club-like places. As the idea made its way over to the US from France, the term then meant a genre of music that was invented at such clubs.

These sounds were new in that they had a mix of bass, saxophones, four-beat kick drums and featured synthesisers. To understand what it means, here are some of the most popular songs from this era featuring disco sounds: ‘Daddy Cool’ by Boney M, ‘Stayin’ Alive’ by the Bee Gees, and ‘I Feel Love’ by Donna Summer. Bollywood songs like ‘Disco Deewane’, Bappi Lahiri’s ‘Disco Dancer’ and ‘Yaad aa raha hai’ also fall into the genre.

Beyonce’s ‘Renaissance’ is full of samples (tunes or words of existing songs that are taken by another artist) from some iconic disco hits.

What is the link between disco and queer communities?

It lies in how the music was created and listened to. Journalists Sarah Marshall and podcaster Michael Hobbes, in an episode of their podcast ‘You’re Wrong About’, said how in the nightclubs at the time there was a lack of music that people could keep dancing to. DJs in cities like New York began cutting up and stitching together existing songs into their own, longer versions, going as long as six or seven minutes – a rarity at the time.

They would take primarily from Black music artists and Latino music, mostly because the kind of songs they made often seemed suited for high-tempo dancing, such as jazz and soul. Additionally, these makeshift places for dancing became central to black and brown LGBTQ people as their public acceptance was lower at the time. The more highbrow clubs would not grant them entrance and there was also a threat of violence.

When singers began recording original disco compositions, the lyrics began reflecting themes of love and empowerment, as these communities could relate to aspirational themes that projected confidence.

How disco rose and fell

This was a period of many societal changes coming right after the 1960s, which saw movements for civil rights emerge, including the Stonewall riots of 1969 that became a landmark event in mobilising the LGBTQ community later on. The podcast quotes the book ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’ on the history of DJing, which says of the craze, “When the economy’s been bad, the discos now are doing the same thing that the big dance halls with the crystal chandelier did during the Depression.”

By the mid-1970s, record labels and established institutions began looking to capitalise on these trends. The hit 1977 film ‘Saturday Night Fever’ starring John Travolta took heavy inspiration from this music and the scene. But as a result, making these mainstream films and songs more acceptable to wider audiences meant not highlighting their origins from marginalised groups.

As the decade drew to a close, overexposure to the genre became a cause for its falling popularity, along with opposition to disco from more conservative music listeners. In a riot-like event now termed the “Disco Demolition Night’, a radio jockey in Chicago encouraged people to gather at a stadium before a baseball game and destroy Disco CDs.

A return to the mainstream

Many argue that even after this night, disco continued to influence Western music. The ‘House’ genre is an example, which stitched together disco songs and added some more elements, like electronic beats. The French music duo Daft Punk in the late 2000s and early 2010s also brought about this sound to the forefront, as have the likes of The Weeknd, Dua Lipa and even K-pop artists around the 2020s.

Beyond the West too, disco became a sensation. Bappi Lahiri brought the sound to India in the 1980s. He once recalled, “I had visited the US for the first time and was in a club in Chicago. There were no DJs at the time but there was a man who was playing records in the club. The song ‘Stayin’ Alive’ from Saturday Night Fever was playing.” Singers like Pakistan’s Nazia Hassan, of ‘Disco Deewane’ fame, also helped popularise it in the subcontinent.