The club is crowded, filled to capacity as the music pours out of the speakers like silk. It wraps itself around corners coming toward everyone in the club, seeping into their skin. Hearts beat, breaths hitch and the bass enters the soul like a holy revelation. The call from the DJ—who is both shaman and guide—comes. Can you feel it? The response? Yes, you can! You feel it as you dance with your family; your sisters and brothers in music, commonalities shared—even if the connection is brief. House is calling you home, and you answer its call.
For many, the early days at the Warehouse, Music Box, and Power Plant meant more than just a simple dance club. It was a time for connection—social, emotional, sexual. It was time spent with found family, which for some that may have been the only family in their lives. For many Black men in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, informing their family of their sexual orientation was not an option. For those who were discovered, the results were multiple; estrangement, rejection from both family and community. |
This often left them with no other people in their lives than their club families. For those sacred hours during the weekend, club members were with their found family and felt acceptance. Clubs were spaces where, “...they could be safe, be themselves, be someone else for a while, and be others in ways not permitted in the ‘normal’ everyday world.”[1] This new normal could exist without judgment, lost in a haze of music, camaraderie, and sweat: a musical Utopia.
In “Can You Feel It? DJs and House Music Culture in the UK,” Tony Langlois wrote that “House music ‘works’ because whilst functioning in a communal ethos, each individual is able to concentrate on their own sensual ‘danceworld’—to ‘lose themselves in the music.’”[2] This danceworld acts as one that is more real for almost every dancer. Societal rules don’t exist—only the self, the music, and the love, and it is in this danceworld that the role of the DJ is paramount. “It is his own transformation from passive ‘record player’ to (virtual) musician that gives the house event its significance.”[3] Again, the DJ acts as a spiritual pied piper of sorts. Knuckles often referred to his DJ work as akin to being in church. In an interview with Chicago TV station, WMAQ, he explained that if you had a room with thousands of people, each with their own unique personalities and tastes, your music had the power to unite them. “It’s the most amazing thing. It’s like that in church. By the time the preacher gets going, or that choir gets going… that whole room becomes one.”[4] He added that there was an incredible spiritual element to it all. “The Warehouse was a lot like that. For most people that went there, it was like church for them.”[5]
This spirituality, dreamworld acceptance, provided by the club, DJ, and dancers allowed club goers to be true to themselves. It was during those sacred hours of worship at the altar of the DJ that they could feel whole, a part of something bigger, a brother or sister to a family on the dance floor in the church of house. This was particularly poignant for those who had been rejected by family, community, and church. There was meaning to be found at the club.
There was a connection made for the Black queer community, one that could be found in the safety of the clubs in the early days that no longer seems to be found on the same level. “The reason I think I progressed in dance music was because I had a chance to see a little bit of the future—gay Black kids, straight Black kids, everybody just going for it.”[6] - DJ Derrick May |
Once house music began its commercialization and appropriation by the straight community, it became a tremendous loss for the Black queer community for which, in many cases, the camaraderie and acceptance found in gay dance spaces created a substitution for the family as well as the church. Once again, queer Black people were left without a house and home.
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