Disco Interlude: 5 Disco-Themed Books
Clear the dance floor and read
Readers and Listeners,
Please pardon our appearance and momentary absence as we plan new articles, in-depth features, and even interviews.
One half of Italian Disco Stories is hard at work searching for the ultimate grail for a self-employed creative: a stable desk job and/or more consistent writing assignments (hire her). The other half is busy publishing and promoting his music, both in terms of original compositions and restorations/reworks of genre-defining yet under-the-radar tracks from the Disco Era–check out Aquarium Sounds, Odeon (Holdin’ On), and Disco Iglesias
In the meantime, we wanted to offer a brief reading list of texts we've greatly enjoyed in the past. This does not represent the entirety of our digital or physical library, but five titles is a great start. Please note, these are not affiliate links, they’re just here for your convenience. Share your favorite reads in the comments!
La Storia della Disco Music by Andrea Angeli Bufalini and Giovanni Savastano
This is one of the very few book-length projects written in Italian devoted to disco music, and we commend Angeli Bufalini and Savastano for examining it from a non-U.S.-centric perspective. He devotes a lot of resources and research to the European panorama, which spawned a wide variety of expressions that eventually became genres in their own right. There are numerous sidebars devoted to chronologies, playlists, and even specific variety shows that played a key role in promoting disco’s rise in Italy. While it lacks the laser-focused depth of Lawrence, this is a very solid, survey-level read.
L’Anello di Bindi by Ferdinando Molteni
In 1961, critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Umberto Bindi appeared onstage at the Sanremo Music Festival, capping his outfit with what was then deemed a very effeminate engagement ring. This caused his progressive ostracism from the spotlight, as he was considered too “queer” for the mainstream public. This unfortunate episode of Italy’s cultural history serves as the anchor for a survey of the intersection of music and queer culture in Italy. Names like Alfredo Cohen, Ivan Cattaneo, Gianna Nannini, Renato Zero, and Raffaella Carrà are prominently featured, while Bindi’s story reverberates like a basso continuo. While not explicitly focused on disco, this book examines different players in the genre. Given disco’s association with LGBT culture, this is a thorough and compassionate read. Unfortunately, it’s only available in Italian, but we’d welcome Molteni for an interview anytime.
Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and 1980s: Disco Heterotopias by Flora Pitrolo and Marko Zubak (ed.)
A volume like this, where different contributors tackle sub-genres and localization phenomena of disco music, is essential for understanding how disco impacted global culture. While we mostly highlight the Italo disco portion, which argues for the genre’s role in spawning Eurodance—both its kid-friendly version and its high-NRG counterpart—and Eurobeat, the book contains chapters about Nigeria, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Montreal, China, Japan, and Hindi cinema. It’s a markedly academic book, so we suggest taking it one chapter (and region) at a time.
Love Saves The Day by Tim Lawrence
Love Saves The Day was a Valentine’s Day party hosted by “musical host” David Mancuso in his loft at 647 Broadway in 1970. Over the course of the book, Lawrence traces the evolution of dance culture from an underground phenomenon into what we would come to know as the “Disco” sound, keeping the venues and the hosts/DJs at the forefront. In addition to a wealth of visual assets and discography cataloging, it includes interviews with figures like Mancuso, Nicky Siano, Tom Moulton, Loleatta Holloway, Giorgio Moroder, Francis Grasso, Frankie Knuckles, and Earl Young. Its follow-up, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980–1983, came out in 2016.
Hot Stuff by Alice Echols
In this book, Echols examines how disco intersected with the leading cultural movements of the 1970s and 1980s, such as gay liberation, feminism, and the Black freedom struggle. She devotes several chapters to exploring disco’s relationship with different gender expressions, including Black masculinity, gay macho masculinity, and androgyny (courtesy of figures like Grace Jones and Sylvester), while also examining the then-outré expressions of female desire brought by LaBelle, Diana Ross, and, of course, Donna Summer.
Thank you for this !