Dance Music and the Gay Community
'The love that you need will never be found at home.' This is the central lament of Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat, the first song to specifically, openly detail issues of living a gay life to top Dance charts in the U.S. Specifically gay Dance music appeared as early as I Was Born This Way, recorded by Valention in 1975, but none had ever topped the national Dance charts. As 1985 began, Smalltown Boy was riding the top of the Dance chart as a powerful reminder of the symbiotic relationship between Dance music and the larger gay community. A crossover to mainstream Pop charts did not occur, but Smalltown Boy proved that songs that moved past a caricature of what it means to be gay in the world were commercially viable in the Dance community.
Dance music, since the earliest dawn of Disco, has always been closely identified with the gay community. Some writers draw connections between the roughly concurrent timing of Stonewall riots, the first incarnations of The Loft, and the opening of the seminal club the Haven seeing the development of club culture as another element of the gay rights movement. However, it may be a bit off target to tie gay community activism too closely to the communal escapism of club culture. Key figures in each were usually not the same people.
Exclusively gay clubs in New York City in the early 70's were a difficult premise. Laws still existed that forbade same gender dancing and quotas were attached for the number of individuals of each gender that were required at a public club. Many of the early dance clubs in New York City attracted a blend of gay and straight dancers happily coexisting in the hedonistic environment.
The Continental Baths opened what was probably one of the first nearly exclusively gay dance clubs in New York City. The Baths were able to get around prohibitions that made exclusively gay clubs nearly impossible since the primary business was acting as a gay bathhouse not as a dance club. Around the same time the wealthy gay communities summering on Fire Island began to open their own dance clubs including the Sandpiper and Ice Palace among others. As the legal status of homosexuals in New York City softened somewhat by the mid-1970's, gay dance clubs began to open alongside predominately straight and mixed clubs.
With the explosion of Disco in the late 70's, a number of recording acts emerged that specifically appealed to a gay audience while, in many cases, leaving mainstream audiences unaware or unconcerned about the strong gay undercurrent. Probably the most successful were the Village People. Jacques Morali put the group together to glorify 'butch' gay stereotypes such as the leather man, cop, and construction worker. Their first Dance hits included odes to Fire Island and San Francisco. YMCA remains a staple singalong at sports events to this day. The San Francisco Disco scene was predominately gay in orientation. Among the artists that emerged were Sylvester, Patrick Cowley, Paul Parker, and Boystown Gang, with their anthem Cruising the Streets.
In the early 80's The Saint opened in New York City. It was one of the largest dance clubs in the nation and a stunning monument to the gay culture in Dance music. Within a few years an unfortunate association emerged. The growing spread of AIDS was often informally referred to as 'Saint's disease' due to the epidemics first flowering in the gay community. AIDS had a devastating effect on Dance music - the number of deaths among artists, DJs, industry figures, and dancers is staggering.
In 1985 the walls didn't suddenly come down between gay and straight communities due to Smalltown Boy, but the success of Bronski Beat in the mid-80's and future success of the Pet Shop Boys, Jimmy Sommerville's solo work, and Hi-NRG Dance music in general did lead to greater tolerance both within the Dance community and outside as well. The inclusive approach of many Dance music artists, producers, DJs and mixers continues to inspire a move toward a world that looks just a bit more like the dream of an 'orientation-free' sexuality expressed by the mixed crowds of many legendary dance clubs through the years from The Loft to Paradise Garage to the Warehouse in Chicago .