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Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a Sylvester fan. While this may tread the fine line between disco and funk (the domain where my hero George Clinton still rules supreme), I see "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) as probably "disco" music's finest moment.
But to dig deeper (this one's to Galileo Middlesex, who was extolling the virtues of modern electronic music - needless to say, I agree with you), I can't see the fine line that separates "disco" from modern club music today. Whether it's the funky falsetto repetition of "Fly Robin Fly" - the cold computerized rep of Kraftwerk's "Tour De France" - the white boy soul of Heaven 17's "Temptation" - the sinewy recitations of Shriekback on "Nemesis" - Ledernacken's teutonic rantings in "Amok" - Coldcut's use of the Fall's frontman Mark E. Smith ramblings set to a dynamic beat in "I'm In Deep" - the mantra-like repetitions of The Orb - the poetic dance stylings of the Pet Shop Boys - Aphex Twin, Future Sound of London, jungle, house, acid house, acid dub, acid jazz, on and on, it's DANCE music, primarily electronically made - some of it's great and some of it sucks. As a former club dj, I can tell you that black, white, gay, straight, jew, arab, et al will all dance to the right record with the right dj administering the mix. The beat knows no boundaries, racial, sexual, otherwise.
Shifting the talk to rap, as someone who worked in the music biz (and with rap exclusively for about three years), I can tell you that rap isn't a "black" thing - at least to the people who sell the records, most of whom are white records execs. For example, on most rap records, you can count on your first 500,000 in sales to come from a primarily black fan base, these sales come in the first 3-4 weeks. To sustain a rap record's sales, you have to cross it over - typically to young white male surburban youth. You're never going to have a monster (plat plus) rap record if you rely on a primarily black fan base (at least that's what the sales trends looked like when I left the biz in 1994).
The reason that you see so much rap flooding the market does lean back to something that FerretBoy said about disco - it's so incredibly cheap to make (even when you pay for sample rights, it's cheap) because it's pretty much all machine based - very little true musical craft is required (to extend that, a couple of my office mates dorked around in the studio and made a "joke" record to play at the office - it was good enough for us to seriously consider putting it out (we didn't) - and these guys were just promo schmucks with no musical background). I worked on a rap record that we paid $8,000 to make - the artist, an unknown, signed a crap deal, giving most of the money to the record company. The record went platinum, and everyone laughed their way to the bank. Touring is cheap because it's a guy and a DAT tape. More cash in the bank. Since even a crappy rap record will sell around 20,000, it's not a tough gamble for record companies to take. It's a "throw it agains the wall and see if it sticks" philosophy. That's why the record biz sucks.
Personally, with the exceptions of groups like DeLaSoul, BDP, PE, 3rd Bass, and PM Dawn, I think most rap is crap.
Death
(who likes to dance)
(PS - FerretBoy - I saved my soul by working for a blues label too - do you forgive me?)
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