In South Africa's burgeoning ballroom scene, pioneering figures and DJs are finding their own ‘Ha’ in the country's past, and in the contemporary sounds of gqom, amapiano, and Afrobeats. Tazmé Pillay learns more “DJ, cut the beat.” The room falls silent — an unforgivable sin anywhere else, but this is no nightclub. This is a [...]
From banging cuts for the ballroom to surprisingly tasteful early big room house, these tracks expose the genre's roots in queer American club cultures. House music is gay music. The sound emerged from the queer black and latinx club cultures of New York and Chicago in the ’80s. Strangely, these roots of the culture are not very well [...]
By Asiya Ali For this Black History Month US and LGBT History Month, we're celebrating the rich roots of house music and the Black and Queer DJs who helped create it. There's a strong impression that House music has become synonymous with whiteness. This is obviously due to the genre being spearheaded by mostly white, [...]