THE ROOTS OF HOUSE MUSIC

Like it or not, house music was first and foremost a direct descendant of disco. Disco had already been going for ten years when the first electronic drum tracks began to appear out of Chicago, and in that time it had already suffered the slings and arrows of merciless commercial music exploitation, dilution and racial and sexual prejudice which culminated in the 'disco sucks' campaign. In one bizarrely extreme incident, people attending a baseball game in Chicago's Comiskey Park were invited to bring all their unwanted disco records and after the game they were tossed onto a massive bonfire. House Music is one of the most heard forms of electronic music around the world. It first appeared out of Chicago and New York, USA around 1984-85. According to the Hyperreal website, It was a direct descendent of disco but was deconstructed into a more "deeper" and "rawer" 4 on the floor type beat with little to no vocals.
But it wasn't just American music laying the groundwork for house. European music, spanning English electronic pop like Depeche Mode and Soft Cell and the earlier, more disco based sounds of Giorgio Moroder, Klein & MBO and a thousand Italian productions were immensely popular in urban areas like New York and Chicago. One of the reasons for their popularity was two clubs that had simultaneously broken the barriers of race and sexual preference, two clubs that were to pass on into dance music legend - Chicago's Warehouse and New York's Paradise Garage. Up until then, and after, the norm was for Black, Hispanic, White, straight and gay to segregate themselves, but with the Warehouse, opened in 1977 and presided over by Frankie Knuckles and the Garage where Larry Levan spun, the emphasis was on the music. (Ironically, Levan was first choice for the Warehouse, but he didn't want to leave New York). And the music was as varied as the clienteles - r'n'b based Black dance music and disco peppered with things as diverse as The Clash's 'Magnificent Seven'. For most people, these were the places that acted as breeding grounds for the music that eventually came to be known after the clubs - house and garage.
Such artists like Frankie Knuckles, Lil Louis, Eddie Fowlkes, Blake Baxter, Juan Atkins, David Morales and Jaime Principle have led the way to what house music is today and will continue to endure the sounds of time.