The LGBTQIA+ roots of House — dance music’s most liberating genre
From Chicago clubs to worldwide stages, we explore the revolutionary sound from the underground
Music from the margins
Today, house music is a global phenomenon, filling clubs in Berlin, parties in São Paulo, and playlists on every streaming platform, but its roots go far deeper than basslines and BPMs. House music was born in Chicago’s queer Black underground. It was the sound of survival, resistance, and ultimately, community. Before it filled festivals and fashion ads, house music was the sound of queer Black and Latin communities finding joy and freedom. Here’s how it started, and why its legacy lives on.
From the ashes of Disco
Disco hit the mainstream in the ‘70s; marginalised communities found solace on the dancefloors, and the music spread like wildfire, from the charts to the silver screen, particularly after the premiere of Saturday Night Fever. Disco overtook rock as the predominant genre in the cultural zeitgeist, and as a result, the straight white male demographic who made up the majority of the rock listenership began to rise in revolt.
By 1979, disco would meet fierce opposition in the now-infamous “Disco Demolition Night”— a Major League Baseball promotional event that incentivised disgruntled listeners of anti-disco disk jockey Steve Dahl to bring Disco LPs to be publicly destroyed by explosion and mass burning. Tens of thousands of rioters attended, hurling discs from the stands. While the event at the reported as a revolt against disco, being that disco community was largely built of Black, Latin, and queer people, the burning was a direct attack at the community that built the genre. Some attendees even recall that of the LPs brought to be destroyed, “some weren’t even disco, they were just Black”.
But, from the ashes of the disco pyre, something new was about to emerge. As Nile Rodgers, legendary guitarist and co-founder of disco band Chic, recalls: “When house came in, they had that thing that we seemed to have lost. We got caught up in the commerciality of it, but people, they don’t really care how you make it— they just want it to move them.”
Clubs with queerness at the core
Clubs and venues were crucial spaces where music and community could be cultivated and defined during the late ’70s, particularly for underground genres such as House. One of the most famous venues for pop, dance, and underground music at the time was The Loft in NYC, and many clubs in other cities opened, inspired by its notoriety.
During the late ’70s, a young Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan—friends since childhood—began attending clubs in New York before eventually taking to the decks themselves. Levan dominated the New York scene at The Paradise Garage, where he held a decade-long residency. This prompted Knuckles to relocate to Chicago and make a name for himself there.
In 1977, club promoter Robert Williams opened a venue at 206 S. Jefferson Street in Chicago. He called it The Warehouse, and it became a beacon for queer Black and Latin music lovers to dance and find community. It was a members-only gay club, designed as such to ensure that the space was for its members to exist without prejudice.
At the heart of it was DJ Frankie Knuckles, an openly gay Black man who mixed disco, soul, gospel, and drum machine rhythms into a new sonic identity. He extended grooves using reel-to-reel edits and elevated the crowd into communal euphoria. This is where the term “house music” was born: people wanted tapes with the music played at “The House.”
Frankie Knuckles recalled the first time he heard the name “House” to describe the style of music he was making, on a drive with a friend in the early 80s:
“There was a tavern on the corner with a sign saying, “We play house music.” That was the first time I heard of it. Well, I saw it. I asked (his friend) what it was, and he said, “It’s the music that you play down there at your club.” I was like, “Excuse me?” He’s like, “That’s house music.” I was like, “Oh. I didn’t realize it had a name.” “Well, it’s the House, that’s everybody’s nickname for the place.” That was the first time I really felt like I belonged in Chicago, that I was part of the city. The fact that people had given it a nickname, that they thought of me, and that music together all in one.”
That sense of belonging and community was integral to the formation of House music. As concerns over the safety of The Warehouse rose—eventually leading to its closure—Frankie Knuckles took the opportunity to become a club owner with the opening of The Power Plant. Other famous venues included The Music Box in Chicago, where resident DJ Ron Hardy pushed sonic boundaries with his own reel-to-reel edits, filling dancefloors with the venue’s world-renowned sound.
It’s impossible to ignore the impact that NYC’s ballroom scene had on maintaining the connection between queerness, community, and House music. While ballroom culture can be traced back to the 1800s and earlier, the ballrooms of the ’80s carried the spirit of the clubs, fusing vogueing with House music. This influence is still seen today in the global impact of drag culture on electronic and pop music—from Madonna to Beyoncé and Chappell Roan.
House’s founding producers were DIY innovators
Beyond the clubs, House music was shaped by a wave of producers crafting sounds never before heard, often from their basements. Many of these queer and/or Black innovators transformed music through the invention of House. Instruments took on new levels of importance, as House DJs took what was seen as minimal by other musical standards and turned it into a massive sound that filled clubs and dancefloors around the world. Second-hand gear created world-class songs, and House showed the non-musician that they could make music.
A few particular pieces of gear helped define the genre. Using Roland drum machines, analog synths, and samplers, these pioneers created a sound that was both mechanical and deeply human. Technology broadened the capabilities of what people could create and allowed them to be truly expressive and experimental.
While the Roland TR-808 was favoured by hip-hop artists and did make appearances in House music production, it was the Roland TR-909 and TB-303 that were used extensively by producers in the Chicago House music scene. The TR-707 would become more prevalent as acid house took shape. The Roland TR-909, initially designed as a practice instrument, was the beginning of a creative revolution for many Chicago producers. Widely considered the first house record, Jesse Saunders' “On and On” showcases the extent to which instruments like the Roland TR-808 were used in House music production.
Frankie Knuckles also began to stretch the limits of the tapes he had by splicing them using a reel-to-reel tape machine to create his signature sound, adding new orchestral elements, vocals, and percussion. Other DJs of the time recall using duplicate copies of the same records for live performances, enabling them to extend the length of a track, perform tricks, and mix live, something akin to live sampling.
On the track “Move Your Body”, Marshall Jefferson, a pioneering producer who took House music from its rhythm-based origins and pushed it into something more melodic, incorporated keyboards and chord structures in his productions, with Roland keyboards playing a large role. It quickly became another defining sonic trait of House music, with many house tracks still emulating that sound today.
Musically, no genre was left untouched. House DJs were music fans through and through, and you could hear that in what was being played. Frankie Knuckles was known for pulling records from any genre you could imagine. “It was such a wide variety of music I used to play there, it wasn’t all R&B and soul. There was some post-punk, Grace Jones, some reggae around the edges, some deep soul. There was some of everything, literally everything.”
A global sound of resistance
As house music left the States, it became the soundtrack to club nights of cities far beyond its origins. House found itself embraced with open arms across the pond— In Manchester, acid house was a perfect match for the infamous venue, The Haçienda, and was the catalyst for the incumbent wave of rave. Over in London, the UK gay club scene congregated at Heaven, where Paul Oakenfold held acid house nights in the 1980s. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Berlin’s burgeoning electronic music scene, forged by the likes of Kraftwerk, quickly adopted House music and expanded the genre into techno styles.
During the 1980s, as the AIDS epidemic devastated queer communities, house clubs became lifelines. While mainstream media ignored the crisis, LGBTQIA+ communities found healing and solidarity on the floor. The music responded in kind, and House became more emotive, to communicate a spirit of defiance and love. Tracks became more spiritual with the inclusion of Gospel samples and uplifting grooves that provided escapism.
House music everlasting
House music was foundational to electronic dance music, and without its queer pioneers, hundreds of subgenres wouldn’t exist today. As music spreads and becomes more global—being adopted, adapted, and transformed to inspire countless communities—it’s easy to lose sight of a genre’s cultural origins. Just as disco became mainstream and was popularized by the likes of the Bee Gees, and became synonymous with John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Many people also forget the Black roots of rock music, which originated from the blues.
Modern queer producers are preserving and pushing House’s radical roots. Honey Dijon, a Black trans DJ and fashion icon, has explicitly centered Black and trans identity at the heart of House music. In her words, “[House music] has gone from culture to entertainment, and what I try to do in my work is constantly protest against forgetting where this music came from – not in a nostalgic way, but in a critical way.”
Other contemporary voices include DJ Sprinkles, also known as Terre Thaemlitz—a trans artist and theorist who critiques the depoliticization of House music and calls for a return to the queerness inherent in the genre’s formation.
Their messages are clear: House is still a living, breathing expression of queer liberation. It’s essential to remember the origins of such an influential genre and to celebrate the contemporary artists who are bringing back what makes House music so special in the first place. House music was a reflection of Black and LGBTQIA+ culture, a sound born out of resistance. Without that fighting spirit, electronic music as we know it today would not exist.
Feeling inspired?
Why not show your love for this revolutionary music genre by creating a House-inspired track of your own? Find musical liberation with your Seaboard or Piano M, find inspiration with House-influenced presets in Equator2 or one of our soundpacks, and share what you've made with us on socials at @roli_create!
