Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture - Softcover

Echols, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393338916 ISBN 13: 9780393338911

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

Synopsis

"Remarkable. . . . Carried along by prose that is as sleek and slinky as its subject."―Christine Stansell, University of Chicago

Alice Echols reveals the ways in which disco transformed popular music, propelling it into new sonic territory and influencing rap, techno, and trance. She probes the complex relationship between disco and the era's major movements: gay liberation, feminism, and African American rights. You won't say "disco sucks" as disco thumps back to life in this pulsating look at the culture and politics that gave rise to the music. 20 black-and-white photographs

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Echols's love of music, her acumen about popular culture, and her gifts as a leading cultural historian come together in this remarkable book. The book is fascinating, carried along by prose that is as sleek and slinky as its subject."-Christine Stansell, author of American Moderns"Hot Stuff describes the book as well as its subject: a thoughtful and sophisticated treatment of a significant but much-maligned music."-Tim Taylor, professor, Departments of Ethnomusicology and Musicology, UCLA"Echols aims for-and thoroughly achieves-a range of higher cultural insights. . . . Using encyclopedic knowledge of the eras' biggest stars, she shows how all sorts of musical disco styles played a 'central role' in broadening the contours of 'blackness, femininity, and male homosexuality' in America. . . . Revelatory."-Publishers Weekly"Without question, Alice Echols is one of America's best cultural critics working the beat between popular and academic cultures. With characteristic stylistic verve and scholarly acumen, Echols trolls the edges of our culture's underbelly to discern its central place in politics and economics. In Hot Stuff, she finds disco to be crucial for understanding what happened in 1970s America. Thus invariably, Echols provides a surprising take on familiar scenes by pointing out potholes and pitfalls of late twentieth-century American culture, exploring regions of experience previously overlooked or discounted. Her deepimmersion in the subjects of her research, thorough oral histories, and extensive archival investigation flesh out her absolutely original critical insights."-Paula Rabinowitz, author of Black & White & Noir

About the Author:

Alice Echols is a professor of American studies and history at Rutgers University. A former disco deejay, she is the author of the acclaimed biography of Janis Joplin, Scars of Sweet Paradise. She lives in Highland Park, New Jersey.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0393338916
• ISBN 13: 9780393338911
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368