The Gay Music Gene

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a dance music historian. I compiled the Billboard Dance Chart book a few years ago so you could say that I wrote the book on dance music.

Recently my 22 year old friend Luke asked me why all gay people like dance/house music. He asked me because his sister asked him and he did not have an answer. His sister lives in Nebraska and even she noticed gay people like house music. When Luke asked me I quickly replied "it's the gay music gene." But it is a good question. Why do 3 generations of gay people over a 40 year period all gravitate towards a certain sound?

Here is a little history. If you were gay in New York in the 1960's you would go to an underground gay club where all they had was a jukebox filled with the hits of the day mostly Motown and you would dance to that. There was no such thing as a DJ. If you were dancing in this club you would select a song like Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Tears Of The Clown or Martha and the Vandellas - Dancing In The Street. To quote the countless American Bandstand rate-a-record contestants "It had a good beat and you could dance to it."

That sound evolved into early disco with songs like 1974 Hughes Corporation - Rock The Boat. Then came hard core disco in the late 1970's. High Energy in the early 1980's, and from the late 1980's until the present there is house and techno.

Here is the cultural history. When you are gay you know you are different. You search out others that are like you. It is human nature. Those clubs where gay people have congregated have always had a dance floor and hence play dance music. This is what we hear so it is what we are familiar with.

I know that I have extra strong dance dna running through my veins. I have always been this way even when I bought my first 45s of KC and the Sunshine Band - Shake Your Booty and the Sylvers - Hot Line. So I know it goes deeper than a cultural soundtrack from bars and clubs. I certainly was not going to gay bars when I was 12 but I had EVERY Donna Summer and Village People albums. This was the biggest clue that I would turn out to be a fag. And to make it worse my mother bought the albums for me! She had no idea!

But she liked the disco music that I blased from my room in high school. Not because it was gay music but because it was up beat happy music with good melodies and of course it had a good beat and you could dance to it.

I think I got my gay music gene from my mother, but I digress....

All I know is that when I hear a song that starts out with a dance beat of about 130 beats per minute with major piano chords and a black girl singing I lose my ever lovin' mind! Nobody can hear CeCe Peniston - Finally and not smile and tap their foot.

This leads to that other strange connection between gay white men and straight black women. What's that all about? Gay white men and straight black women always get along. And every gay boy has his black girl attitude speak when emphasizing something. Girl, I know I do. And when I lose my temper I turn into Shaniquia on her period!

Well most early disco and later house music is sung by straight black women. Are we drawn to it for that reason too? Many, including Martin Luther King, Jr.'s wife and foundation have said that the struggle for equal rights for gays and blacks has many parallels. A black woman is gonna tell you what she really feels and will keep it and you real. When you struggle for equality you have to do a lot of introspective searching. Most straight people who do the standard high school, college, marriage, children, house thing never have to think about who they are and why they are doing it. This is more true for the 1960's than today, but we minorities have to figure out who we are and how we fit in and why. We ask ourselves the hard questions to make sense of ourselves.

So when a black girl tells it like it is there is power in that attitude. It says that I know me, and I know you are fooling yourself so get over it! Gay people have that same attitude. We have to know who we are because there is no historical life template that we can fit into. So when we hear the power of that black girl singing we are emotionally moved and drawn to it.

But this does not explain how Luke's sister in Nebraska with no gay culture at all knows the gay - house music connection. It must be something deeper.

My best logical answer to Luke's question was this. As gay people we struggle. Certainly less now than 20 or 40 years ago but the coming out process is never easy. We as gay people always have that weight on our back that eats away at your soul with thoughts like "why am I different" and "am I a bad person" it takes a life time to come to terms with accepting who you are.

Maybe, just maybe, dance/house music makes us feel good and forget our troubles for a few minutes. I know it does when I am on the dance floor. Maybe gay people are drawn to House instead of death metal because we have enough to worry about and we just want to feel happy.

I do have one gay friend who lacks the gay music gene. Michael does not own or get dance music and certainly not remixes. He thinks the regular radio version is just fine. I guess nothing is 100%.

With the exception of my best boogie friend Lauren and a gaggle of fag hags, straight people really are not moved by dance music the way gay people are. Sure they may know or like a dance song here or there but they do not blast dance music in their car when there is not a dance floor in sight.

Which brings us back to my original answer. There must be a gay music gene or something in the way gay people's brains are wired that makes us gravitate toward positive up beat music.

Of course this does not include Lesbians with their depressing, introspective folk of the likes of the Indigo Girls. But those Lesbians are in a class of their own. Maybe there is a Lesbian music gene that makes you like political folk rock and acoustic guitars?

In the end it all comes down to this quote form the late, great and immortal dance diva Sylvester: "Your ear has to be in your foot to not hear these girls can sing yall."