Andrea Angeli Bufalini - Giovanni Savastano

Title: La storia della disco music

Author: Andrea Angeli Bufalini, Giovanni Savastano

Publisher: Hoepli

Pages: 480

Price: €29.90

Hands off disco music. An indispensable disclaimer before going any further, since the writer, under the lights of the mirror ball, built the very foundations of his future musical passion. Though far more as a listener than as a habitué of the dancefloor, including the makeshift ones at school parties. In short, disco is one of those (few) fixed points in the passage from childhood to adolescence. A fetish. Like Italy's World Cup win in Spain, the birth of private TV networks, or the first video games. A voluptuous, heavily made-up muse, in tight flared jeans, who drags you onto the dancefloor and never lets you go. Love to love you baby – as an impudent Donna Summer once whispered, the woman crowned queen of an entire era on the cover of Newsweek on April 2, 1979, under the eloquent headline "Disco Takes Over". But in truth, those sequins and those (pre)pubescent moans of excitement are only the most conspicuous side of a reality with many faces, almost as many as the little mirrored tiles of the legendary strobing ball that became its icon.

To tell us all about them, in extraordinary depth, comes this volume by Andrea Angeli Bufalini and Giovanni Savastano (published by Hoepli), which traces the complete history of disco music back to its Afro, R&B, soul and funk roots, through to its contamination with eurodisco electronics, paying special attention to the early days of italodisco, and also examining the proliferation of the original discotheques that, starting in Paris, exploded in New York, the gravitational center of club culture (The Loft, Studio 54, Paradise Garage) and the launchpad for the new ministers of sound, the DJs and their 12-inch vinyl records. A map to navigate the various currents that achieved worldwide fame: from the Afro origins of Manu Dibango and the Lafayette Afro Rock Band to the sun-soaked Miami Sound, from Bohannon's disco-stomp to Saturday Night Fever, from the orchestral Philly Sound to the electronic Munich Sound of Giorgio Moroder, from the superstars (Donna Summer, Bee Gees, Boney M, Chic, Gloria Gaynor, Barry White, Amii Stewart) to the hits of precious one-shot wonders like Van McCoy, Anita Ward, Patrick Hernandez, Lipps Inc. and the marvelous Dee D. Jackson (respectively: "The Hustle", "Ring My Bell", "Born To Be Alive", "Funky Town" and "Meteor Man"), from the gay-clubbing scene of Sylvester and Grace Jones to the "scandalous" ambiguity of Amanda Lear and the various aliens who landed on the dancefloor from the planets of rock, funk and jazz, down to eccentric Italian phenomena like La Bionda, Oliver Onions, Donatella Rettore, Alan Sorrenti, Gazebo (although the first Italian disco track was apparently "Nessuno mai" by Giancarlo Bigazzi and Gianni Bella, performed by Marcella and later turned by Boney M. into "Take The Heat Off Me").

Through a passionate narrative rich in anecdotes (did you know that "Soul Makossa" by Cameroonian artist Manu Dibango can be considered the forerunner of the genre, or that Donna Summer recorded "Love To Love You Baby" lying on a shag carpet?), Angeli Bufalini and Savastano delve into a phenomenon far more complex and rife with contradictions than is usually acknowledged. Because disco is indeed escapist music, but it is also one of the voices of social advocacy, in its embrace of Black culture, for instance, or of the gay world. It's popmuzik, but also a genre capable of making significant innovations to the science of rhythm – as those prescient visionaries David Bowie and David Byrne had already sensed – as well as to composition and recording techniques, and even to the ways music was distributed (think, for example, of mix records). And above all, it's music without barriers, perhaps even the first genre to unite – under those dazzling strobe lights – different generations, social classes and cultures. Afro music, but with an extra groove, borrowed from soul, funk and even jazz.

"Disco music will remain forever etched in the DNA of music," the authors state. "Not even when, three months after the peak of its success, in 1979, Disco Demolition Night took place – the most shameful and violent crusade against the genre, which saw thousands of records burned in Chicago – was it possible to kill it off. That act only exposed the intolerance, racism and homophobia of a group of fanatics backed by a faction of the record industry." And yet the hostility did not only come from the most obscurantist and puritanical factions of the time, but also from the world of rock – as Ezio Guaitamacchi points out in the introduction: "The fact that a genre as macho as rock could have been overtaken by a genre whose leading figures were women, gay people and people of color was not an easy idea to digest in that historical and social context."

Thus even that brazen Donna Summer, all moans and sexual overtures – branded by the feminists of the time as a mere object of male pleasure – actually sealed something of a social revolution, also because – as Savastano recalls – disco also marked "an important step forward in the relationship between men and women," freeing women from those codes of honor whereby a woman had to be asked to dance by a man, in a kind of dependency on the male figure. In disco, and on the dancefloor, women instead finally went out to dance on their own, no longer needing suitors to beg them for a dance. And on the fluorescent tiles of those glittering dancefloors, everyone could be themselves.

Although the main focus is on the period 1974-1980 (along with its precursors and aftermath), the book also recounts the evolution of disco music in the years that followed and its influence on contemporary music, as attested by the recent tributes from various artists, some of whom are also mentioned in the volume – such as Daft Punk, Hercules & Love Affair, Kylie Minogue and Róisín Murphy – who can easily answer yes to the question "Is there life after disco?" with which the volume closes, referencing a famous 1978 Rolling Stone cover.

Divided into 10 sections, each represented by an emblematic title from the historical phase under examination, and closed out by a list of around twenty hits from the period, “La storia della disco music” also gathers an inexhaustible wealth of images, album covers, LP artwork, notes, dates and quotes from artists and songs. Adding a few extra curiosities are the foreword by Gloria Gaynor and the introduction by Amii Stewart, two queens of disco's golden age, alongside the afterwords by Mario Biondi and Ivan Cattaneo.

And if the doors of discotheques remain sadly shut because of the pandemic, all it takes is flipping through these pages to switch the lights back on that mirror ball still spinning in the memory and heart of each of us.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

23/01/2026