‘Soundbreaking’ Recap, Episode 5:’ Dance Music Creates One Nation Under A Groove

We’re now more than halfway done with the show Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music, which breaks down the art and history of music production and the recording process. The PBS documentary series was executive produced by legendary “Fifth Beatle” Sir George Martin, and is currently available for streaming on Hulu. Past episode have dealt with vocalists, instrumentalists, producers and the studio itself. Episode 5, titled ‘Four on the Floor’, breaks down the rhythms that provide “the very bedrock of all music” and the various ways they unite people from all backgrounds into one nation under a groove.

The episode starts right back in the studio, where hit making writers and producers The-Dream and Tricky Stewart discuss the creation Beyoncé’s smash hit “Single Ladies.” As will become a recurring motif in the episode – and the series loves its recurring motifs – it all started with a simple drumbeat. And while the track is utterly modern in its subject matter and production, the actual hand clap patterns that form the basis of the rhythm track recall ones often used in gospel music. It is, as the producers call it, “a sanctified beat.”

While its adherents are legion, the influence of black gospel on popular music often gets short thrift. Not only did it launch the careers of so many great vocalists, it also has a distinctive musical language, many aspects of which have been adopted by secular music. Among them is the fervent rhythmic rush, the driving beat, as a singer, choir or preacher pushes the service to its climax. The first musicians to present these riffs in an irreligious manner sparked controversy, since church folk knew they were meant to send parishioners into a state of sacred ecstasy.

You can hear the influence in the stomping rock n’ roll of Little Richard, whose “contagious” beat celebrated those Earthly pleasures fundamentalist Christians were busy warning people about. That driving beat can also be heard in the music of Motown, where it powered indelibly crafted songs that sought to erase America’s entrenched racial bounderies. As Berry Gordy, Jr. told Smokey Robinson when he founded the label, “We’re going to make music for the world. We’re going to make music with some great beats and some great stories.”

The music of James Brown on the other hand, was more explicitly black, yet would win over just as many converts. “The hardest working man in show business” built his reputation on his live show, which itself evoked a religious service in the penitent pleading of his hit “Please, Please, Please,” and his fervent delivery, each song rapturously ascending to its apex. Starting in the mid-’60s, he began to shape a new style of music that drew inspiration from the extended instrumental vamps the band played live during Brown’s dance routines. They often relying on but a single chord, and the sparest of lyrical refrains, they were also rhythmically dense, as every instrument acted as a piece of percussion. It was a sound at once raw and primal, and as complex as a map of the stars. James Brown had just invented funk.

Soundbreaking then curiously segues to one of the unfunkiest bands of all time, The Grateful Dead. However, it’s true both Brown and The Dead relied on hypnotic cyclical grooves to send audiences into a trance state meant to inspire human fellowship via dance (though it’s debatable whether or not the gyrations Deadheads do actually qualifies as dancing). Fellow San Franciscans Santana blended heavy acid rock guitars with the rhythms of Afro-Cuban jazz and Boogaloo to superior effect.

Of course you can’t talk about dance music and not talk about disco. Though often derided as plastic music created for rich narcissists to snort coke to at Studio 54, New York City’s initial disco scene was a haven for the gay community, and a place where people of all backgrounds truly came together on the dance floor. After a girlfriend took him to an area disco, black Greenwich Village hippie Nile Rogers was inspired to write the song “Everybody Dance” for his band Chic. The art of remixing was also born of the disco experience, as a means to keep people dancing over the typical 8 hour DJ shift. While the music eventually suffered a backlash, often with ugly racist and homophobic overtones, its influence has never gone away. “Disco” may have be dead, but dance music lived on, picking up the influence of hip hop, and spawning techno and house music, which would eventually cross the Atlantic ocean and mutate into what we now know as EDM.

Soundbreaking goes to great pains to be as all-inclusive as possible and like other episodes, ends this one by examining the electronic dance music phenomenon. While the series often annoyingly tries to bring all things full circle, it actually makes sense here, considering the EDM DJ is in many ways the ultimate manifestation of the producer as artist. The celebratory communal experience found at EDM concerts really does echo that of the church service, but on a massive, international scale. EDM’s reliance on pounding dance rhythms and not vocals, is able to unite people from around the world. In another church parable, it’s like the Tower of Babel in reverse. As German electronic music musician Paul Kelkbrenner says “Only sounds can transport it and that’s why its such a global movement because it goes beyond all borders of language.” And some people think you need lyrics to be deep.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Watch the "Four On The Floor" episode of 'Soundbreaking' on Hulu