The walls of the Chicago History Museum were vibrating to an unmistakable bass line Jan. 30. Jamie Principle's "Your Love" was powerful enough to be heard from the entrance. People found a space on the floor of the packed Chicago Room and began to dance as DJ Alan King, lawyer by day and one of the original members of the DJ crew The Chosen Few, brought House music back to the city of its birth and gave attendees of the first 2014 Out at CHM an education.
Chicago History Museum ( CHM ) curator and Out at CHM Committee member Jill Austin said that this year—the 11th in the series—the theme is all about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. "It's all about music and the community," she said. "We want people to think provocatively while learning and celebrating LGBTQ history first and foremost. We want people to move to the legacy that we have that is House in Chicago."
"It's not your average museum program," CHM Chief Historian and Executive Vice-President Russell Lewis said. "And that's intentional. Tonight is another example of what makes the Out at CHM series so relevant: by recognizing great music that was developed in Chicago both inside and out of the LGBT community."
After King's set started the event, the museum brought together a panel consisting of King, along the original Warehouse nightclub founder and House music treasure Robert Williams; American House producer and DJ Derrick Carter; and Providence, R.I.-based DJ and Brown University Cultural Historian Micah Salkind. TheExecutive Director of Columbia College Chicago's Center for Black Music Research Monica Hairston O'Connell moderated the panel.
The event was called "The House that Chicago Built." So Hairston O'Connell—who described herself as a house-mmusic neophyte—had to begin the discussion with a statement from producer, songwriter, DJ and director Lil' Louis. He has spent the past five years working on a documentary about the history of house music that will be released in early summer of this year and carries the same title. Louis wanted to make it clear that the event and the forthcoming film were not affiliated.
Salkind—who is researching and writing a dissertation about the development of House music culture—is facing a similar task. "My project can't be an all-encompassing or definitive account," he said. "Rather it's going to be just one of many attempting to better understand and explain the importance of House for Chicago and the world."
Salkind said that he wants to fight for the music to be understood as one of Chicago's countless contributions to global cultural heritage. "Help us continue to tell a story of House that acknowledges and celebrates its gay, Black and Latino history," he challenged the audience.
In answering Hairston O'Connell's question as to what exactly house music is, Carter replied. "It is what it is. It's not a mystery. It's a cultural movement." Williams added that he felt it was an underground movement: "All the music that DJs play, they manipulate to an underground scene. No matter what type of music it is, it's how they present it to the public."
"A lot of us first started hearing the term 'house' in reference to the Warehouse." King clarified. "People would hear a certain record, like 'Your Love,' and you'd associate it with the Warehouse and say 'that's house.'" King also described the early-'80s birth of Chicago house as an attempt by people, like Principle, Farley Keith and Steve Silk Hurley using drum machines and rudimentary equipment in their homes to replicate the music they were hearing at William's nightclub.
"I think it was about the space and the community that was being built," Hairston O'Connell added. "And about the African-American and Latino gay aesthetics and moral values."
Carter recalled a time when communities, like gays in the '70s needed somewhere that was safe enough for them to express themselves. "Being able to be with people that were maybe not exactly like you but enough where you felt comfortable being in a room them and you didn't have to worry about being judged for being yourself," he said. "Especially to people who had been marginalized. A good deal of them didn't have support from family members or peers. These places, where this music was happening, gave them the hours that they needed to recharge and wake up and see tomorrow."
"When I was in high school, the best music I ever heard in my life was coming out of the Jeffery Pub," King remembered about the South Side establishment. "It was evident to me that it was a gay bar. I wasn't old enough to go into any bar but I would walk up and down that strip. That music captivated me."
King said that iconic DJs like himself, Chosen Few founder Wayne Williams and Craig Thompson eventually went to hear the music coming out of places like the Jeffery Pub, the Warehouse and Den One. "There's a lot of people who went into these environments who were not gay or lesbian. Wayne would go, I would go. But there were people in our crew that would not go. They had the benefits of getting the same music that we brought back to them."
"When we brought the music back, we cleared a lot of dance floors." Williams added. "There was an anti-gay backlash going on at the same time. But the music was so just so good and so powerful that it transcended any of that stuff."
Williams said that DJs, like his fellow panelists and artists like Frankie Knuckles, transcend people he simply termed "record players" by being both musicians and educators. "In the house-music world, I enjoy people who teach me different things. Unfortunately, the South Side of Chicago is a music desert. It needs to be developed. I'm working on it."
"That's the new struggle as a DJ." King agreed. "Where you can play new music. Where you can get away with it."
For more information about the Out at CHM series, visit www.chicagohistory.org or call 312-642-4600.
