News

Many people grew up with the music of the Village People, but Jonathan Belolo literally did. His father co-founded the disco group in 1977, and the younger Belolo was immersed in the band’s history, even once joining them onstage as a toddler. But as he watched from behind the stage at the Capitol One Arena in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 19, Belolo beheld one of the strangest sights of the Village People chronicle. As the current version of the long-running band launched into its exuberant “Y.M.C.A.,” they were joined onstage...

Henri Belolo, a music producer and co-creator of the Village People, died on Saturday, New York Daily News reports. He was 82.

“I am devastated by the untimely death of Henri Belolo who was my former producer, mentor and co-creator of Village People,” lead singer Victor Willis said in a statement to Rolling Stone. ” Henri who actually died on August 3, 2019, leaves an impressive body of work that helped shape the disco genre, and as a record executive, he was par excellence. A private funeral was held already in France [in] Paris, but...

So it turns out that disco was actually a revolutionary tool that ended the oppression of women and black and gay people in the Us. Who knew?

I like disco as much as the next person, which is to say I like it at night, in moderate helpings, and only when accompanied by spirits. Disco has long been the musical genre to caricature rather than savour, best enjoyed in the background on hazy nights out rather than as a legitimate musical experience. So presented with the opportunity to sit through a two-hour disco documentary at the London film festival, I was a bit circumspect.

But from the first bar of that sour-sweet high-octane disco beat, I was hooked. This is because The Secret Disco Revolution is no ordinary history lesson about the 70s craze. Rather than simply charting the rise and fall of disco to a thumping soundtrack, the film...