Do You Remember House?

Today, no matter where you are in the world, you can turn on a radio and hear the echoes and influences of Chicago house music. Do You Remember House? tells a comprehensive story of the emergence, and contemporary memorialization of house in Chicago, tracing the development of Chicago house music culture from its beginnings in the late '70s to the present. Based on expansive research in archives and his extensive conversations with the makers of house in Chicago's parks, clubs, museums, and dance studios, author Micah Salkind argues that the remediation and adaptation of house music by crossover communities in its first decade shaped the ways that Chicago producers, DJs, dancers, and promoters today re-remember and mobilize the genre as an archive of collectivity and congregation. The book's engagement with musical, kinesthetic, and visual aspects of house music culture builds from a tradition of queer of color critique. As such, Do You Remember House? considers house music's liberatory potential in terms of its genre-defiant repertoire in motion. Ultimately, the book argues that even as house music culture has been appropriated and exploited, the music's porosity and flexibility have allowed it to remain what pioneering Chicago DJ Craig Cannon calls a "musical Stonewall" for queers and people of color in the Windy City and around the world.

Micah E. Salkind is the Special Projects Manager for The City of Providence Department of Art, Culture + Tourism. A DJ, sound designer, and curator of live performance, Salkind's writing on Afro-Diasporic cultural production and post-industrial cultural development complements his work towards establishing innovative models for sustaining community art institutions and art-makers.

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Epigraph Introduction Part 1 - This is How It Started Chapter One - Like a Phoenix From The Ashes: Socio-Sonic Memory and Proto-House Geographies Introduction Anti-Integration Activism in Residential and Cultural Spaces Urban Renewal, Deindustrialization, and Top-Down Development The Rise and Fall of Chicago's Indie R&B and Soul Industry Queer of Color Cultural Antecedents Conclusion Chapter Two - The Warehouse and The Music Box: Nurturing Chicago House Music Culture Introduction The Birth of The Warehouse Ron Hardy and The Music Box Conclusion Chapter Three - Remediating The Underground: Teen Parties, Disco Punk, and Hot Mix Radio Introduction The Deep Times and Spaces of Chicago's Black Social Dance Cultures Hotmixing DJs on The Airwaves "Saturday Night Live Ain't No Jive" Conclusion Chapter Four - The End of The First Decade: House Music Crosses Over and Moves Out Introduction Pressing and Selling Chicago House Chicago House Music Moves Out Conclusion Part 2 - It's Not Over Chapter Five - "Is It All Over My Face?" Sounding a Communal Love Ethic at The Chosen Few Old School Reunion Picnic Introduction Setting The Stage: Reunion Picnics, Chosen Family, and Camp Culture Sounding The Classics of a Repertoire in Motion Dancing The Loving Community Conclusion Chapter Six - Are You Ready to Get Your Life? Performing Neostalgia and Wildness in Chicago's Contemporary Queer Club Scenes Introduction The Hermitage of House Safer Spaces on The West Side Queen!'s Neostalgic Musical Mix Sounding Wildness at Chances Dances Queen!'s Neostalgic Visuality Cuteness and Wild Visuality at Chances Dances Conclusion Chapter Seven - Dancing in Brave Spaces Introduction Being Big Riding The Rhythm, Pulling Energy Jack Your Body, Strike a Pose Out of My Head Conclusion Coda Bibliography Books Articles Websites, Online Articles, and Multimedia Conferences, Lectures, Symposia, Unpublished Work, Personal Correspondences etc. Oral History Interviews Selected Discography