Peter Shapiro's 'Turn The Beat Around' illustrates why and how disco changed the face of popular culture. Comprehensive and thoroughly researched, Shapiro's book traces disco from its roots in Second World War Europe, through its inception in New York's dark decades of the Sixties and Seventies to its influence on Chigaco house and Detroit techno.
The genre may, on the surface, be deemed cheesy and glitzy, but Shapiro's sociopolitical reading re-radicalises disco, seeing it taking form amid the creation of the newly out and proud gay communities and the fall out of the Black Power movement.
Featuring artists such as Chic, Sylvester, Donna Summer and Frank Grasso, as well as insights into the creation of the Smiley logo, DJ techniques and much more - Turn The Beat Around is an exhilarating and essential cultural history of an often derided musical genre.
Size: 129 x 196mm
Pages: 368
Publisher: Faber & Faber