ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the arguments against disco in terms of its being 'capitalist' music. It attempts to think through the – ambivalently, ambiguously, contradictorily – positive qualities of disco. One is folk music – in this country, people might point to Gaelic songs and industrial ballads – the kind of music often used, or reworked, in left fringe theatre. These, it is argued, are not, like disco, produced for the people but by them. The other kind of music most often posed against disco and 'pap pop' at the level of how it is produced is rock. Popular song's eroticism is 'disembodied': it succeeds m expressing a sense of the erotic which yet denies eroticism's physicality. This can be shown by the nature of tunes in popular songs and the way they are handled. Rhythm, in Western music, is traditionally felt as being more physical than other musical elements such as melody, harmony and instrumentation.
