Admittedly a bit awkward, but an interesting paper nonetheless....

From Resident Advisor...."Check out this guy's PhD thesis on house and techno via the 303, 808 & 909"....



Chicago house and the "democratization" of music production

Written by Hans T. Zeiner-Henriksen, PhD-student at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo.

(Paper presented at the conference "Manchester, Music and Place" at the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture, Manchester Metropolitan University, June 8th -10th 2006)

The innovations in dance music related to the club culture of Chicago at the beginning of the 1980s have had a major influence on the development of the global dance music culture of the 1990s. The DJs at the Haçienda in Manchester were playing tracks of Chicago house as early as 1986 initiating the so-called Madchester era, the second summer of love, the acid house-scene, the first wave of British rave culture.

The linkage connecting these two cities, Chicago and Manchester, in the 1980s, is the music; played at the Power Plant and the Music Box in Chicago and the Haçienda in Manchester, and the place; in this paper interpreted as the club, the place where dancing and deejaying sets the conditions.

Frankie Knuckles introduced the New York-tradition of deejaying and underground club-culture to Chicago. He was invited to deejay at the Warehouse in 1977 and his choice of music and methods in deejaying was of major influence for the contributors of what later has been identified as Chicago house.

This presentation will focus on the early tracks of Chicago house and the "democratization" process that took place at the beginning of the 1980s concerning prizes and distribution of electronic musical instruments, introducing new groups of contributors into music production. I believe this new group of contributors brought an approach towards music production that influenced the dance music of the late 1980s and the 1990s immensely.

My key question for this paper is: How do changes in music production processes appear in the music of the club-culture of Chicago at the beginning of the 1980s?

More...

http://folk.uio.no/hanst/Manchester/ChicagoHouse.htm