Queen of Disco

Sylvester grew up in Watts, a black working-class area of Los Angeles. A child prodigy with angelic vocals and androgynous features, he went far in the gospel choir. Later, he would score huge hits, including You Make Me Feel [Mighty Real] and Do Ya Wanna Funk. He died of AIDS in 1988. For millennials and the forgetful: disco emerged in the early 1970s in a semi-legal circuit of black and Latino gay clubs and parties in New York. It coincided with the emancipation of the LGBTQ community in America and became an unprecedented phenomenon. In the 1970s, the whole world was on the dance floor - often in a sea of epileptic light effects. It was party time! But the recession, Ronald Reagan and a raging AIDS pandemic drove disco underground again in the 1980s. Later, as house, it would conquer the world again. Queen of Disco is about identity, emancipation and activism. But also about the deadly impact of a pandemic, the impact of the underground and the dance floor as an arena for [cultural] renewal and zest for life.