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Disco is a genre of music that originated in discothèques. Generally the term refers to a specific style of music that has influences from funk, soul music, and salsa and the Latin or Hispanic musics which influenced salsa.

Elements of disco music appear on records from the early 1970s such as the 1971 theme from the film Shaft by Isaac Hayes (Jones and Kantonen, 1999). In general it can be said that first disco songs were released in 1973, however many consider Manu Dibango's 1972 Soul Makossa the first disco record (Jones and Kantonen, 1999). Initially, most disco songs catered to a nightclub/dancing audience only, rather than general audiences such as radio listeners, but there are many aspects proving opposite tendencies as well; popular radio-hits were being played in discothèques, as long as they had an easy to follow rhythmic base-pattern close to 120 BPM (beats per minute). Most 70's Disco genre songs had a distinctive four/four bass beat.

1975 was the year when disco really took off, with hit songs like Van McCoy's "The Hustle" and Donna Summer's "Love To Love You Baby" reaching the mainstream. 1975 also marked the release of the first disco mix on album, the A side of Gloria Gaynor's Never Can Say Goodbye (Jones and Kantonen, 1999). Disco's popularity peaked in the so-called Disco era of 1977 - 1980, driven in part by the 1977 classic film Saturday Night Fever. Disco also gave rise to an increased popularity of line dancing and other partly pre-choreographed dances; many line dances can be seen in films such as Saturday Night Fever, which also features the Hustle. In 1975, the pop star Dalida was the first to make disco music in France with her song "J'attendrai" which was a big hit there as well as in Canada and Japan in 1976. She also released many other disco hits between 1975 and 1981, including "Monday, Tuesday... Laissez-moi danser" in 1979, translated the same year as "Let Me Dance Tonight" for the USA, where she was their "French diva" since her late-1978 performance at the Carnegie Hall). Soon after Dalida's pioneering French disco work, other French artists recorded disco: Claude François, in 1976 with his song "Cette année-là" (a cover of The Four Seasons' disco hit "December 1963 (Oh what a night)"), then the famous "yé-yé" French pop singer Sheila, with her group B. Devotion, who even had a hit in the USA (a rarity for French artists) with the song "Spacer" in 1979. Many other European artists also recorded disco music.

The transition from the late-1970s disco styles to the early-1980s dance styles can be illustrated best by analysis of the work of specific artists, arrangers, and producers within each region, respective to the timeperiods. Complex musical structurres basically gave way to a "one-man-band" sound produced on synthesizer keyboards. Also, the increased addition of a slightly different harmonic structure, with elements borrowed from Blues and Jazz, (such as more prominent chords created with acoustic or electric pianos) created a different style of "dance music" in the 1981-83 period. But by this time, the word "disco" became associated with anything danceable, that played in discothèques, so the music continued for a time to be called "disco" by many. Examples include D. Train, Kashif, and Patrice Rushen. Both changes was influenced by some of the great R & B and jazz musicians of the 70's, such as Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock, who had pioneered and perfected "one-man-band" type keyboard techniques.

Finally, disco was largely succeeded for younger listeners by rap, which had started, by rapping over disco tracks. The first commercially popular rap hit was "Rapper's Delight", which borrowed the bass line from Chic's "Good Times". The two styles existed side by side for a few years, with rap sometimes being used in disco songs such as In Deep's "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life". The two styles together also sparked off "House Music" or "techno" when Afrika Bambataa released the 1982 rap "Planet Rock", which drew several elements from Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" and the previous year's "Numbers". Electronic sounds in rap were eventually discarded in favor of a more "raw" hip-hop sound. However, the "Planet Rock" sound also spawned a non-"hip-hop" electronic dance trend, with such follow-ups as Planet Patrol's "Play At Your own Risk", the same year, followed by "One More Shot" by C-Bank; and the following year, its popularity skyrocketed with Shannon's "Let The Music Play" Freeze's "AEIOU", and Midnight Star's "Freakazoid". Electronic Dance music or House Music (later called "techno") had now emerged as its own genre, and this became the new "disco", even though it was not addressed as such.