1977–1979: the three years the whole world danced

1977 — The year the dance floor caught fire

On 16 December 1977 Saturday Night Fever premiered, and with it the Bee Gees soundtrack that would sell more than 40 million copies and win the Grammy for Album of the Year — the only record in history to manage it. “How Deep Is Your Love”, “Stayin' Alive” and “Night Fever” turned dancing into a mass phenomenon.

But 1977 was already running hot: Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder had put out “I Feel Love”, the track that opened the door to the genre's electronic future; and Chic, the project of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, was debuting with “Dance, Dance, Dance”. That same year, in Paris, Voyage released its first album, and the producer Alec R. Costandinos signed his disco debut as Love & Kisses — a record that, a key fact for us, had a Venezuelan edition in 1977 (Barclay, pressed by Suramericana del Disco): proof that this music was circulating here from the very first moment.

«The record that was winning on Billboard was imported on vinyl and the radio played it over and over until the miniteca made it its own.»

1978 — The peak

If 1977 lit the fuse, 1978 was the explosion. Village People turned disco into a visual spectacle with “Macho Man” and “Y.M.C.A.”. Gloria Gaynor recorded “I Will Survive” —released at the end of '78, number one at the start of '79—, which would become the empowerment anthem of the genre. Chic put out “Le Freak”. Donna Summer reached number one with “MacArthur Park”.

And on the club circuit these were playing strong: Love & Kisses with “Thank God It's Friday” (theme of the film of the same name), Voyage with “From East to West”, and Amant —the Latin disco project of the New York musician Ray Martínez— with “If There's Love” and “Hazy Shades of Love”.

1979 — The climax at the edge of the abyss

The last year of the decade was the most intense… and the beginning of the end. Donna Summer reigned with “Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls”. Chic put out “Good Times”, whose bassline would years later found hip-hop. Diana Ross, guided by Ashford & Simpson, reinvented herself with “The Boss”, number one on Billboard's Dance Club chart. Sister Sledge, produced by Chic, premiered “We Are Family”.

In the booths, alongside the big names, the club cuts were playing: Revanche —the Italian-American project of the producers Jacques Fred Petrus and Mauro Malavasi— released its only album, Music Man, with “1979 It's Dancing Time” and “You Get High in N.Y.C.”. And Destination, a New York trio, hung on for four weeks at number one on Hot Dance/Club Play with “Move On Up / Destination's Theme”. That same 1979, Chicago's “Disco Demolition Night” marked the start of the backlash that would push the genre to mutate in the eighties.

The chain: from Billboard to the miniteca

Here is what makes this story ours. In a Latin America with no internet and no social networks, these hits did not arrive on their own: the minitecas —in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico and across the region— imported the vinyl from the United States, and local stations followed the Billboard charts in order to program them. Radio and the imported record were the bridge.

That is why, when no record turns up today saying “such a miniteca played such a track”, it is not that it did not happen — it is that the era did not leave that trace: it left radio statistics and sales charts. The current is documented even if the exact playlist has been lost. That current was, also, a miniteca influence.

«The less famous cuts did not fill stadiums, but they filled dance floors: they were the cards a good discjockey (now DJ) kept for exactly the right moment.»

Three years, one same pulse

From the explosion of 1977 to the climax of 1979, dance music was the language of a generation on both sides of the sea. The Latin American miniteca received it on vinyl, put it on the turntable and made it its own. Three years, an ocean of distance and one same pulse: that of the needle dropping into the groove.