Miqui Puig recommends an essay to read on the dance floor

BarcelonaMiqui Puig He says that he generally doesn't like music books "because they have very standard patterns"; in fact, despite his long career as a musician, the memoirs he has just published (I didn't want to be Miqui Puig. A sentimental chronology of a love singer.) aren't exactly a music book either. However, their recommendation is: The secret history of the disc (Caja Negra, 2012). It's an essay by Peter Shapiro on the historical origins of disco music that "at no point draws on the clichés of dance music," but rather takes an "almost sociological" approach. In this sense, Shapiro's analysis focuses on three aspects: the racial, sexual, and class integration that took shape during this musical revolution. "It talks a lot about the importance of Latinos, gays, and Black people in disco music," Puig explains. "The book has a working-class perspective that I really like. In fact, there's a chapter dedicated to northern soul as a working-class musical subculture," he adds.

The other element that makes the essay a different kind of music book is that instead of citing a flood of names, it focuses its analysis on the work of two fundamental artists: the band Chic and the singer August Darnell, known as Kid Creole and leader of Kid Creole and the Coconuts. "There are those who see Darnell only as a colorful character, but Shapiro explains very well how a guy of Latin origin revolutionized dance music," says Puig, who has hosted the radio program specializing in dance music for years. Wooden Track"It's the armed wing of my thinking," he says. "For me, dance is politics and entertainment, the escapism of the poor who work all week," he concludes. He'll prove it once again this Sunday at his traditional DJ set at the Gràcia festival, on Travessia de Sant Antoni street at 7 p.m.