Donna Summer's Gospel Music Analysis

There were many black disco singers in the 1960’s that 21st century artists inspired; one of them is referred to as the disco queen, Donna Summer. She first sang as a gospel and church singer; this makes sense because disco retained strong qualities and similarities to gospel music. Gospel music was all about the salvation through God, but taking in the progression of another step into the profundity, disco can be translated as sex or love. Disco music is mixed with African American percussion, futuristic synths, integration and escape; to Donna Summer, disco meant as a religious devotion to sent out positive messages and sayings about liberation. To her, disco music was a dialogue where cultural threads can weave together to be stronger. Her

“Crazy In Love” the song tempo is pretty moderate and Beyonce’s vocal range spans around one octave and uses many vocal riffs as what disco singers did in the 1960’s. The Chi-Lite’s was a famous vocal quartet during the 1970’s who lead a high lead vocal of electrified simple rhythms, and this musical interpretation had a similar effect to Beyonce’s music. Even though disco music hasn’t been heard that much, these big artists like Beyonce still sample from 1960-1970’s artists to market their musical style and make catchy rhythms and vocalizations. In the 21st century, we live in a world where pretty much all dance music is made electronically on computers with no live musicians. Disco music is like a breath of fresh air because it‘s mixed with different live instrumentals like horns, pianos, violin, viola, cello, trumpets, bass and electronic guitars, drums, and other percussive instruments such as the bass drum. Not only instruments, but also disco music sets up a live vocalist like Donna Summer for people to enjoy music raw. Disco music provided simple and repeated refrains of the lyrics, and became an easy way for listeners to understand and memorize the music easily. In Donna Summer’s music of

During the 1960’s and 1970’s, fashion theme dominated styles with flares, ruffle blouses, big gold chains, afro hair, and empire waists; during this era it was a time of bold and an overstatement style. Recently, the Migos and Drake brought back the disco influence in one of their singles,“Walk it Like I Talk It” In the article, Migos’ Stylist Shares the Key to Their “Walk It Talk It” Video: Definitely Ruffles, The Migos stylist Zoe Costello says, “Offset wears a pale pink suit, whose studded lapels recall the designs of Nudie Cohn, over a peach silk open-front ruffled blouse.” In the music video of “Walk It Like I Talk It”, it’s infused with the disco fashion with The Migos and Drake wearing bellbottom suits, loads of ruffles, and gold chains dancing under a disco ball. One of the Migos rappers, Offset, wore a huge afro fro which was a famous hairstyle during the disco era. The Migos’ stylist Zoe Costello, definitely helped bring back the disco look to life, and changed the fashion industry of high fashion brands like Versace to produce more disco like clothes. Costello also quoted, “ Quavo wears a patchwork denim suit with a ruffled poet blouse, unbuttoned to show off a stack of chains (including a gold pendant with the logo of the group’s record label, Quality Control), and an Afro wig with a pink Pucci-style