Josephine Baker | The War on Disco and Chicago's Disco Demolition Night
Manage episode 402595769 series 3325432
Welcome to season 2, episode 7! We're celebrating Black history in the Smoke Circle! First up, Laurel takes us back to roaring 20s Paris to meet Josephine Baker, the Jazz Age star, who was not only a singing and dancing star in the early 20th century, but also was a spy for the French Resistance during WWII and spent her later years as an activist for the Civil Rights Movement in America.
Next, we puff, puff, pass it to KT, who picks history up in the late 1970s, when disco ruled the airwaves...but not everyone was happy about that. Learn about Chicago's Disco Demolition Night and how "the war" against disco wasn't just about upbeat, danceable music...it also showed some ugly truths about the permeation of white supremacy in America.
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Mentioned in the Stories:
Josephine Baker's Banana Dance
Josephine's Charleston (she is *topless*! NSFW)
Our Episode on Cannabis and Jazz
Our Episode on the Stonewall Uprising
Frankie Knuckles's NYC Boiler Room DJ Set
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The Socials and Patreon!
Patreon-- The Best Buds Club! Instagram - @HightailingHistory TikTok- @HightailingHistoryPod Facebook -Hightailing Through History or @HightailingHistory YouTube- Hightailing Through History
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Source Materials--
Josephine Baker--
https://www.biography.com/artists/josephine-baker
https://www.history.com/news/josephine-baker-world-war-ii-spy
The Many Faces of Josephine Baker: Dancer, Singer, Activist, Spy by Peggy Caravantes
War on Disco--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night
lhttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/arts/television/the-war-on-disco-pbs.html
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/FelipeRYM/heavy-bands_projects-fronted-by-a-black-vocalist/
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Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
90 episodes