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Disco is a genre of dance music containing elements of funk, pop, psychedelic and Latin music that was most popular in the 1970s, though it has since enjoyed brief resurgences, including in 2013. The term is derived from discothèque (French for "library of phonograph records", but subsequently used as proper name for nightclubs in Paris). Its initial audiences were club-goers from the African American, Latino, and psychedelic communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Disco also was a reaction against both the domination of rock music and the stigmatization of dance music by the counterculture during this period. Women embraced disco as well, and the music eventually expanded to several other popular groups of the time.

In what is considered a forerunner to disco-style clubs, New York City DJ David Mancuso opened The Loft, a members-only private dance club set in his own home, in February 1970. The first article about disco was written in September 1973 by Vince Aletti for Rolling Stone magazine. In 1974 New York City's WPIX-FM premiered the first disco radio show.

The disco sound has soaring, often reverberated vocals over a steady "four-on-the-floor" beat, an eighth note (quaver) or 16th note (semi-quaver) hi-hat pattern with an open hi-hat on the off-beat, and a prominent, syncopated electric bass line sometimes consisting of octaves. The Fender Jazz Bass is often associated with disco bass lines, because the instrument itself has a very prominent "voice" in the musical mix. In most disco tracks, strings, horns, electric pianos, and electric guitars create a lush background sound. Orchestral instruments such as the flute are often used for solo melodies, and lead guitar is less frequently used in disco than in rock. Many disco songs employ the use of electronic instruments such as synthesizers.

Well-known late 1970s disco performers included ABBA, Giorgio Moroder, Donna Summer, The Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, The Trammps, Gloria Gaynor and Chic. Various critics would also claim that Kraftwerk, who were an electronic band played a large part in pioneering disco as well as the electronic sound that became a big element of disco. While performers and singers garnered some public attention, producers working behind the scenes played an equal, if not more important role in disco, since they often wrote the songs and created the innovative sounds and production techniques that were part of the "disco sound."

Many non-disco artists recorded disco songs at the height of disco's popularity, and films such as Saturday Night Fever and Thank God It's Friday contributed to disco's rise in mainstream popularity. Disco was the last mass popular music movement that was driven by the baby boom generation. Disco music was a worldwide phenomenon, but its popularity declined in the United States in the late 1970s. On July 12, 1979, an anti-disco protest in Chicago called "Disco Demolition Night" had shown that an angry backlash against disco and its culture had emerged in the United States. In the subsequent months and years, many musical acts associated with disco struggled to get airplay on the radio. A few artists still managed to score disco hits in the early 1980s, but the term "disco" became unfashionable in the new decade and was eventually replaced by "dance music", "dance pop", and other identifiers. Although the production techniques have changed, many successful acts since the 1970s have retained the basic disco beat and mentality, and dance clubs have remained popular. A disco revival was seen in 2013, as disco-styled songs by artists like Daft Punk (with Nile Rodgers), Justin Timberlake, Breakbot, and Bruno Mars filled the pop charts in the UK and the US.

Disco was more than just music; the disco scene also had a subculture centred around club-going, dancing, fashion, drug use, and sexual promiscuity. By the late 1970s most major U.S. cities had thriving disco club scenes centered on discotheques, nightclubs, and private loft parties where DJs would play disco hits through powerful PA systems. Studio 54 was arguably the most well known of these nightclubs. Popular dances included the "Robot" and The Hustle, a very sexually-suggestive dance. Discothèque-goers often wore expensive and extravagant fashions. There was also a thriving drug subculture in the disco scene, particularly for drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, such as cocaine (nicknamed "blow"), amyl nitrite "poppers", and Quaaludes" The other cultural phenomenon of the disco era was promiscuity and public sex in the clubs.

By the late 1970s, a strong anti-disco sentiment developed among rock fans and musicians, particularly in the United States. July 12, 1979 became known as "the day disco died" because of Disco Demolition Night, an anti-disco demonstration in a baseball double-header at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

Hi-NRG (pronounced "high energy") is a style of uptempo disco that originated in the United States and United Kingdom during the late 1970s. As a music genre, typified by a fast tempo (c. 140 bpm), staccato hi-hat rhythms (and the four-on-the-floor pattern), reverberated "intense" vocals, "pulsating" octave basslines, was particularly influential on the electronic dance music scene. Its earliest association was with Italo disco, which incorporated new American electronic sounds of post-disco and hi-NRG. Later, the genre became essential in the evolution of techno, and, to a lesser but important degree, house music. Artists like Daft Punk, Jus†ice or Calvin Harris represent only a small portion of those artists, coming mostly from a house music and electro-funk background, who gained a renewed interest in hi-NRG.

In 1977, Donna Summer was interviewed about her single "I Feel Love", which was a mostly electronic, relatively high-tempo disco song without a strong funk component. In the interview, she said "this song became a hit because it has a high-energy vibe". Following that interview, the description "high-energy" was increasingly applied to high-tempo disco music, especially songs dominated by electronic timbres. The tempo threshold for high-energy disco was around 130 to 140 BPM. In the 1980s, the term "high-energy" was stylized as "Hi-NRG". Eurobeat, dance-pop and freestyle artists like Shannon, Stock Aitken Waterman, Taylor Dayne, Freeez or Michael Sembello were also labeled as "Hi-NRG" when sold in the United States.

In the 1980s, "Hi-NRG" referred not just to any high-tempo disco/dance music, but to a specific genre, only somewhat disco-like. Hi-NRG is, however, typified by an energetic, staccato, sequenced synthesizer sound of octave basslines or/and where the bass often takes the place of the hi-hat, alternating a more resonant note with a dampened note to signify the tempo of the record. There is also often heavy use of the clap sound found on drum machines.

Ian Levine, a Hi-NRG DJ and producer from the UK, defines Hi-NRG as "melodic, straightforward dance music that's not too funky." Music journalist Simon Reynolds adds "The nonfunkiness was crucial. Slamming rather than swinging, Hi-NRG's white European feel was accentuated by butt-bumping bass twangs at the end of each bar."

High-tempo disco music dates back to the mid-1970s. Early examples include several British disco songs by Biddu and Tina Charles in 1976 and Patrick Hernandez Born to be Alive in 1978. From 1979 to 1987, unlabeled high-tempo disco music was especially popular among LGBT communities in American coastal cities such as New York and San Francisco.[citation needed] San Francisco-based Patrick Cowley and New York producer and composer Bobby Orlando were behind a number of Hi-NRG hits in this period. The genre found moderate mainstream popularity in Europe, despite being the icon of British and American LGBT communities around 1983–85, while opposing both Euro disco and electro on the dance scene. Examples of Hi-NRG disco acts include Claudja Barry, Miquel Brown, Amanda Lear, France Joli, Sylvester, Divine and The Weather Girls.

During the same period, a form of Hi-NRG (EDM) became popular in Canada and the UK. The most popular groups of this style are Trans-X and Lime. The genre is closely related to space disco. Bands include Koto, Laserdance and Cerrone. The Hi-NRG sound also influenced techno and house music.

In 1983 in the UK, music magazine Record Mirror began publishing a weekly Hi-NRG Chart. Hi-NRG entered the mainstream with hits in the UK and US pop and dance charts, such as Hazell Dean's "Searchin' (I Gotta Find a Man)" and Evelyn Thomas's "High Energy". In the mid-1980s, Hi-NRG producers in the dance and pop charts included Ian Levine and trio Stock Aitken Waterman, both of whom worked with many different artists. Stock Aitken Waterman had two of the most successful Hi-NRG singles ever with their productions of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" (UK #1 & US #11 in 1985) and Bananarama's "Venus" (US #1 & UK #8 in 1986). They also brought the genre full circle, in a sense, by writing and producing Donna Summer's 1989 UK and US hit "This Time I Know It's For Real" (UK #3 and US #7).

American music magazine Dance Music Report published Hi-NRG charts and related industry news in the mid to late 1980s as the genre reached its peak. By 1990, however, house music and Eurodance had superseded Hi-NRG in popularity in many danceclubs. Despite this, Hi-NRG music is still being produced and played in various forms, including many remixed versions of mainstream pop hits, some with re-recorded vocals. Later in the 1990s, Nu-NRG music, a fusion of Hi-NRG and trance, was born.

Soul Train is an American musical variety television program, which aired in syndication from 1971 until 2006. In its 35-year history, the show primarily featured performances by R&B, soul, and hip hop artists, although funk, jazz, disco, and gospel artists have also appeared. The series was created by Don Cornelius, who also served as its first host and executive producer.

Production was suspended following the 2005–06 season, with a rerun package (known as The Best of Soul Train) airing for two years subsequently. As a nod to Soul Train's longevity, the show's opening sequence (during later seasons) contained a claim that it was the "longest-running first-run, nationally syndicated program in American television history," with over 1,100 episodes produced from the show's debut through the 2005-06 season. Despite the production hiatus, Soul Train will continue to hold this honor until at least 2016, if and when its nearest competitor, Entertainment Tonight, completes its 35th season. (If ET does not complete a 35th season, Wheel of Fortune would surpass it in 2018 if it continues to air.)

The origins of Soul Train can be traced to 1965 when WCIU-TV, an upstart UHF station in Chicago, began airing two youth-oriented dance programs: Kiddie-a-Go-Go and Red Hot and Blues. These programs—specifically the latter, which featured a predominantly African-American group of in-studio dancers—would set the stage for what was to come to the station several years later. Don Cornelius, a news reader and backup disc jockey at Chicago radio station WVON, was hired by WCIU in 1967 as a news and sports reporter. Cornelius also was promoting and emceeing a touring series of concerts featuring local talent (sometimes called "record hops") at Chicago-area high schools, calling his traveling caravan of shows "The Soul Train." WCIU-TV took notice of Cornelius's outside work and in 1970, allowed him the opportunity to bring his road show to television.

After securing a sponsorship deal with the Chicago-based retailer Sears, Roebuck & Co., Soul Train premiered on WCIU-TV on August 17, 1970, as a live show airing weekday afternoons. The first episode of the program featured Jerry Butler, the Chi-Lites, and the Emotions as guests. Cornelius was assisted by Clinton Ghent, a local professional dancer who appeared on early episodes before moving behind the scenes as a producer and secondary host.

The program's immediate success attracted the attention of another locally based firm—the Johnson Products Company (manufacturers of the Afro Sheen line of hair-care products)—and they later agreed to co-sponsor the program's expansion into national syndication. Cornelius and Soul Train's syndicator targeted 24 markets outside of Chicago to carry the show, but stations in only seven other cities—Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco—purchased the program, which began airing on a weekly basis on October 2, 1971. By the end of the first season, Soul Train was on in the other seventeen markets.[2] When the program moved into syndication, its home base was also shifted to Los Angeles, where it remained for the duration of its run. Soul Train was part of a national trend toward syndicated music-oriented programs targeted at niche audiences; two other network series (Hee Haw for country music, and The Lawrence Welk Show for traditional music) also entered syndication in 1971 and would go on to have long runs.

Though Don Cornelius moved his operations west, Soul Train continued in Chicago as a local program. Cornelius hosted the local Chicago and Los Angeles–based national programs simultaneously, but soon focused his attention solely on the national edition. He continued to oversee production in Chicago, where Clinton Ghent hosted episodes on WCIU-TV until 1976, followed by three years of once-weekly reruns. The syndicated version was picked up in Chicago by CBS-owned WBBM-TV at its launch; the program moved to WGN-TV in 1977 and remained there for the balance of its run.

In 1985 Chicago-based Tribune Entertainment (WGN's syndication wing) took over Soul Train's syndication contract; the series would continue distribution through Tribune for the rest of its original run.

Don Cornelius ended his run as host at the end of the show's 22nd season in 1993, though he remained the show's main creative force from behind the scenes.