A lot of people out there mistakenly believe that House Music is a product of the now. But that seemingly futuristic, electronic sound “has predominantly black roots” and was born in poor, crime-ridden 1980s Chicago at the hands of one Bronx-bred DJ named Frankie Knuckles. As the resident DJ of The Warehouse in the early ‘80s, Knuckles had no idea that the outcome of layering disco with electronic 4/4 beats would be “thunderous” House. At the request of his crowd, the man who came to be called the Godfather of House Music started recording his DJ sets on cassette tapes dubbed “The Warehouse Mix.” Those quickly multiplied by the thousands and Warehouse Music became house music. By the mid-’80s, DJs including Jessie Saunders, Farley Funk, Marshall Jefferson, Steve Hurley, Adonis, and many more were not only mixing the sounds on the decks, but creating their own and pressing them onto vinyl. The demand for house music records grew so quickly, “we were grinding up records like Thriller to make house music,” says Rachel Cain, the co-founder of Trax Records, one of the first labels to make house records.

Despite its fast-growing popularity, House remained in the underground until 1987, when a song called “Jack Your Body” suddenly flew to the tops of the UK music charts. Just like that, the sound went global and even Knuckles himself moved to London for a few years. Since then, the genre has traveled far and changed so much, dying down in the US during the ‘90s, only to surface again in the mid-2000s. For this genre though, the struggle has always been to prove that it is not “not a passing fad,” that house was real music, capable of breaking moulds and changing perceptions (runtime 1:37:23). For the full blast, watch Unsung on Frankie Knuckles and the Roots of House Music (runtime 35:26).