In 1999, Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton published Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, a seismic book that elevated the club DJ from mere nightlife accessory to unsung hero. Two of the music’s most influential DJs, Larry Levan in New York and Ron Hardy in Chicago, had died in 1992, having received little media exposure in their lifetimes. Brewster and Broughton’s work sought to correct that oversight by exalting the DJ and lovingly excavating the underground culture’s rich history. Brewster’s argument on behalf of dance music’s cultural validity has resonated widely. It’s difficult to imagine the current dance-music landscape—with even energy-drink manufacturers and liquor companies dedicated to documenting the culture—without Brewster’s example.
As a DJ, Brewster has proven himself a tireless compiler of dance music’s hidden corners, and he spells out his life’s narrative arc as a DJ, writer, and music fiend on Tribal Rites, a fascinating 3xCD (or 4xLP) compilation. Across 41 tracks, Tribal Rites traces Brewster’s biography as a listener, from psychedelic rock to snotty punk to ecstatic house music, finding through lines across a bewildering number of sounds and—like the greatest DJs he’s interviewed—crafting a story with these seemingly disparate songs. In an era lousy with compilations, DJ mixes, and streaming playlists, the compilation not only unearths some elusive, bewildering gems; it offers the chance to hear through the ears of one of dance music’s most discerning listeners.
A number of themes arise over the nearly four-hour runtime of Tribal Rites, but the first thing that jumps out is not so much its party-time atmosphere as its apocalyptic undertones, as evidenced by two tracks dating from 1971. There’s the sulfuric crunch of Agape’s “Rejoice,” a Christian rock curio that sets ominous Biblical lines (from Matthew 24:7 and Acts 2:20) into psychedelic rock; General Crook flips a line from the Sermon on the Mount for the stomping sting of “What Time It Is.” Which seems heavy, until you consider that dance music culture as we know it today originated in the pressure cooker of 1970s New York, serving as an antidote to the brutality its participants—primarily African-Americans, Latinos, and gays, lesbians, and trans people—faced in their daily lives. Early parties like David Mancuso’s Loft and Nicky Siano’s the Gallery were safe havens for their audience.
In that light, when Brewster gets to Floyd Beck’s slinky groover “Party Is the Solution,” from 1980, it hits less like an escapist trifle and more like the revelatory and all-inclusive conceit that a proper dance party actually is. But Brewster is also enough of a British punk at heart to find a similar revelation in the snarky piss-take of Gaffa’s “Attitude Dancing (Land Of a 1000 Dunces).”
The frisson of different genres coupling with one another on the dancefloor gives Tribal Rites its spark. There’s the dubbed-out disco frolic of the Raincoats’ “Animal Rhapsody (Version)” and Ruts DC doing spindly dance grooves; reggae’s massive influence creeps into a cavernous take on Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” as well as the early Afrobeat classic (and Loft staple) “Soul Makossa” (recast as the syrupy “Reggae Makossa”). But Brewster also finds illumination in quieter moments, like the synth-laced country chimes of the Bobbie Gentry rarity “Thunder in the Afternoon.” It says something about Brewster’s counterintuitive tastes that the comp’s most gobsmacking moment is an acoustic take—made with banjo, mandolin, and pedal steel—on Hall and Oates’ “I Can’t Go for That.”
The last portion of the set focuses on streamlined house and techno, ranging from the dub-techno masterclass of Maurizio’s “M4” to Swayzak’s microhouse splicing of Larry Heard’s “Night Images” to the flute-laced tech-house remix of Chicken Lips’ “Is That You or Me.” But when the anthemic piano and gospel vocals of Clifton King’s “Family Prayer” come on, the energy is singular. A staple on stations like KISS-FM and WBMX back in the early ‘90s and the epitome of that era’s garage house sound, the song finds ecstatic uplift in lines like “And while we party/We all get closer/Dance to the family prayer.” Clifton King cites Ecclesiastes 1:9: “It is written there’s nothing new under the sun.” He then finds ample reason to keep dancing.
