The disco/pop music-world have lost two prominent figures this month - Disco Queen Donna Summer and Robin Gibb of the BeeGees. Their music is well familiar to me and I grew up listening to them. So let's set aside our celebtration of 'Disco King' Bappi-da's music and remember the departed disco legends, starting with Donna Summer.
Like her songs, her name itself had a feel-good effect. Besides her great singing abilities, she was a great performer, who also looked hot and sexy. Donna Summer proved that you don't have to look at picture,figure or movie to feel sensual - songs like Love to love you,baby and I feel love can have the same effect!
Her name was part and parcel of the 80s hit-charts consistently. Among her many hits, the song 'I don't wanna get hurt'(1989) is special for me, because I discovered Donna Summer through this song. Since then there was no looking back. By and by, I discovered her earlier hits too (esp. in her collaboration with Giorgio Moroder- the pioneer of Italo-disco).Certainly she is one of my favourite singers of all time.
After dominating the hit-charts consistently for a decade and a half, Donna Summer and her brand of feel-good dance music became out-of-fashion.The next decade (90s) saw the emergence of new artists (Whitney Houston,Tracy Chapman, Mariah Carey- to name the few) and music-forms ( such as rap, reggae,r&b,bhangra,rock-metal etc.) Later that decade saw the re-emergence of the disco-sound with ABBA,Beegees,Boney M,Modern Talking, (Bappi-da and Biddu in this part of the world) all gaining iconic status. So does the Disco Queen Donna Summer.
NB : Bappi-da's earliest disco-hit 'Ramba Ho'(1981) was inspired by Donna Summer (and Giorgio Moroder) super-hit 'I feel love'. As this year marks the 30-th anniversary of Bappi-da's colossal hit album Disco Dancer (1982) which made Bappi Lahiri a household name in the Indian sub-continent, if not in Asia and the whole developing world, I'll be focusing more on Bappi-da and disco-music through out the year.
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