In 2025 house music is such a globally popular and varied genre that its origins in early 1980s Chicago warehouses seem improbable.

But the myth of house music of course starts right there in the Windy City, as Black and brown queer artists in largely underground spaces used nascent technology to make the music of the future. Love, lust, strength, passion and defiance defined the spirit of the genre in its earliest days, as producers often transferred the church music of their youth to songs meant for another, if not ultimately so dissimilar, type of worship.

The sound was soon reverberating through clubs as vinyl pressings were passed by hand from DJ to DJ, record shop clerk to househead. House music changed the fabric of clubland in all of dance music’s North American hub cities and th

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