Cake Wines Presents: End Notes (Disco Edition)

End Notes is a monthly live jazz night held at the Cake Wines Cellar door that over the last six months has brought sold-out performances of vocal-led gospel, horn-heavy New Orleans, a 9-piece Latin band and a tight neo-soul jam. For a special Vivid Edition, End Notes brings you disco, a journey into the artists and music that created the movement from its roots to its peak.

By the early 1970s soul, funk, RnB and Motown had been filling the airwaves for almost 15 years, their popularity across both coasts of America and as far as the other side of the Atlantic, where the Northern Soul movement had reached fever pitch. However, a newborn star, disco, had begun to burn brightly, beginning in the North-Eastern city of Philadelphia with the records and soundtracks of Isaac Hayes and Willie Hutch, the sound spread to the work of groups such as The Whispers, The O’Jays and The Brothers Johnson.

Felt by many to be a reaction against the stigmatisation of dance music by the counterculture, disco preached a message of inclusivity regardless of culture, ethnicity, sexuality and gender. Disco wasn't a place where difference was just tolerated but for the first time, actively celebrated. Unsurprisingly, it spread like wildfire to the loft parties of New York City’s Lower East Side before finding a popular home in the clubs. 

Donna Summer, Luther Vandross and Winfield Parker all carried the flame before it became the genre of choice for talented young producers such as Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder and Larry Levan, who in disco made names and ultimately careers for themselves. Characterised by lavish percussion, layered rhythms and lush strings combined with funk-driven bass-lines and soul vocal harmonies, disco has always been centred around movement, one of a number of legacies it generously passed on to the music of clubs today, house and techno.

End notes: Disco brings a 10-piece live band featuring horns, synths and three vocalists to light up the Cake Wines Cellar Door disco ball playing the songs that echoed in David Mancuso’s Loft and Nicky Siano’s Gallery, both New York institutions which sparked the flame more than 45 years ago. The show will also feature promient Sydney DJs Boogie Monster, Lauren Hansom, and Anno, digging deep into their collections to showcase the rarer side of the genre.

Line-up:
Princeton Parker and the Melodius Thunk + 10 piece live band
Boogie Monster
Lauren Hansom
Anno