Soundscapes NYC
The Seventies was a calamitous decade, a low point in the history of New York City. City Hall continually failed to balance budgets and turned to austerity, privatization, and sheer negligence when it came to running city services. Roads disintegrated, buildings and overpasses collapsed, garbage piled high, and crime ran rampant. The city literally crumbled under the weight of austerity.
At the same time, underground culture surged with energy, from subway graffiti to experimental theater and gay bars. Musical artists embedded in the urban fabric turned to their craft with gusto. They formed loose networks of like-minded artists who made and appreciated particular styles of music. Their world during this period, at times, reflected the disintegrating cityscape. At other times, their music celebrated the social constraints let loose in a time of crisis, when the city seemed to be falling apart.
Soundscapes is a podcast about how music created in New York has shaped the history of the city and how the city itself has been an incubator in which music has blossomed throughout its history. Soundscapes is a bi-weekly podcast series in which historian Ryan Donovan Purcell talks with artists, music industry professionals, and scholars about NYC music history.
About the hosts: Ryan Donovan Purcell is a professor of modern American History at Sarah Lawrence College while serving on the editorial board at the Gotham Center for New York City History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Soundscapes draws from his book Sounds of the City Collapsing, forthcoming with Columbia University Press.
Kristie Soares is an Associate Professor of Women & Gender Studies and Co-Director of LGBTQ Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Author of Playful Protest: The Political Work of Joy in Latinx Media (2023), Soares is currently conducting an oral history project that explores the role of Latinx disc jockeys in the development of dance music in 1970s New York. This is part of a larger book project entitled Macho Man: Performances of Latinidad in the Disco Era.
IG: @soundscapesnyc
Tt: @soundsacpes.nyc
Gotham Center: https://www.gothamcenter.org/
Soundscapes NYC
Latest Episodes
S2.E6. A Night At the Baths
Disco didn't just happen—it emerged from the vibrant gay club scene of 1970s New York City. In this episode, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares explore how iconic venues like the Continental Baths, the Mineshaft sex club, and the legendary P...
S2.E5. From Stonewall to Studio 54
In the fifth episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares sit down with the legendary DJ Nicky Siano. The history of dance music in 1970s New York is synonymous with the life and work of Siano. He was...
S2.E2. Lost Women of Disco
Women have been central to the evolution of dance music culture since its earliest days, yet their contributions have often been overlooked. From Régine Zylberberg's pioneering work in creating the modern discotheque in 1950s Paris to Sharon Wh...
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S2.E1. Love Saves the Day
The Loft was a dance party series organized by DJ David Mancuso in his Manhattan warehouse apartment at 647 Broadway from Valentine’s Day 1970 to June 1974. The parties offered an alternative to New York’s commercial nightclub scene. The invita...
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