New Disco Oral History

A disco book arriving in 2026 sounds nostalgic until you see the reporting behind it: *A Night at the Disco* was published on March 24 as a 256-page hardcover, and it pulls together more than 90 interviews plus photographs of more than 100 artists from the 1970s dance-music world. (accartbooks.com) The authors are Alice Harris, a fashion writer and image curator, and Christian John Wikane, a New York music journalist who has interviewed more than 600 artists since 2003 and previously wrote an oral history tied to Casablanca Records. (abebooks.com) (theivybookshop.com) The book does not treat disco like a single sound or a punchline from a backlash documentary. It covers the years 1970 through 1979 and frames disco as a culture built by singers, producers, clubs, fashion, and studio experimentation across a full decade. (pridesource.com) (soultracks.com) That matters because disco’s public memory is oddly narrow. Many casual listeners jump from Donna Summer to the Bee Gees, but the book’s roster stretches to Giorgio Moroder, Debbie Harry, CHIC, Labelle, the Trammps, Village People, and Earth, Wind & Fire, which gives the scene a much wider map. (simonandschuster.com) (shop.rockhall.com) The format is doing part of the work here. An oral history lets artists explain how records, clubs, and careers actually connected, the way a group chat tells you more about a night than a polished press release ever could. (washingtonblade.com) The visual side is just as deliberate. ACC Art Books says the volume includes 59 color images and 57 black-and-white images, which turns the book into a record of clothes, poses, club style, and stage design as much as a record of songs. (accartbooks.com) Even the foreword signals how the authors want disco read. It comes from Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire, placing disco inside a broader Black popular-music tradition instead of isolating it as a short-lived fad. (pridesource.com) The release is also being treated like a live cultural event, not a quiet archive drop. Wikane is promoting the book on a United States tour, including bookstore appearances and a New York event with Melba Moore, one of the era’s own stars. (pridesource.com) (eventbrite.com) So the real story is not just that another music book came out in March. It is that two authors used interviews, photographs, and first-person testimony to rebuild a decade that shaped global pop, then got flattened into a stereotype after the music stopped dominating radio. (soultracks.com) (washingtonblade.com)