Dinner Music 112: The weekly lineup
global disco, spanish boogie, non-stop grooves
This week’s newsletter is a sonic love letter to Bibiana Fernández, also known as Bibi Andersen, an iconic and pioneering Spanish trans actress, singer, model and performer who rose to fame in the late seventies after working with Pedro Almodóvar. Her only album, released in 1980, sits at the boundary between disco and the eighties, being neither and both at the same time. All the same, the sounds are sexy, glamorous, high-energy — that’s what this week is all about. We’ll move through Spain, Nigeria, India, New York City, Brazil, Lebanon and Peru in search of that nighttime sonic quality, full of glitter and up-to-the-moment feeling.
Naturally, we begin with Bibi’s album, self-titled, noteworthy for its sound as well as its position as a pioneering piece of trans art, placing her with other disco era queer artists like Sylvester or Divine (and also calls to mind SOPHIE). Her track Girls Will Be Boys feels very ahead of its time. Yes, the disco era represented a time of boundary-crossing and self-expression, but it was nearly fifty years ago and then, as now, that is a radical act. Do not miss the video (below) for her track Touch Me Lady Champagne. It’s perfect. Next, we move to legendary dancer, choreographer and instructor Frank Hatchett, who taught people like Madonna, Brooke Shields and Olivia Newton-John, and whose talent did not stop at body movement. Sensations compiles tracks from sixteen albums, songs that range from the smokey-funk of seventies to synth-laden, stop-everything-and-dance eighties tracks (and a very interesting new age one called Malibu Nites). As you might expect, each song nearly demands that you get up and dance, and why not? We keep the energy high with another post-disco Spanish album, with crisp production and catchy melodies — a little bit of Blondie, a little bit of ABBA. Rubi, or María Teresa Campilongo, came to Spain in her early twenties as an exile from Argentina after the Coup d'état 1976 and continued making pop music, eventually becoming something of a “muse of the Madrid scene” throughout the eighties. If you like pop music from the eighties, do not miss this one. If you don’t recognize the name Sheree Brown, you’ve definitely heard her work. She co-wrote Groove Thang and worked with Patrice Rushen for many decades. Straight Ahead is breezy, with jazz infected riffs underlaying bright, easy vocals and that effortlessness is what’s special about Brown. Simple doesn’t mean lesser — it means masterful. We end with a comparatively new album from Luke Temple. The title tells all: Good Mood Fool.
Enjoy.
Paid subscribers have access to the full Dinner Music archive (via Spotify and Apple Music), an after hours playlist, a “New York Grooves” playlist and more — hundreds of hours of groove, soul, jazz, folk, samba, hi-life, disco, electro, post-punk, funk and more, lovingly selected.