Larry Heard and Deep House

Just a little bit of follow up on my post about the black and queer roots of House music. In that post, I really wanted to talk about more of the individual people, but there are too many to discuss, especially when I’m working from the assumption that a lot of readers barely even know what House music is. So I tried to name names, and I’ll leave it to you to learn more as you’d like.

Fortunately, House isn’t exactly a little-known genre, so there are a ton of interviews and videos online.

Resident Advisor has a nice mini-docu video about Deep House and Chicago’s Larry Heard (AKA Mr. Fingers). It’s equal parts biography and genre analysis, so it’s right up my alley.

(Forgive the narrator’s pronunciation of Debussy and Satie; she knows not what she does.)

I started this post just to share that video, but, one of the cool things you learn is that many of the Chicago House originators, despite House’s soul and disco roots, were more into other forms of progressive music of the ’70s, such as prog and heavy metal, or the experimental acid rock of people like Frank Zappa, until they discovered Euro-disco/synth-pop. Larry was the drummer of a jazz-fusion prog rock band. House wasn’t the music of people who were interested in making a buck as a pop star, or non-musical amateurs looking for a shortcut (as many people disparagingly think of electronic artists), it was the music of people who wanted to experiment and push boundaries (and have fun doing it).

Deep House, these days, basically means a form of house music with a thick and pillowy bass. It doesn’t necessarily hit hard (that’s Hard House), it simply has a great depth of resonance, low bass contrasted with airy synth pads.

It’s a sonic depth, not a philosophical one. But the RA video above makes a nice case for how it also means something about depth of emotion, depth of departure from the mainstream (a la “deep cuts” from an artist, referring to songs that are rarely played).

Larry Heard’s classic Deep track “Missing You” (1993) definitely shows the enduring influence of space rock, in its scattered, whale song-like punctuations.

The entire track is treble heavy. You don’t need a prominent bass to be Deep. Larry said in an interview with Dazed, “I’m a 60s kid, so maybe some of that stuff just got into my psyche: to be free-flowing, to not stress out about every little thing.” That’s exactly the attitude you get from Deep House.

Frankie Knuckles’s “Whistle Song” is another great example of the style. It has the classic bouncy House bass, but it’s less prominent in the mix than the jazzy flute melody and disco-esque strings.

---

In my previous post, I talked a lot about the soul and R&B roots of House as a part of its black history. The funky soul bass lines are one of the most defining features of House, what sets it apart from other forms of techno. But it’s just as important to remember that black artists are not confined to historically black genres, like soulful house or hip house. The Belleville Three, who made futuristic techno based on European synth-pop, were not doing musical whiteface. Acid house and Detroit techno are just as black as classic Chicago house. That’s really my ultimate goal in these posts—to help people get out of thinking of history or mainstream manifestations as being prescriptive.

Rock is the greatest example of how insidious this prescriptive thinking is. Rock music was invented by black Americans. Full stop. We know this. It was appropriated by white musicians, and I choose the word “appropriation” because it wasn’t just genuine growth of community, it was commercial theft. Black songs were re-recorded by white artists so that white music producers could profit from it. This is a very different thing from a sincere enthusiast joining the community and the organic spread of influence. Black artists were not given airplay or allowed to perform on mainstream platforms. So, we only see it coming from white artists, and suddenly, it’s a white genre. You get the attitude, “You can’t do rock, you’re black.” Funkadelic wrote a song about that.

And as diverse as EDM still is, this prescriptive attitude endures today, at least as a general sense among many white people. White supremacy wants for others to stay in the lanes we designate for them.

At the beginning, a lot of artists were working in many different styles. A soulful house artist could just as easily make a futuristic acid record. It wasn’t all delineated, because they were experimenting and looking for the possibilities. But Larry’s style was unique. He brought the jazz fusion, and he also brought in smooth ’70s R&B and gospel. As much as he’s evolved, you can really hear his style in his records, from the first to the latest.

To me, the Deep House sound is very ’90s, but as with so much EDM, you’ve got a dude from Chicago in the ’80s to thank for it.