Photo: Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images
One day in 1979, Chicago radio DJ Steve Dahl encouraged thousands of fans to bring disco records to a White Sox game and destroy them. “He felt like it was just ‘that Black stuff,’” Vince Lawrence said. But those attendees of “Disco Demolition Night” unknowingly contributed to the birth of a Blacker, gayer genre: house music. “I was an usher,” Lawrence said. “And I was taking people to their seats at that game with the goal of purchasing my first synthesizer.” Just a few years later, Lawrence co-wrote “On & On,” regarded as the first house song, with Jesse Saunders. “And that’s why I had to tell this story,” said Elegance Bratton, director of the documentary Move Ya Body: The Birth of House Music, which features Lawrence and other key figures from house’s early days and premiered at Sundance 2025.
The documentary, co-produced by Hillary Clinton’s HiddenLight Productions (“I’m like, Hillary Clinton likes house?” Bratton joked), traces the birth of house in Chicago straight from the wreckage of Disco Demolition Night. “We live in a world that tries to separate us,” Bratton said. “And what I love about house music is that it’s about the exchange of culture.” Just look at Lawrence, who isn’t even gay! “House music is the great unifier,” Lawrence said. “It doesn’t know a race, a sexual preference; it doesn’t care about your economic status or your religion. You know, it’s just all about that groove and recognition that you can just be yourself and that’s cool. House is for the nerds, house is for the left out, it’s for the marginalized, the skipped over. House music is the soundtrack to the unconsidered.”
We’re back at Sundance in the Vulture Spot, where we’re interviewing the casts and creators of the year’s buzziest films. Check out the rest of our coverage from the film fest here.