We're proud to welcome at Soulcom one of the all times best House artists, Jere McAllister, who, with simplicity, give us his own vision about one side of the House music history.

“These parties were the perfect escape for people like me, who knew we could, and wanted to grow beyond the hood, or hood mentality. It showed us that there was a different life out there other than what the media was portraying for “us”. It showed us that we didn’t have to listen to other people, from other parts of the country, telling us what was cool, or what we were about, we could decide for ourselves. So after the infamous “Disco Demolition”, the “Disco Sucks” backlash (which I see as a very racially/culturally insensitive movement), and New Wave and Rap (some of which we incorporated, but on our terms) were being presented as the new “Hot” things, we resisted and held on to what we knew was a good scene and good music. This was especially possible because Chicago had a big enough, sophisticated enough, minority population to support an alternative scene such as this, and no immediate financial investment in, or connection to, Hip Hop. Which is why I think a lot of brothers in NY got caught up in it, that might have normally have been more inclined to identify with House (Russell Simmons, a former Disco head, being a good example). As I said before, early Rap/Hip Hop was not attractive to most of us, here, because it seemed like a cultural step backwards. It wasn’t until some of the more positive, intelligent-image groups, such as PE, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, etc, came along that many of us began to get into it. And, most New Wave just wasn’t soulful enough.

As matter of fact, that is how I first came across the term “House” being used as a label for the soulful dance music we loved. Early on, some of the DJs started trying to incorporate some of the new music that was being pushed by the record companies, to some success, but after a while it just didn’t work for the crowd. “House” was already being used as a term to describe the type of fashionable, eclectic, people that were know to frequent the Warehouse. If someone looked like they had just stepped out of a GQ or Vogue magazine, we would say that person was “House”. We also described the actual fashions or art in the same terms. I remember overhearing a couple of guys in Marshall Field’s checking out some of designer Willi Smith’s Willi Wear (who was very hot in the early 80s), and saying “oh that’s House”. So when the new music wasn’t working for the crowd, some people would start saying, “don’t play that stuff, play some music like they do at the House, play some House music”. Although, we knew that a lot of the music was actually Disco, Disco was such a taboo term, and, besides, we didn’t want to associate the soulful Disco that we were into with the more commercial stuff, that did suck, so “House” was apropos....

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