It always felt as if the chosen were being called by some mysterious but benevolent power. It could be heard at the end of the party in the early morning, somewhere at one of the legendary nightclubs in New York City: Sound Factory, The Warehouse, The Tunnel, Limelight, Café con Leche. Before that and out of historical earshot, similar tunes had consecrated founding temples like Paradise Garage or The Loft, storied venues that housed Black and brown gay, lesbian, and trans people desperate to find the lower frequencies in bankrupt 1970s New York. It was reserved for the twilight hours, the time of the late-arriving or slow-to-depart acolyte or disciple. It was the moment for ritual movement, for a fixing ceremony among the initiated. Prior to Kelis summoning all those boys to that impossibly saccharine yard, E. G. Fullalove’s Didn’t I Know? (Divas to the Dance Floor… Please) extended a steely invitation to have house music not so much dress you in the silk Toni Morrison imagined as the healing power characteristic of black church tenors, but rather allow this secular yet sanctified sound to augment or highlight whatever garment your grown self had fashioned or procured.
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