This is a podcast about house music. I’m thatpodcastgirl, C Dub, and I’m here to guide us through the untold stories behind the house music. This season, we’re remembering what was almost lost—what pulsed in the basslines and lived in the corners. Stories that stayed alive only because someone danced them into memory. Picture this:

It’s 2024, and you’re in Berlin. A DJ pulls out a vinyl with no label and no sleeve. Just black wax and instinct. She drops it. It’s from Shelter. A remix from decades ago. The crowd roars. But most people in the room don’t know that track was once played in protest. They don’t know about the night the beat was an act of defiance.

In the early 1980s, a virus began to spread. And for far too long, the world stayed quiet.

The clubs that gave people freedom—places like the Warehouse, the Paradise Garage, the Power Plant—became spaces of mourning. Dancers disappeared every week. DJs lost their friends. Party flyers became obituaries.

The government wasn’t naming it. So the music did.

Michael Roberson is a scholar, a father of the House of Garcón, and a Black queer activist. He’s often spoken about the ballroom floor as a sacred place during the AIDS epidemic.

“We were losing people every week. So we danced with them, for them, through them.”

For Michael and so many others, house wasn’t just escape. It was church and it was ritual. It was where you could scream into the bass and still be held.

At the Paradise Garage, DJ Larry Levan began playing extended versions of tracks with long breakdowns and pauses. Sometimes he left full seconds of silence.

Club historian Tim Lawrence says:

“People would stand still, or scream, or weep. The music gave them space to grieve.”

In 1989, ACT UP held a die-in at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. That same night, on the floor at a gay club in New York, dancers lay down in silence.

They called it dancing to remember.

There’s also a story about a track that included a voicemail. The voice said:

“I can’t go on.”

Nobody agrees on who made it, and some say it was a real message. Others say it was constructed from memory.

It was played only once. In a small club. Quiet room. Full of people who understood.

Then the beat dropped.

At the door, the ten-dollar cover might be for the DJ—or for someone’s casket. Sometimes it paid for AZT. Sometimes for rent, or a hospital bed.

At the Shelter in New York, one woman came every weekend, in the same shirt. She danced in the same corner.

“I’m here for my brother,” she told the DJ once. “He used to dance here. I still do it for him.”

At certain parties, there was a board behind the DJ booth—names were pinned, and candles lit. It wasn’t advertised because it didn’t need to be - those were friends.

Flyers used coded language: “This one’s for family,” or “bring your breath.” That meant someone had passed. That meant come ready to move through it.

These weren’t just parties. They were vigils on the dance floor.

Frankie Knuckles once said:

“You can play joy. But you can also play mourning. The floor knows the difference.”

The dancefloor didn’t ignore the crisis. It became the memorial.

And for some, it stayed that way. From the early 1980s through the late 1990s—and even into the 2000s in clubs like The Shelter and Body & Soul—these spaces continued to hold grief and memory. Candles continued behind the booth. Sundays felt like service. A silence before the drop that meant more than words ever could.

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This is a podcast about house music.

Until next time, keep the beats alive.