Μύ Up tempo beats, celebrity DJs, sweaty dancers, bottles of water. Today's house music scene hasn't changed much from its early beginnings according to Josell Ramos' infectious documentary, "Maestro". Rewinding club culture to the 70s, "Maestro" rediscovers the often overlooked roots of house music in the gay clubs of New York City.
It was in clubs like The Paradise Garage and The Loft that New York DJs like Larry Levan fermented the distinctive sounds of Chicago house music into a heady cocktail of euphoric dance anthems.
Recalling the period from the early 70s to the early 80s with real fondness, "Maestro" offers first hand testimony of the scene's importance to generations of future clubbers. These range from the truly moving (as in the stories of the way AIDS impacted on this fragile community), to the hilariously stoned ("A lot of people were stressed out. But when you went to that Garage, you'd release all that energy. And when you came out, you were in Paradise" claims one aging clubber, remembering his own epiphany on the dance floor while watching recycled footage of Prince's When Doves Cry video!
Battling to fit so many years into the scope of a single documentary, Ramos frequently overreaches himself, something that's not helped by the occasionally incompetent camerawork and lighting. Many of the talking heads get to witter on endlessly, depriving of other, far more articulate, speakers of the chance to expand on their assertions.
Whatever its faults though, "Maestro" is an important contribution to the history of dance music.
It's the cinematic equivalent of an archaeological dig through a culture that's been sidelined by mainstream history books because of its radicalism, its sexuality and, most of all, its challenge to every assumption that blacks and whites, men and women, gays and straights, couldn't find a common ground on the dancefloor.
