Winter Fantasies

Saturday, December 11, 1982
The Concert Hall

The last GCDC dance of 1982, Winter Fantasies, featured a performance by Arlene Duncan, a Black Canadian singer and actress who released her disco-infused debut single "I Wanna Groove" that same year. 

Duncan’s hit “I Wanna Groove'' features some of the sonic hallmarks of dance music of the mid 1980s: synthesiser- and drum machine-forward, pounding four-on-the-floor beat articulated on a bass drum and a cowbell, syncopated electric guitar, prominent bass guitar, and multiple female backing vocalists supporting the claims of the lead. In this recording, Duncan’s voice is not at the front of the texture but is mixed at the same level as the instrumentation and the backing vocals, giving an aural sense of collectivity.

As Alice Echols argues in her book Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, disco is a genre of music that celebrates and amplifies female desire (especially when compared with phallocentric rock music of the same time)--something we can hear clearly in Duncan’s lyrical address in which she asks: “do you wanna groove?” 

GCDC minutes from January 1983 indicate that Duncan’s performance “was well received by all,” which was not the case for all live performances. Some of the live performances, interviewees remember, were “floor-clearing.” That Duncan’s performance was such a crowd pleaser  indicates the incredible popularity of her music in the early- and mid-1980s and the way she expertly navigated the shifting aesthetics of dance music of the era.