Danny Tenaglia “Music Is the Answer”

The birth of our underground brand Factory 93 not only brought on an adrenaline rush reminiscent of the renegade warehouse-era of raving—on which Insomniac was founded—but it also had us thinking back to all the people, places and parties that made this whole operation possible. And with that came a burning desire to crack open our collection and dust off the classic records we couldn’t live without. Through our From the Crate series, we’ll be breaking out both seminal and obscure cuts alike, imparting some knowledge in the process.

Since the dawn of dance music, songwriters have had a proclivity for invoking the music’s own uplifting spirit to power people on the dancefloor. Self-referential incantations have called upon the disco gods to “Turn the beat around,” declare that “House is a feeling,” and command dancers to “Jack your body,” “Work it to the bone,” and even “Hit it from the back.”

These proclamations were different from the sing-along shouts popularized in folk and rock music, in that they weren’t presumed to be sung along to. No DJ expects to peer out from the booth and see lips mouthing “House music all night long!” no matter how many times the refrain is repeated (all night long?). But through ecstatic grins or grinding jaws, house music mantras resonate as deeply as a bass drum kick. And in 1998, no chorus reverberated as widely as “Music is the answer,” as sung by Chicago-born vocalist and drag performer Celeda on the song of the same name by producer and DJ Danny Tenaglia.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Tenaglia caught the disco bug at an early age. By the age of 18, he was a regular at the legendary Paradise Garage, where he would watch DJ Larry Levan unfurl emotion-laden musical adventures that set the template for DJ sets still followed to this day. Tenaglia set his own sights on DJing, but he would have to move to Miami in 1985 to secure his first regular gigs, introducing the sounds of New York and Chicago house to a club community steeped in Latin grooves and early electro bass. He returned to New York in 1990, just as the city’s deep disco and house style was starting to give way to harder rave and techno tempos. Melding the two in a style he called “hard & soul,” Tenaglia began releasing stomping tracks on Twisted America Records, home to Miami tribal titans Murk and their more pop-leaning Funky Green Dogs project, along with gay club star Peter Rauhofer (as Size Queen) and Londoner Superchumbo.

The sound was sparse and raw, best exemplified by Tenaglia’s 1994 debut “Bottom Heavy,” with its super-sized toms and crashing bells that made stereo speaker stacks loom as large as the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Between those speakers was Tenaglia. He became the city’s biggest DJ in 1996, when he secured a residency at Twilo—the megaclub formerly known as Sound Factory, at the edge of Manhattan’s pre-gentrified Chelsea neighborhood.

His only competition was Junior Vasquez, a former colleague-turned-rival who had been the resident DJ at Sound Factory. Outspoken and outlandish, Vasquez was a perfect foil to Tenaglia’s earnest and eager persona. The nightlife press loved playing up the competition between Tenaglia’s residency at Twilo and Vazquez’s new night at Tunnel. Things became even more tumultuous the next year, when the two DJs traded places, with Vazquez moving to Twilo and Tenaglia setting up shop at Tunnel. The feud peaked in 1998 when, according to an interview with DJ Times, Tenaglia was asked by security to leave Vasquez’s night at Twilo because he was allegedly not welcome by the current DJ administration.

It was amid this brouhaha that Tenaglia released “Music Is the Answer” as the first single off his second album for Twisted, Tourism. From within the increasingly acrimonious atmosphere caused by the Vasquez feud, Tenaglia’s call for respite on the dancefloor seemed to be a personal call for peace. The music also evoked a more credulous era of dance music, returning to the piano melodies and organ stabs of classic New York house, as epitomized at the Paradise Garage. Tenaglia was looking back to his roots at a time when the club community he had dominated was becoming obsessed with the futuristic sound of European progressive house and trance, as best epitomized by Sasha and John Digweed’s infamous monthly Twilo residency.

Tenaglia did not shun the new sound entirely. In fact, he would become one of the few New York DJs to be welcomed into the European fraternity, with “Music Is the Answer” appearing on Pete Tong’s highly influential Essential Selections CD compilation in 1998 (and subsequently Essential Millennium in 1999 and Essential Classics in 2005). The song was also a highlight on Tenaglia’s 1999 mix compilation for Global Underground, appearing as a quick uncredited acapella on disc one, and as an eight-minute extended remix on disc two. This was a callback technique favored by many NYC jocks during their extended all-night sets.

The disc-two track was in fact the D-Tour Groove Mix, although it was listed as only “Music Is the Answer” on the packaging. This version’s sleek uptempo rhythms played nicely with the trancy sensibility of the series, as seen on mixes by UK heroes Paul Oakenfold and Sasha. But far from carpet-bagging his way to Europe, Tenaglia used the compilation to make his mark by introducing much of the dance music world to Miss Kittin and the Hacker’s “Frank Sinatra,” a song that would bridge the 20th and 21st centuries as New York’s house gave way to the electroclash of the new millennium.

Tenaglia would keep moving in his own direction. His second collaboration with Celeda, “Be Yourself,” was released in 1999 and became the name of his final New York residency at Vinyl—a modest-sized venue that, like the Paradise Garage, didn’t serve alcohol and catered to a deeply committed clientele that would let Tenaglia expand his repertoire as a DJ. At Vinyl, he would both bask in his deep house bona fides and challenge the dancefloor with more futuristic techno territory. The duality became fully realized in 2013, when Tenaglia played two separate sets at Berlin’s two-floor Panorama Bar and Berghain club—one house, one techno. That weekend, the lyrics “Music is the answer” sung out on both floors.