Daft Punk's Teachers

"House, the real 80s Chicago shit"

The catalyst behind any homework is always a teacher, and Daft Punk’s Homework directly pays homage to the individuals who set the foundations for the musical identity they achieved in the late 90s in their song Teachers, the 9th track of the album.

The wordplay in the French duo’s first album may come to you as a hidden-in-plain-sight wordplay. It caught me SO off guard. I even felt dumb, as I had been blasting that track for centuries. However, they’re the ones to blame! How can they craft such a hypnotizing, magnanimous groove that completely drowns out the lyrics?!

Now, let’s see who these overlooked “teachers” were.

I pulled up the Spotify lyrics, and there they were—name after name scrolled down the list. At first glance, I could only recognize three:

1. Paul Johnson, best known (to me, at least) for his infectious Get Get Down, featured in one of the later Just Dance editions (editor’s note: Just Dance 2021).

2. Dr. Dre, whose production style has transcended the boundaries of hip-hop, influencing countless genres.

3. George Clinton.

   George Clinton?

   Nope. Certainly not the George Clinton I had in mind.

My main shock came from the fact that these fools hadn’t even mentioned Kraftwerk!

Kraftwerk is a German band who are basically considered electronic music pioneers. You could draw comparisons both (1) soundwise -heavy use of vocoders, synthesizers, and drum machines - and in terms of (2) visual identity: matching suits and a borderline machinelike behavior.

From there on, my Google search on these individuals began.

Firstly, it was evident by their names that a big chunk of them were DJs: DJ Slugo, DJ Pierre, DJ Tonka. I found it funny how nowadays no DJ who wants to be taken seriously would put that prefix into their artistic name, lol.

The second thing I noticed was Chicago. Apparently, the Windy City is the cradle for their inspiration, followed by Detroit and various UK based artists. The map below - proudly made by moi - illustrate their places of origin.

Worthwhile to note how none of their ‘mentors’ come from their country, La France. Interesting stuff, huh.

This is not coincidental, as most things on earth. The relationship was clear to me. As one colleague from my internship made me aware when I asked about his favorite genre: “House, but the real 80s Chicago shit!”

This guy likely assumed my only exposure to the music genre was through Fred Again.. or the tracks played at Istar. However, this guy was right to assume my unawareness of its origins. Thank you sir👍🏼

The exact birthplace: The Warehouse, a club frequented by Black and primarily gay DJs in the late 1970s and 80s, located at 206 South Jefferson Street in Chicago. The place became a hub for the experimentation and subsequent transformation of Disco music into what we know today as House.

---

The influence of these Chicago legends on the duo’s first album is undeniable. Even the song itself, Teachers, is a rendition to a song made by Parris Mitchell ft Waxmaster (both mentioned in the tune) by replicating the bar ‘XXX is in this motherfucker!’, but sonically adjusting itself to the naturally richer concept that derives from the confluence of their muses.

---

But how did this distinctly Chicagoan sound make its way across the Atlantic all the way into the ears of two French teenagers? French teenagers who, by the way, didn’t look one bit alike or had next to nothing in common to their references. Simple: the magic of crate-digging DJs and forward-thinking producers who couldn’t resist the raw energy of those early house records.

By the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, European clubs were buzzing with imports from the American scene. This cross-pollination birthed a new take on the genre. Daft Punk didn’t just replicate the style; they polished it. At first, I wasn’t able to verbalize the peculiarities of the genre, having to recur to someone who could. Here are Goshfather’s two cents on the matter:

(… )It’s all about that gritty looped feel. You’ll hear how the sample is filtered, compressed and repeated. It gives it that hypnotic, robotic vibe while still maintaining that funky groove. Disco house stays closer to its roots.

Couldn’t have phrased it better myself.

The result? What we know now as French house. Of course, the creation and development of the subgenre is also attributed alongside artists of the likings such as Justice and Stardust.

---

Random Access Memories, the last remaining piece in their discography (revealed to us), represents the moment in which “the student becomes the master”. The similarities to their proclaimed ‘Teachers’ get very blurry, as you can barely trace the elements that characterize their style.

• What disappears - The heavy repetition, looping, and extensive filtering.

• What stays - The prominent baseline, phaser and vocoder usage - pay attention to Julian Casablancas’ feature and hear it for yourself.

• What gets added - A total shift in the production techniques.

  Real life instruments are present in the mix. Spacious drums, funky guitars, melodic focus and vocal centric tracks. All driven by the emergence of new legendary “teachers” like Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder.

The outcome of this blending and substracting equation was the transition to a laid-back, smooth groove. Less gritty, less ‘robotic’. More ‘human’.

The perfect clue of how close we were to the end of the masquerade of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo.