NEWS
EVENTS
The Black Madonna stays Chicago
When the Black Madonna first came to our attention a few years ago with huge, slow-burning disco tracks like ‘Stay’ and ‘We Still Believe’ in 2012 and 2013, she was a producer of unique and intelligent house and disco, who was beginning to carve a special place for herself in global music. Today, a few years down the line, she’s more than proven herself capable of materialising the principles she clearly holds dear as a human being and musician.
One of the main voices coming out of Chicago right now in terms of dance music, Marea Vierge-Noire, AKA the Black Madonna, might be the most influential current advocate of the original spirit of disco, house and Chicago rave. She is known for vocally championing and ensuring diversity, equal opportunities and boundary-pushing, which have been put on the backburner in dance music in recent years, replaced by profit baiting as the genre explodes ever further into the mainstream.
In 2013, Noire became the Creative Director of Chicago’s main venue for dance music, Smart Bar, putting herself in the ideal position to realise her vision of dance music and give others the same opportunity. Since then, Smart Bar’s bookings of women are around 30-40%, more than the vast majority of international nightclubs.
This week the Black Madonna teams up with another of dance music’s notorious androgynes, Tiga, in a track which oozes old school glamour. She remixes his ‘Blondes Have More Fun’ in what must be one of this year’s most transcendent bits of disco. She throws in slabs of Moog Voyager for a bassline deeper than the ocean. Tiga said of the record: "Rarely do I feel somebody nail the real, true, deep funk that I always crave.... and now, I got it. A killer remix, that I will be supporting heavily."
The Black Madonna’s next gigs in the UK are at Field Maneuvers and the Warehouse Project.
