JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As someone from the South, house music was somewhat foreign to me.
Growing up, R&B, funk, soul, gospel, and pop were played in my household. I grew up on Luther Vandross, Jill Scott, Rick James and more. Every night, I would go to sleep to The Quiet Storm and the Sweat Hotel playing on the radio. At the time, I hadn’t even heard of house music.
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As I grew older and was introduced to new music, I started to hear more sounds, including the sound of house. I can’t exactly pinpoint my first time experiencing house music, nor the song that made me a fan. Mainstream music in the late 2000s and early 2010s started to incorporate Electronic Dance Music, or EDM, in songs.
One of the first EDM artists I remember falling in love with was Skrillex. Skrillex is a pioneer in the U.S. dubstep scene. While the sound of dubstep was new and fresh to me, I fell in love. Even though dubstep was one of my first loves in the EDM world, house music is what changed my life.
During the EDM boom of the 2010s, I used to listen to house artists such as Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Nicky Romeo, Avicii, and Tiësto. As a teen, I dreamed of going to Ultra Miami and experiencing this music live when I became 18. However, somewhere around 2015, I fell out of the world of EDM. At the time, I thought it was due to me experiencing more new music and growing older. However, I now know why I turned my back on house music; no one looked like me.
As a Black person in America, I tend to seek authentic spaces for me and people who look like me. While EDM was an authentic space for me personally, at the time, it didn’t seem like an authentic space for everyone. All of my favorite DJs didn’t look like me, nor did the biggest names in the industry. For a while, I ignorantly thought Black culture and house music had little to no overlap. Oh, how wrong I could be.
“House is one music genre—in terms of electronic music—that had a lot of representation of Black artist…Green Velvet, Carl Cox...you have those names and people know exactly who they are.”
- Dustin Arceneaux, House music lover
A brief history of house music
The history of house music is Black history.
House music is the spiritual successor of disco music. Disco music ruled the music industry in the 1970s. Everywhere you went, disco was there. It got to the point that non-disco acts were making disco records to sell. That all changed when Disco Demolition Night happened.
Disco Demolition Night was a promotion put on during a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. The promotion featured people coming to the ballpark to watch a crate filled with disco records get blown up in between the two baseball games. Despite disco being super popular at the time, the genre and the culture surrounding disco had its opponents to the point that more than 50,000 fans packed the stadium.
After the records were blown up, thousands of fans stormed the field, and a riot ensued. The riot caused the second baseball game to be forfeited to the Tigers.
Disco Demolition Night, whether directly or indirectly, helped lead to the decline of disco in mainstream culture. And while disco was on the decline, a new style of music was brewing in the underground of Chicago.
“Prior to like 2020, a lot of the DJs who were getting the opportunity to play were white men DJs. A lot of people forgot or didn’t understand the history that there have been a lot of Black DJs who have been part of the fabric of house music.”
- Bridge, Brooklyn-based DJ, Music Historian, Influencer
House music has roots in New York City, with DJs such as Larry Levan and Walter Gibbons being influences in the early sound of house. But Chicago is where the spark became the flame.
“I want us to really talk about the Black History of House music. I want us to recognize the pioneers—the Black pioneers of House music. I want us to recognize the Black women who have contributed to the emergence of House music."
- Bridge
Frankie Knuckles is often credited as “the Godfather of House”. Knuckles started his DJ career in New York City before taking his talents to the Midwest, becoming the resident DJ at the Warehouse club in Chicago. Knuckles and other DJs such as Ron Hardy, Marshall Jefferson, Lori Branch, Jesse Saunders and Kym Mazelle helped pioneer the early sound of house music. House eventually spread across the U.S. to cities such as Detroit before heading to Europe and the rest of the world and forever shaping the future of electronic music.
“When I originally heard house…was Inner City’s Big Fun..Kevin Saunderson, but there was remix by Magic Juan and that’s what did it for me.”
- NICKFRESH, Jacksonville-based DJ, Music Historian
Jacksonville’s place in hose music
“In Jacksonville, you have to find it. The whole thing has been a whole fun exploration.”
- NICKFRESH
Jacksonville, like many other cities in the South, doesn’t have a rich history of house music.
Jazz, rock, country, hip-hop, and R&B have long dominated the culture within the River City. At one time, the LaVilla neighborhood was known as the “Harlem of the South.” The city has a rich musical history, including being the home of the Black National Anthem.
While Jacksonville doesn’t have a rich history of house music, electronic music has come out of the area. 95 South, Quad City DJs, and 69 Boyz all brought that North Florida flavor to the sound of Miami Bass. Miami Bass is a blend of hip-hop and electro, and breakbeat, creating a unique electronic musical experience that could only come from the South.
“We are a creative city. We have an amazing community that wants to be creative together. I think everyone wants to see each other win.”
- Kayla Harvey, Founder & Owner, Lunar Desk Management
“Jacksonville has the land, it has the space and we got to utilize it. And we got to maintain it.”
- JayBeau, Jacksonville-based DJ/Producer
It’s tough to exactly pinpoint house music’s first introduction to Northeast Florida. However, there has been an underground scene for quite some time. During this process of interviewing local DJs and other people within the house scene in Jacksonville, one place kept coming up: The Garage.
The Garage was a party featuring electronic music that originated out of St. Augustine, featuring a collection of local DJs including Albert Adkins, DJ Papi Disco, TC Birden, the late Sacred H3art, and more. From conversations with NICKFRESH and JayBeau, this was the place to be to hear house music in this area.
Since The Garage ended back in the 2010s, Jacksonville’s electronic music scene has continued to grow. From local collectives and record labels to parties at bars and nightclubs, house music is played all across Northeast Florida.
However, in a city that has a Black population of nearly 30% according to 2024 data from the City of Jacksonville, the house scene here is predominantly white.
“I think a lot of the spaces here have been predominantly white and I’ve been searching for those Black spaces. Which is one of the reasons I started organizing parties myself with a group of friends and we bring and platform Black DJs in the area.”
- Somalia Jamall, Event Organizer, SWEATOUT & Fresh Squeezed
“It seems like you’re in a space that you’re not supposed to be in just because so many are uneducated on where it came from…Even when I first started djing, I would have Black people be like ‘you like that white people sh—?’ and I would be like ‘baby you don’t even know, this is ours.”
- Ezra Law, Jacksonville-based DJ/Producer & Event Organizer, First Fridays at the Flamingo
Jacksonville has a way to go when it comes to Black house and electronic DJs.
As a Black house and electronic DJ myself, there are not a lot of spaces that intentionally platform and support Black DJs. However, more of those spaces are starting to be created.
Duval Folx, created by DJ Geexella, was one of the first parties I saw that platformed Black, brown, and queer culture within the local house music scene. Other local events have also platformed Black, brown, and queer culture, such as Discotech and more recently, Fresh Squeezed and SWEATOUT, the latter of which just held its first party on Feb. 22. There is a desire for something new culturally in Jacksonville, and over the next few years, expect house and electronic music to be a key part of that.
Hopes for the future
“When you look to the people who are able to travel to Europe, to travel the world with their music, they don’t tend to look like us…House music was filtered in a lens that took the soul outside of House music.”
- Sabu, DJ & Event Organizer, Fresh Squeezed & SWEATOUT
The global house and electronic music scene is predominantly white and will most likely continue to be that way. For instance, even though there are nearly 300 artists booked at EDC Las Vegas in 2026, less than 10 DJs are Black. However, there is a resurgence of Black, brown, and queer DJs from across the world who are reclaiming the genre that was bred from the marginalized communities of Chicago, New York City, and Detroit.
Whether it’s Jacksonville or Johannesburg, house music and Black culture are once again finding each other, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
“I hope that the future of house music reflects radical acceptance…I hope that the future of house music accepts living on the edges of society and finding home…I hope that it stays Black and queer.”
- Sabu