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OUSE MUSIC IS MIDWESTERN
at its core: Forged in defiance
of New York’s disco and punk
waves, the underground
electronic genre first circulated within
Chicago’s hip late-1970s DIY circuit.
At local dance clubs The Warehouse
and The Music Box, early pioneers like
producer-DJs Frankie Knuckles, Ron
Hardy and Larry Heard (aka Mr. Fingers)
spread a gospel of inclusivity and four-
on-the-floor beats. The house movement
has endured to this day, inspiring a new
generation of electronic acts including
Daft Punk, Kaskade, Calvin Harris, David
Guetta and Kygo. “In my head, I still live
in Northbrook and I’m taking the train
into the city to hear some proper house
music,” Chicago-bred, Bay Area-based DJ
Kaskade has written on Twitter.
Established in 1984, Windy City
imprint Trax Records was an early force
in the business. Its discography includes
records from genre mainstays Knuckles,
Jesse Saunders and Marshall Jefferson.
“House is the mother of all electronic
music as we know it today,” says Rachael
Cain, the label’s owner/president and
one of the first acts signed to the imprint
under her artist moniker, Screamin
Rachael. She has since collaborated
with Heard, Jefferson, Phuture, Afrika
Bambaataa and others. “A superstar DJ
like Kaskade is wearing a Trax T-shirt.
The Matriarch Of House Music
Trax Records owner/president Rachael Cain talks leading the genre’s revolution
on the 35th anniversary of the legendary Chicago label
David Guetta and Daft Punk have named
Trax as influences,” she says. “Young
people who have never heard acid house
think it’s brand new, but it’s timeless.”
Since she acquired the label in 2006,
protecting the Trax legacy has been
Cain’s chief concern: She shepherded
a partnership with New York publisher
Raleigh Music Group, which administers
catalogs for Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley and
others, and is in talks with the Chicago
History Museum to celebrate the label’s
history with an exhibit. The outfit also
will introduce new signings like queer
artist Mikey Everything and Grace Jones’
brother Chris Jones.
Trax has leveraged the global reach of its
records to widen its pop culture footprint,
earning synchs from fashion houses Gucci,
Louis Vuitton and Maison Kitsuné, as
well as placements in FX’s Pose, Rockstar
video-game titles and Kanye West’s Life of
Pablo track “Fade” and 2018 single “Lift
Yourself.” “While some people thought
Kanye had lost his mind and some people
thought it was genius, everyone said that
the beat is fire — and the beat was Trax,”
says Cain, who discusses her history in
house music, its pop culture reach and what
35 years of Trax means for Chicago.
What makes a track “house”?
House songs weren’t songs in a
conventional sense. They weren’t verse,
chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. There were
no superstar DJs. Trax was the first label to
actually put the DJ’s name on the record
instead of the artist’s — it was all about the
producers and DJs. And there were two
in Chicago who really made a difference:
Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles. Because
we were young and involved in the house
scene, we weren’t going to nightclubs.
When house exploded in Chicago, it was
a youth movement. Frankie was doing his
all-ages parties at The Warehouse, and Ron
Hardy was doing The Music Box. Later, the
Hot Mix 5 jumped onboard.
Why was the city ready for such a
movement?
Chicago wasn’t an industry city at the
time. The working-class environment was
similar to that of the U.K. We had that
same kind of ethic: more blue collar, less
trendy. And because it was such a DIY
city, with the industrial and punk scenes
and all-ages shows, it became a hotbed for
something like house to happen.
You’ve been involved with Trax since the
beginning. How did you first connect?
I was very much into punk at the time.
Rock’n’roll had kind of reached a point
of homogenized overproduction in the
mid-’80s. Punk and house both had that
same sort of stripped-down sound. They
were bare bones. I met DJ-producers
B A C K S T A G E P A S S
Cain (second from right)with (from left) Reggie
“Mars” McFadden,
Richard Fairbanks and
Saunders at Chicago’s
Universal Studio in 1984.
BY KEVIN WARWICK
AUGUST 10 , 2 019 | WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 69