“What does house music mean to you?” 

You could ask this question to a hundred different people and get a hundred radically different answers. For Millennials and Gen Z, their connection to house music may stem from music festivals, vibing out at mega stages at Coachella or Electric Daisy Carnival. Others might recall hedonistic pool parties in Vegas. Depending on its particular flavor, house music can be the soundtrack to an intense gym workout just as easily as it is the background ambiance of an indie coffee shop. 

For those of a certain age, house music means transcendent all night dancefloor experiences in clubs and illegal warehouses throughout the 80s and 90s. It was vinyl and it was soulful. It was bold and drew upon R&B, funk, and disco. That was the grown folks vibe that Soulnic brought to our Grand Performances stage this past Saturday. It was a celebration of 40 years of house music, and drew a diverse and multigenerational crowd of house music heads, many of whom were there from the onset back in the 1980s. Some brought their kids - and grandkids. No matter their age, this was a crowd that knew its way around a dancefloor. It was beautiful to behold California Plaza pulsating nonstop for four hours thanks to killer DJ sets by WeirdoWithSoul, Roxcizzle, and Drack Muse.

An unforgettable highlight of the evening was seeing the NYC based band Tortured Soul perform house music live. Their tireless drummer John-Christian Urich never missing a beat on a set that wove in and out of songs like a DJ set would. Similarly, the crowd never missed a beat, dancing the night away. 

To those in attendance, “house music” meant the past, present, and future. It meant unity, love and diversity. It meant sweating out our troubles and finding group therapy in movement.