Disco! The very word hustles you back to the 1970s, the decade in which it was gloriously born in the loft parties and basement clubs of New York, where it blossomed into a national obsession and entered its decadent phase, when Ethel Merman went disco . And if you don’t remember the ’70s, you may recall parties when you dressed up in your parents’ old clothes and danced to their records. It defined a time, and the three-part documentary “Disco: The Soundtrack of a Revolution,” beginning Tuesday on PBS at 9 p.
m. Pacific (and already streaming from PBS.org ) ties the music not just to its place in the evolution of pop but to the liberation movements of the time, as an expression, originally, of Black, brown and queer subcultures — but also as a genre that gave female singers a different, more assertive, self-confident voice.
“I will survive,” went the song , and if all this series does is get you to listen to Gloria Gaynor again or for the first time, it’ll have been worth it. Though mass success is exciting, obviously, and empowering to the artist, stories of music history are never more exhilarating than when detailing the creation of a new style, before money is an issue or even a possibility, when it’s the expression of a community rather than the bet of a corporation. “Soundtrack of a Revolution” captures that moment thrillingly, though, as is often the case with such histories, the rise is followed by a fall — the lows are here, along with the h.