Nicky Siano talks about the birth of dance music in New York after Stonewall

As he gets ready to play Electric Picnic, clubland pioneer Nicky Siano tells Ed Power how dance music was born on the mean streets of New York amid the ashes of the Stonewall riots.

Nicky Siano was there at the start of it all. He was resident DJ at Studio 54, the notorious temple of late-1970s New York excess, and, prior to that, the founder of The Gallery, the legendary downtown club credited with bringing disco out of the fringes of gay and black culture and into the mainstream.

When the sounds streaming out of Manhattan clubs were changing the face of popular music, Siano — who plays a rare Irish set at Electric Picnic next weekend — was one of those fanning the flame.