House music was invented in Chicago by Black DJs and musicians, not in London or Europe

May explicitly corrects the record: house music ‘does not come from London! It comes from Chicago.’ The genre was created by figures like Farley Jackmaster Funk, Steve Hurley, Chippy, Joe Smooth, and Marshall Jefferson — musicians who, like earlier blues artists, did not have the business infrastructure to control their genre’s narrative when it went global. May draws a direct parallel to Chuck Berry, B.B. King, and Muddy Waters: Black American originators of a genre that was later claimed elsewhere. Detroit techno and Chicago house had a direct exchange: May was exposed to house on radio when visiting his mother in Chicago and returned determined to make something that Ron Hardy would want to play — while not sounding like house.

Examples

Ron Hardy (The Music Box, Chicago) is named by May as the greatest DJ he ever heard. Marshall Jefferson’s ‘Move Your Body’ (1986) is typically cited as the first house track with a piano melody.

Assessment

State where May says house music originated and name three of the originators he mentions. What parallel does he draw to earlier American music history?