Joni Sledge, 60, member of 70s dance band Sister Sledge

Joni Sledge, who with her sisters recorded the defining dance anthem We Are Family, has died aged 60.

Sledge was found dead in her home by a friend in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday, the band’s publicist Biff Warren said. A cause of death has not been determined.

“Yesterday, numbness fell upon our family. We welcome your prayers as we weep the loss of our sister, mother, aunt, niece and cousin,” the family said.

Sledge and her sisters Debbie, Kim and Kathy formed Sister Sledge in 1971, but had their breakout success in 1979 with We Are Family. The dance song became an anthem of unity and women’s empowerment.

Sledge is survived by a son besides her sisters and other relatives.

“The four of us had been in the music business for eight years and we were frustrated. We were saying: ‘Well, maybe we should go to college and just become lawyers or something other than music, because it really is tough,’” Sledge told The Guardian.

But then they met Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers of the hit group Chic, and their breakout soon came.

The pair wrote and produced their album We Are Family, and soon the women had their first major hit with disco jam The Greatest Dancer, which became a top 10 hit in May 1979.

Their biggest hit would come a month later with the title track, an infectious dance anthem that celebrated their familial connection with the refrain: “We are family, I got all my sisters with me.”

While it celebrated their sisterhood, the 1979 hit so also became an anthem for female empowerment and unity. It was nominated for a Grammy. Both the song and album sold more than a million copies.

Joni Sledge.