Yesterday, David Mancuso turned 72. Though one of the most influential people in dance music history, David Mancuso’s somewhat mystical legacy spread mostly by word of mouth. Mancuso’s presence at the roots of disco culture dates back to ‘Love Saves the Day’, the inaugural invite-only party he held at his loft on Valentine’s Day 1970s.
His unique approach, combining spiritual freedom and the attention to detail of an audiophile, had a profound influence on Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage, Frankie Knuckles’ Warehouse parties, Steve Rubell’s Studio 54 and discotheques across the world. Inspiration came from the rent parties held in New York’s African-American community: held at someone’s apartment to raise money for the rent. This community spirit was vital to the atmosphere of the Loft, with white and black; gay and straight interacting freely without the prejudice of the outside world. The creation of a safe space in which minorities and economic groups could mix freely set a precedent for the disco parties of the following decades as a form of social progress.
Escapism was central to the parties. With hippie ideals of peace and love left shattered by the ongoing Vietnam war and discrimination against numerous minorities across America, Mancuso encouraged guests to turn off their minds, relax and float downstream. The achievement of this serenity was, unsurprisingly, assisted by experimentation with LSD. Neither clocks nor mirrors featured at the loft, emphasising the parties (and the drug trips) as an escape from time itself and ensuring that guests did not feel self-conscious, cultivating an environment of uninhibited unity.
The role of drugs in the origins of the disco era followed from the psychedelic and proto-rave parties of the mid-to-late 1960s, and Mancuso was greatly inspired by ‘The Psychedelic Experience’, a manual for LSD experimentation co-written by Timothy Leary. The events held at the Loft began primarily as gatherings to experiment with LSD, and the role of music followed Leary’s example.
Mancuso made eclectic and atmospheric ‘journey tapes’ to accompany his trips, though dancing was initially a secondary aspect of the events, gaining momentum as more guests began to attend. Interestingly, he never wished to be viewed as a DJ, preferring to be seen as the musical host of the events, there to guide guests on a journey of self-expression.
The Loft set the standard for sound reproduction, on a never-ending quest for sonic purity. Somewhat paradoxically, the soundsystem was of paramount importance whilst simultaneously being entirely secondary to the music itself. Mancuso wanted to create a space where the speakers were not seen or heard, only that the room was filled with the sound itself.
Reproduction of the music as the artist intended was key. Songs were played end-to-end, as intros and outros would not have been recorded if they were not meant to be heard. A mixer was not used, as any additional components could distort or colour the sound. Likewise, effects or pitch-control were unacceptable, distancing the sound played to the audience from the sound recorded by the artist. Mancuso often left spaces between tracks, during which the crowd broke into applause.
Musically, he was a storyteller rather than a mixer, and his selections tied in with his structuring of the parties into three stages, one of calm, one of celebration and one of re-entry to reality.
The all-night events became a regular occurrence, a rite of passage for the noteworthy of New York’s club scene. Mancuso successfully kept his parties both underground and legal, avoiding the need for a license since he was not selling anything at his events. Widely regarded as the dance party that spawned all other dance parties, many aspects of his unique events have been replicated at parties across the globe.
With so many passionate clubbers and DJs in disagreement with the increasingly ostentatious showmanship promoted by big-festival EDM culture over the past decade, a return to Mancuso’s sound-centric approach is perhaps more necessary than ever.
Check out this killer (and very rare) Mancuso compilation here