Without David Mancuso, dance music would be much less colourful

David Mancuso was the first. There have subsequently been many more famous (and somewhat less deserving) DJs than David and there have arguably been better DJs, too. But there are none that have exerted the influence over dance music that Mancuso and his famous Loft parties has. Without his input, both the sound and direction of disco (and thus dance music as a whole) would have been much less colourful and undoubtedly different.

David Mancuso was born in Utica in New York state in 1944 and raised in an orphanage by a Sister Alicia. He came to New York immediately prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and never left. Scraping a living as a shoe-shine boy, waiting tables and as a store clerk in a health food store, he began throwing parties in the mid 1960s in his loft, though what became known as the Loft did not begin until 1970. A passionate music and sound fan, he’d been amassing records and sound equipment since he was a boy, pulling apart radios to repurpose the speakers. It was his work, in conjunction with Alex Rosner, that led to the creation of the now standard soundsystem setup. David demanded extra tweeter arrays (the high-frequency speakers that hang in the centre of the room). “I didn't think it was a bad idea,” says Rosner. “but I thought it was too much. He wanted two of them which would have been eight tweeters and normally there's one tweeter per channel. I thought it would be too much high frequency, but I was wrong. It was so high up, that's not where the pain level is. The more you have up there the better. So it was actually a terrific idea. From there on, I used them in every club I worked in.”

The 1960s informed much of what Mancuso believed in: freedom, civil rights, women’s liberation and the psychedelia that influenced much of the music that Mancuso went on to play at the Loft (an often overlooked facet of disco). At first, Mancuso opened his loft up to friends once a fortnight but it swiftly became a weekly party. “I wanted it to be private, because the loft was also were I slept; where I dreamt, everything,” said Mancuso. “It was an invitation. You were not a member. It was not a club. I didn't want to be in that category. It meant different things to me. I wanted to keep it as close to a party as possible. It was like $2.50 and for that you'd get your coat checked, food, and the music. Everything was quality. And of course you would not get into this space unless you had an invitation.”

The first ever record to cross over into the Billboard Hot 100 without radio play began its life at the Loft. The song was ‘Soul Makossa’ by Cameroonian sax player Manu Dibango. This one song wrought a huge change in the music industry and gave us club promotions (amusingly dubbed the homo promo, since so many were gay). Promoting music directly to clubs instead of only radio, became one of the key arms for breaking disco to a mainstream audience over the next few years and led directly to the formation of the New York Record Pool, again instigated by Mancuso, as a more direct way to distribute records to DJs.

François Kevorkian was an early adherent to the Loft. “It was so magical; so incredible. The Loft was not the kind of place where you'd go to find a date or something. You'd just be there to feel part of the group, to be there with people. Everybody was so into the music and they'd be calling the names of the records; screaming. At the Loft you could hear people's voices at any time because the music was much lower. And there was more of an interaction between the people and the music. It was not at the level where it was a tidal wave just sweeping the dancefloor. It was something more deep and spiritual, touching you in other ways. Not just through the body, but the mind, too.” What distinguished Mancuso from the rest of the pack was not just this incredible environment he had created but the eclecticism of his sets. Records that no-one else played – or would dare to play – like Brian Briggs’ otherworldly ‘Aeo’ or the largely unheralded ‘Rude Movements’ by British act Sun Palace or Chuck Mangione’s riotous live version of ‘Land Of Make Believe’.

“It was amazing” enthuses Def Mix don David Morales. “Up to this point, I was what you’d call a commercial DJ, but when I went to the Loft I heard all this different music. I thought ‘Wow, I like this’. I used to be there for like 12 and 15 hours dancing. I was one of the ones who got there early and I was one of the last ones to leave as well.” Notably, Many of Mancuso’s favourite songs often seemed to speak of the desire to seek solace on another planet – or plane, leaving the impression that he was some sort of astral pilot: ‘Life On Mars’, ‘Dancing In Outer Space’, ‘Serious Sirius Space Party’, ‘Could Heaven Ever Be Like This’, ‘Above & Beyond’.

Despite his huge influence in New York, for much of his working life as a DJ he remained largely unknown outside of his home city, known mainly through the enigmatic bootleg series Loft Classics that was widely distributed around New York, which also made their way to Europe. With the publication of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, my history of the DJ written with Frank Broughton, and Nuphonic’s brilliant compilation The Loft in 1999, Mancuso’s name started to gain traction among a much wider constituency. Tim Lawrence’s Love Will Save The Day, essentially an extended love letter to Mancuso, further established his position at the centre of dance culture and the parties organised by Lawrence, DJ Cosmo and cohorts brought the Loft spirit to East London on a regular basis for the first time.

David Mancuso brought together the crucial elements of club culture for the first time: the soundsystem, the party, the music, the environment. In doing so he inspired into action a generation of New Yorkers. So many of its stars began on the floor at the Loft: Frankie Knuckles, Larry Levan, Danny Krivit, François K and David Morales. He changed how music was viewed and helped form the notion of the DJ as creator, shaman and curator. In short, he changed dance music. In our current era of hate and divisiveness Hercules & Love Affair’s Andy Butler best summed up what David Mancuso offered: “[He] gave the Loft to the world as a celebration of music with a spirit of inclusivity and was all about the best version of humanity.”

Bill Brewster and Eliot Wyatt are regular contributors to Mixmag