David Mancuso slipped off this earth last night, another sadness to add to the litany of 2016. While Mancuso never sang, played an instrument, or produced an album, his influence on music is as seismic as that of David Bowie and Prince. Arguably, his reach is even greater, in that every dancefloor can trace its roots back to the floorboards in Mancuso’s downtown Manhattan loft. Just don’t mistake him for the father of disco or the man behind modern club life, as Mancuso’s vision was more profound than that. If anything, Mancuso suggested that any music can be dance music so long as it moves people, and that the Loft can serve as an ideal for living (rather than perpetuating nightclubs’ obsession with status and need for liquor sales). Climbing the stairs up to the Loft provided a glimpse into what true community, democracy, and unity actually looked and felt like.
Raised as an orphan, Mancuso had to make his own family out of friends and fellow music fanatics. A product of ’60s counterculture and inspired to seek out new systems of living, Mancuso mailed out invites to a bunch of pals and threw a party on Valentine’s Day 1970 in his loft space home at 647 Broadway. “Love Saves the Day” read a flier (and there may have been some of that acronym in the punch bowl). Amid turmoil and nightlife restrictions throughout the city, the home later dubbed “the Loft” served as a safe haven in the years following the Stonewall Riots. It was a place for queer and straight alike—whether white, black, or brown—to express themselves and move as one on the dancefloor. The joy and inclusivity that attendees experienced in Mancuso’s home soon inspired others to start their own parties and nightclubs, from the Gallery to the Saint, Paradise Garage to Studio 54 (which distorted the Loft’s “invite-only” status, making it about exclusivity).
“For me, the core [idea behind the Loft] is social progress,” Mancuso said earlier this year in a rare interview with Red Bull Music Academy. “How much social progress can there be when you’re in a situation that is repressive? You won’t get much social progress in a nightclub… In my zone, you can be any age, a drinker or non-drinker, a smoker or a non-smoker. And that’s where I like to be.” With a vibe that was one part birthday party, one part prom, one part church picnic, and one part utopia, the Loft remains a vital part of living history. At any Loft party, there’s always a small altar tucked into a corner where tribute can be paid to the Ancestors; David Mancuso has now gone to join them.
Here, we celebrate 10 songs Mancuso and the Loft helped make classics in their own right.
This British ensemble dabbled in reggae, jazz, and soul just like other early disco favorites including Cymande and Azymuth. But the closing track on their debut exists on another plane entirely. Slow, ritualistic, and deeply spiritual, “Anambra” mixes African and Nyabinghi drumming as the group chants “Om Mani Padme Hum.” A Buddhist mantra in Sanskrit, the line suggests a spiritual path wherein impure body, mind, and speech can lead towards enlightenment. Often serving as the closing song for his sets, Mancuso imparted such spiritual wisdom into the music itself.
By not selling food or alcohol at the Loft, Mancuso was able to skirt around the city’s oppressive and restrictive cabaret license laws. So this party song by former James Brown trombonist Fred Wesley doubles as a statement of the Loft as well, which for decades was actually Mancuso’s own home. While the Loft often changed addresses, the spiritual space remained crucial to the fight for equality among those marginalized by the powers that be throughout the ’70s. With the recent ascendancy to national prominence by one of New York City’s most repressive mayors (Rudy Giuliani), one who shuttered numerous clubs and strangled culture, a new fight awaits us.
“People went wild trying to find that record,” Studio 54 house DJ Nicky Siano recalled in the book Love Saves The Day. “That record” was a 45 from Cameroonian jazzman Manu Dibango, which Mancuso pulled from a record shop in a West Indian neighborhood of Brooklyn and made into a hit. It led to upwards of 23 different bootleg recordings of “Soul Makossa” flooding the market in the span of a few months. A few months on, it became the first disco record to enter the *Billboard *Top 40, proving that the underground club scene could influence mainstream pop.
It’s one thing for a DJ to hear a beat and know that it would kill in a club setting, but Mancuso’s ear also sought out records that could mimic the biorhythms, ebbs, and crescendos that one can hear in nature. So while most DJs might not investigate the smooth stylings of a jazz fusion guitarist like Pat Metheny, Mancuso knew just when to deploy this sidelong 1981 track (recorded with pianist Lyle Mays) for maximum effect.
Unlike their namesake, British progressive hard rock act Babe Ruth never really had a big hit. But this deep album cut from their debut became one of the most influential songs outside of the band’s native rock world. It was a break weapon for hip-hop DJs like Grandmaster Flash, it was an inspiration of electro producers like Jellybean Benitez, and thanks to Mancuso, it became one of the earliest songs to be repurposed for his dancers. The word didn’t exist in 1972, but “The Mexican” prefigured what would become known as disco.
In hindsight, Larry Heard’s debut single as Fingers Inc. served as the blueprint for Chicago house. But “Mystery of Love” slotted into no category when Mancuso began to play it at the Loft, though it checked off many of his own personal tastes. Its Roland Jupiter 6 chord progression suggested the jazz-fusion chops that Mancuso was so fond of, while Heard’s 707 beat swung like R&B and moved feet. But the track’s wistfulness and emotional core—which would later define deep house—also stirred hearts.
North End was a studio project helmed by a young Bostonian producer named Arthur Baker. Before he had hits with Afrika Bambaataa and New Order, Baker’s 1981 single wound up on discerning New York dancefloors, thanks in part to Mancuso’s airing of the B-side. Remixed by Tee Scott (one of NYC’s influential albeit unheralded club DJs) and led by sparkling xylophone alongside George Benson-style guitar lines,“Tee’s Happy” is a euphoric slice of soulful disco that despite almost no vocal, conveys waves of joy nonetheless.
Leather-lunged, kaftan-clad, bearded Greek crooner Demis Roussos gained international renown as a soft-pop demiurge and balladeer extraordinaire, selling millions of records the world over. But even with so many gold records and legions of adoring fans, Roussos still sought validation on the New York dancefloor. For his lone disco hit, Roussos lent his soaring high tenor to this cosmic, synth-powered track. It also ascended into a Loft classic.
A defining Madchester track, a seamless fusion of ambient and house music, a cheeky juxtaposition of Steve Reich and Pat Metheny’s “Electric Counterpoint” with Ricki Lee Jones, and an early crossover hit for electronic dance music. But thanks in part to Mancuso’s early support, the Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds” floated across the Atlantic and became a gateway track for many listeners otherwise unfamiliar with underground dance music (such as this author).
“Love Is the Message” is many things: the most important disco record ever, perhaps the greatest song to come out of Philadelphia’s vibrant music scene of the early 1970s and the studios of Gamble and Huff, and the defining song of the Loft. To the outsider, “Love Is the Message” may seem overplayed and a bit outdated. But stand in the middle of the Loft’s dancefloor as the strings and vocal fanfare come in, and it’s like you’ve never heard the song before. As balloons fall from the ceiling and dancers move with more energy and purpose, this classic still confers a simple yet profound message—one that’s at the heart of the Loft.
