David Mancuso

David Man­cuso invented the format of modern night­club­bing, by acci­dent, when he started hold­ing par­ties in his Man­hat­tan loft in 1970. David, and The Loft, are still going strong.

How did you first come to put on parties?

Well I always liked music, and friends of mine also liked music. It goes back as far as I can remem­ber, as far back as when I was nine years old, that’s the first time I remem­ber actu­ally having some friends over to my house and putting some records on the record player. That would be 1953, so already there was this whole break­out of rock ‘n’ roll and doo wop, so the musi­cally had dra­mat­i­cally started to change, and all the songs were about a new dance and so forth, so I just grew up in a very musi­cally tran­si­tional time. And I just always wanted to socialise.

So that was the first Loft?

Kind of. As I got older I just con­tin­ued that. In the mid six­ties, I got a loft space which was not some­thing people did back then. It was just an old fac­tory con­verted par­tially for living, and I thought that was a good oppor­tu­nity. I was already into audio, and I had a sound system, so I just started making tapes and invit­ing friends over and that was my lifestyle. Then around 1970, eco­nom­ics changed for me dra­mat­i­cally, and in order to give par­ties, I started to do rent par­ties to sup­port the rent, and my friends con­tributed and my lifestyle got a bit more organ­ised so I could sup­port myself as well as having fun.

And is that why you had this great atmos­phere, because it was all friends coming?

It was very real, it was a scene built on friend­ship, on love and on music. I wasn’t going into the club busi­ness or the cabaret busi­ness, it was much more real to me and my friends than that. And there was much more social free­dom, because we were doing it from our point of view, from our ideals. Then, as far as the exter­nal things that were going on at that time, there was a lot of net­work­ing going on with social causes or polit­i­cal causes.

And what about the music you played, was it a con­scious deci­sion to play all dif­fer­ent kinds of music?

DJing was not what was hap­pen­ing. Any­thing that is mean­ing­ful, that was musi­cal, that was dance­able, any­thing that had life energy in it, you’re drawn to it. If you’re into music, you’re into music uncon­di­tion­ally. It can’t really be com­pared to DJing today, and the way things are going in gen­eral, that is not what I wanted to achieve. The last thing in the world I was inter­ested in was being a DJ, it was just about keep­ing the par­ties going and having fun, the DJing part was just that we needed some­one to put the records on the turntable. It was about the music and my friends, per­form­ing as a DJ isn’t how I per­ceive this whole thing, it’s more like being a musi­cal host.

And get­ting a mes­sage across with the records you played, was that always important?

I think there is a mes­sage in music. If you take a record like ‘There’s a Mes­sage in the Music’ by the O Jays, that will explain it better than I can. There’s an obvi­ous story in there, or it’s like open­ing up a box with a puzzle in there, and you have to put them together, there’s always a story. I just go with the music, I didn’t invent this way of play­ing records, I posi­tion myself in a manner that when I’m involved in music, which I see as a mir­a­cle, if you will, or a gift from the gods, I respect it as such, and that’s my approach. The point is that to share with people music and an appre­ci­a­tion of music, then every­thing falls into place. I think it takes dis­ci­pline, I think it has to be tech­ni­cally on point, and I think that it’s impor­tant to let the music do it’s thing, to make us happy, to let it be our friend, and it is our friend, uncon­di­tion­ally. I don’t think my approach to music is dif­fer­ent to anyone else’s, we all may have dif­fer­ent roles in the moment, and that’s what makes it won­der­ful, because we’re all into it together.

So the DJ and the crowd and the musi­cians who made the record are all col­lab­o­rat­ing? Is that the right word?

I’ve said this before in many inter­views, and I don’t mean to be rep­e­ti­tious, but we’re all play­ing in the same band. When you and a friend of yours hear a song and you both like it, there’s a twin­kle in both of your eyes, there’s a feel­ing in that moment, and I think that feel­ing is very pow­er­ful. Am I making any sense?

Yeah

It’s a very hum­bling thing.

Can I ask about the sound qual­ity thing? Why is that so impor­tant? Does that lead on from the ideas about shar­ing music?

Of course. That’s a good ques­tion and a seem­ingly simple one. Let me just say this: I cannot believe it when I hear music being played and it’s dis­torted. You know, when we go to a restau­rant, we eat with our eyes. If it don’t look right, you’re not going to eat it. If music doesn’t sound right, it’s not appeal­ing. Sound, for it to be musi­cal, it must be as the artist intended it. Louis Arm­strong said some­thing once, he said, ‘If it sounds good, it ain’t bad’ which makes a lot of sense. If there’s some music that it’s hard for you to tol­er­ate, that you don’t like, you can tol­er­ate it if it’s cleanly repro­duced. And the oppo­site of that is true, if there’s a song that you love a song from the bottom of your heart, and you hear it dis­torted, that upsets you, so it’s only log­i­cal to repro­duce music the way it’s intended. It’s just better that way. It’s like your writ­ing: if you write some­thing, and the printer dis­torts the print­ing, so that I can’t read the words, what good is it? The pur­pose of writ­ing is to com­mu­ni­cate, and the pur­pose of music is to com­mu­ni­cate and if that com­mu­ni­ca­tion is dis­torted then it’s not going in the direc­tion intended. Good sound is impor­tant. The human race wouldn’t be here today if we didn’t have cer­tain per­cep­tions of sound. You know, if you’re walk­ing through the woods, and there’s some­thing behind you and to the left that might attack you, you have to know exactly where that some­thing is to sur­vive. If that’s dis­torted, and you can’t figure out where it is… sorry, I’m really ram­bling here.

No, I see what you mean. And not mixing the records is an exten­sion of all that?

First of all, I’m always look­ing at this thing as each song, each record is a prayer, if you will, is a piece of art. The mix is ulti­mately with the musi­cians, each one making their sound and the mix between them makes the music. If you’re going to go in there and change things, well, that’s one approach. I don’t believe in that approach at all, I find it turns me off, and I can’t react to the music. It’s the same thing as with sound, if you walk into a room and there’s music being repro­duced elec­tron­i­cally, you do not want to hear the sound system, you want to hear the music. Once you start detect­ing that the music is being repro­duced, there’s a vari­a­tion there. If the sound is clean, and you walk into that room blind­folded, you can’t tell how many speak­ers are in there, and where they’re placed etc. etc. all you know is that you’re enveloped in music. That to me, from my per­spec­tive on how music works, makes sense.

So it’s about keep­ing the link between the musi­cians and the people listening?

I don’t think I should inter­fere, and be judge, jury and exe­cu­tioner, with some­thing that you may love. If you want to go into a sit­u­a­tion where it’s not impor­tant to know which records play­ing, or the tonal­i­ties of a song, and it’s a whole dif­fer­ent mix, that’s between you and your­self. If that works, for you that’s fine, but Jack, the key thing for me is that I have to stay close to home as far as the orig­i­nal intent goes. with drum machines and all that other stuff, we’re losing a little bit of spir­i­tu­al­ity in music - all these records that start of with a drum machine and sound like every other frickin’ record. Take your heart­beat, there’s no two heart­beats the same, and when we’re in the womb and we’re expe­ri­enc­ing that vibra­tion and it’s going into our con­scious­ness, that’s a ref­er­ence point. Mixing records and all these things are fine, but once we start think­ing that this is the way to do things, and lose that orig­i­nal ref­er­ence point, that I think is totally crazy. What’s the result of all this? Did we have a good time last night? We went out to have a good time. Even when you’re at home, you have a sense of where you want to sit, what you want to listen to and what you like. It’s about you, it’s not about me. Music is sup­posed to be for all of us. Oh, I get too seri­ous about all this, I’m sorry.

I don’t think you can really get too seri­ous. Can I just ask one more ques­tion? Is The Loft still run­ning today?

What I’m doing right now is look­ing at loca­tions. Things have changed rad­i­cally in Man­hat­tan. I’ve been down­town for years, and that used o be a cheap place to live, but that’s all changed. I’m trying to relo­cate, and get The Loft going again on a reg­u­lar basis. This has been a dif­fi­cult time for that to happen for var­i­ous rea­sons. I’ve been offered var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions, but I feel that if the basic pur­pose that got me into doing this is com­pro­mised, I’m not going to be into it. The intent, that lasted for years for me and my friends, I don’t want to dis­turb that. I’m not so much into the club busi­ness, espe­cially the state it’s in these days. I don’t mean to be neg­a­tive, but it’s come full circle. Part of the reason for the par­ties was that people didn’t have to go “out”, because for one reason or another — whether it’s clubs taxing you to death with high prices, or telling you can do this but not do that — that’s not the way some people want to socialise.

So, it was always much more a party than a club?

Part of it was rebelling against the whole social status quo. Anyway, I do expect to resume, and hope­fully the oppor­tu­nity will present itself. I believe it will, because it always has in the past. I’m just not going to jump into any­thing. I’m very much in touch with all the people who’ve been coming over the years, because it’s been built through friends and that thing about six degrees of sep­a­ra­tion means there’s a whole net­work of people out there ready for it.

So are there people who still come from the first party you did?

If I was to put on a party tomor­row, you’d see people there from day one, or even friends from before. I’ve been very blessed that when I’ve made friends I’ve kept them, I’m very for­tu­nate that way. And it’s to do with the young and the old. Friends of mine grew up, got mar­ried, had chil­dren and brought them along to let them know that there’s this dif­fer­ent option avail­able to them when they go out. I’ve seen three gen­er­a­tions of one family on the dance­floor at the same time.

That must be unique.

I’m sorry I sound so hard-​headed about all this, but I just can’t help it, I strongly believe in music, that’s the main thing.

Posted at 12pm on 15/01/01 by Jack Mottram to the interviews category.
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