David Mancuso

RIP David Mancuso, 1944 – 2016

In the New York dance music scene of the early 1970s, David Mancuso made the dance party a sacred and safe space for marginalised communities of LGBTQ+, Black and Latino dancers. He focused heavily on putting music at the centre of a party experience, using audiophile sound systems and his respectful DJ style.

However, many of the things that were written about David Mancuso don't get to the core of his influence. David Mancuso was a thought leader whose ideas were ahead of their time, and perfect for the context of the 1970s.

The Loft

David Mancuso is mainly known as the founder of The Loft in New York City. In 1970, David Mancuso hosted a "by invitation only" party, titled "Love Saves The Day" in his New York City Apartment. This became a series of events known as "The Loft". His parties put music at the centre of the experience. He used an audiophile sound system and played tracks in their entirety.

These parties felt like a private house party, instead of a commercial club. The parties were welcoming of diversity when the New York club scene was not. The parties did not follow traditional club opening times, and continued all night into daylight hours.

David Mancuso used high end speakers and amplifiers to achieve pristine sound quality. This would have sounded crystal clear to dancers who were used to the poor quality sound of 1970s transistors clipping the signal.

David Mancuso played every track in its entirety from beginning to end, which mirrors the curatorial approach of a fine art gallery space for the visual arts. He read crowd reactions to curate the tracks that he played. David Mancuso's tastes were eclectic and expansive, and combined with the style of his parties, this would have created a connoisseur art-house vibe.

The Influence Of David Mancuso

The Loft was attended by many future DJ legends, including: Frankie Knuckles, Larry Levan, Nicky Siano and David Morales. However, David Mancuso was also a thought leader in the world of music, and his ideas have influenced music in a much more profound way than just through the people who attended The Loft.

David Mancuso put music at the centre of his events. He used audiophile equipment, and he played tracks from beginning to end, leaving a moment of silence between the tracks. At the time, the majority of DJs acted like a radio host by talking over the beginning and end of tracks and segueing from one track to the next. David Mancuso treated music like a fine art curator would treat a piece of art.

Putting the music first has been a philosophy that has appeared at various times in dance music history in different forms.

The Backlash Against Corporate Clubbing

For many people, this philosophy of putting the music first became an antidote for the commercialisation of music in the 1970s. The dominant ideology of music in the 1970s was commercial radio. Commercial radio exerted economic pressure on music, and many people found the resulting aesthetics to be unpleasant for a few reasons.

Beatmatching wasn't common in the early 1970s, but DJs were starting to use slip queueing and beatmatching in their DJ sets. A continuous mix of commercial records in an ordinary segue-style medley results in listener fatigue because the tracks are very short. Commercial radio stations like short songs with vocals because it allows scheduling of lots of ads. In a club long instrumental tracks often work better. The disco scene reacted against the short length of commercial tracks with the introduction of the 12" vinyl format featuring extended mixes and long instrumental breaks. DJs like Tom Moulton and Frankie Knuckles became proficient in remixing commercial tracks using tape edits to extend their length.

Another radio aesthetic that polluted the landscape of clubbing was the commercial radio playlist. Radio programming consultants applied data-driven broadcast metrics to physical venues, and copied the track rotation structure of commercial radio. This removes the selector role of the DJ. Radio consultants even applied the concept of planned obsolescence to clubbing, because it was calculated that a person who arrives, buys drinks and then leaves, is more profitable than a person who stays in a club. It was also considered more profitable to have white customers and cater to white preferences, because they were expected to have more money to spend.

The playlist was a manually calculated algorithmic selection that resembles the automated algorithms we have on internet platforms today. Many club managers forced DJs to play chart hits on rotation, instead of dance friendly tracks. This meant that the same records were played over and over again, and every club sounded the same. In Chicago these commercial clubs were located on the North Side. The backlash against this corporate sell-out culture occurred on the South Side.

David Mancuso was the antithesis of the corporate radio consultant. He didn't know it at the time, but his curatorial approach was the antidote to the corporate radio playlist that would emerge in the mid 1970s. David Mancuso influence Robert Williams and Frankie Knuckles directly, and also the New York DJ scene. You didn't have to know about David Mancuso to rebel against corporate music programming. If you did rebel through natural instinct, then you would find a perfect expression of human centred music waiting for you in David Mancuso's radical hospitality.

The South Side Chicago backlash against corporate playlisting wasn't just in the clubs directly related to David Mancuso and The Loft. The Warehouse is a clear example of David Mancuso's direct influence, but Herb Kent's "Stay Up and Punk Out" created a synergy between parties and radio that would last into the house era. The South Side teen scene also rejected the corporate club, and the synergy of radio and club in South Side Chicago allowed house to become a mass movement. The rise of non-corporate local radio shows via low power radio led to shows on local college radio, and to the Hot Mix 5, and finally the mass adoption of house culture in Chicago. This suggests that technology doesn't have to be anti-human.

The Backlash Against Hardcore Rave Mixing

In the late 1980s, the hardcore rave style of deejaying was to mix tracks as fast as possible to create a feeling of energy, and tracks were typically played for about a minute. This has the effect of condensing time and making a short time feel much longer. This rave style of mixing was adopted from a practice that already existed in Chicago, with DJs like Bad Boy Bill or the Hot Mix 5 before that.

Carl Cox was known for high technical proficiency of the UK fast mixing style. When hardcore rave deejaying took fast mixing to an extreme in the UK, DJs sometimes had assistants to hand them records as fast as possible. Although this style created hype and energy, it also created listener fatigue. People would complain at DJ booths because only a tiny fraction of a track had been played. Some DJs ended up just playing intros from tracks, and the more musical of the fast mix style DJs ended up playing a series of drops and this quickly caused listener fatigue.

In the 1990s, the progressive house scene of the UK rejected the rave style of fast mixing, and many progressive house DJs mixed only minimally at the start and end of tracks. DiY Sound System are an example of DJs who adopted this style. The intention of this style of deejaying was the same as David Mancuso's, to put the music first. Carl Cox himself moved away from the fast mixing style of his early years and adopted a style similar to early Chicago DJs like Frankie Knuckles.

The Brostep Misstep

The brostep era recreated a similar issue to the hardcore rave era. The rollercoaster effect of brostep sets sounded good at first, but after twenty minutes the sequence of hyped-up drops is very tiring. The younger brostep DJs and producers ended up making the same mistakes as previous generations because they didn't know the culture.

The tiring effect of repeated drops has the musical end-point of boredom. This is because of a psychological effect called hedonic adaptation, where continuous excitement becomes a new bassline. The repetition of hype becomes what's known as a hedonic treadmill, which is the same as what we now call doomscrolling.

Solving Today's Problems With David Mancuso's Philosophy

The commercial pressures in today's music are a parallel to the commercialisation of music in the 1970s. The format of the two hour DJ set has dominated clubbing since the 1990s because it gets people in the club, but it also destroys the potential for musically interesting DJ sets. Algorithmic music recommendations of the platform economy create economic pressure to make tracks that are similar to hits, so that the algorithm will recommend your track as a similar track. The represses originality and encourages slop music.

The algorithmic recommendation systems of platforms like Spotify, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are not designed to find things that you might be interested in, or to create an enjoyable experience. They're designed to optimise short term attention, but this creates the same hedonic treadmill via doomscrolling. These algorithmic systems are similar to the data-driven radio consultants of the 1970s. The reaction to these anti-life equations should be for humans to recommend music to humans. This is why I advocate for digital crate digging on this website.

David Mancuso's Influence Today

On today's DJ scene there are still DJs who follow David Mancuso's philosophy of putting the music first. Some examples of this style are: Moodymann (Kenny Dixon Jr.) and Theo Parrish. This is a concept that is now embedded in dance music culture and will never go away. However today, we have another type of corporate programming to rebel against, the algorithmic recommendation engines of the big tech monopolies.