{"id":1570,"date":"2016-11-15T22:09:28","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T03:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/?p=1570"},"modified":"2016-11-15T22:09:28","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T03:09:28","slug":"david-mancuso-at-dub-spot-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/2016\/11\/15\/david-mancuso-at-dub-spot-records\/","title":{"rendered":"David Mancuso at Dub Spot Records"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this year of awful news, I wonder if we\u2019re currently experiencing what evangelical Christians call the rapture. Only now the evangelicals remain on earth, while great people whose contributions made the world a better place are passing away almost daily. Just reviewing the music world memoriam since January: David Bowie, Lemmy, Glenn Frey<\/a>, Blowfly Pierre Boulez, Dan Hicks, Vanity, Nana Vasconcelos, Frank Sinatra Jr., Phife Dawg, Prince, John Stabb, Guy Clark, Dave Swarbrick, Bernie Worrell, Scotty Moore, Alan Vega, Prince Buster, Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell\u2026 And now David Mancuso.<\/p>\n

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David Mancuso\u2019s contribution to music is signified by his page-one status in Tim Lawrence\u2019s book Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979<\/i>. At the beginning of the new decade, Mancuso hosted private house parties at his downtown NYC loft at 647 Broadway Avenue, where dancing to music emanating from a superlative audio system was the main focus. These loft parties, later institutionalized under the nightlife moniker \u201cthe Loft,\u201d set in motion the sound and experience we associate with modern nightclubbing.<\/p>\n

Ostensibly the disc jockey, Mancuso\u2019s genius lay in curating content and cultivating communion for the dancefloor, well beyond the specific roles associated with \u201cthe DJ.\u201d He culled deep cuts and left-field tracks that inspired dancefloor revelation in a pre-disco world. Working with sound engineer Alex Rosner<\/a>, he developed a sound system that broke new ground in nightclub audio experience. Mancuso created new possibilities of narrative and theme from the DJ\u2019s playlist. Famously, he didn\u2019t blend his records together, instead letting tracks run all the way to their final fade-out, the silence signalling the end of a particular sonic episode. He cultivated a dancefloor democracy that contrasted with the high-status nightlife scenes reported on society pages. Loft parties were invitation-only but free, Mancuso carefully selecting a balanced mix of races, genders, sexualities and classes. The Loft served the simplest of refreshments: punch, snacks, and no alcohol. The drugs and libidos that attendees brought with them often heighten the collective release on the floor, but Mancuso had \u201can alternative set of priorities,\u201d as Lawrence writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe loft chipped away at the ritual of sex as the driving force behind parties,\u201d says Mark Riley, one of Mancuso\u2019s devoted followers. \u201cDance was not a means to sex but drove the space\u201d (pg. 25).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This much is recognized by dancefloor devotees and scholars: the line through disco, house music, and finally all stripes of underground dance music that provide dancefloor ecstasy and subcultural shelter can be seen to start with David Mancuso. But his contributions to dance music went beyond the Loft. His musical taste and promotional effort helped sketch the musical parameters of disco in its earliest days; among the songs he helped break through in America was Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango\u2019s \u201cSoul Makossa.\u201d Mancuso inaugurated the first record pool for NYC DJs, in which music labels distributed new releases to a certified, mutually regulated group of disc jockeys; this arrangement, copied in other cities and scenes, tilted the aesthetic and economic balance of power between recording artists, music industry, and DJs toward the latter.<\/p>\n