One of the many classic songs played at The Loft's 50th Anniversary party, held Sunday Feb. The manner in which the music played Mancuso, through good days and bad, almost until his death in 2016 the central role that the relationship between sound and host played to The Loft, and to the communities that blossomed around it and why the fruits of that relationship continue to inspire three generations of people who still attend this party (or carry on its legacy globally) - make up one of late 20th century American music's great magical-realist fables. 'David would always say, 'I don't play the music, the music plays me,' ' his longtime friend, Donna Weiss, told me a few weeks ago. We would look at each other in recognition.' 'Someone would approach me to play a record,' Mancuso recounted in Lawrence's book Love Saves The Day, 'and I would already have it in my hand or it would be on the turntable. Soon enough, an osmosis-like psychic space, that Mancuso would later dub a 'third ear,' formed, one that made the communication between dancers and host fluid and unspoken.

And yet that night, knowing his friends' tastes, while also trusting his own intuition for a beat-wise atmosphere - heavy on R&B and soul, as well as psychedelic and boogie-blues grooves - the music began to open up an unexpected energy between the 'musical host' (Mancuso despised being called a 'DJ') and the dancing crowd. For $2.50, they were treated to coat-check, food and drinks (no alcohol) and Mancuso playing music - somewhat hesitantly at first, he would recall later, because he thought it would prevent him from mingling with the guests. Half a century later, The Loft retains its mystique, while continuing to feed and foster inquiring younger minds.Ībout 100 people showed up that first night, a blended coterie that became the norm. It also embodied a hard counterpoint to the popular (and often racist and homophobic) history of disco as hedonistic and formulaic - even as it both presaged its glamorous Studio 54 years, and functioned as one of the disco era's secret engines of creativity. The Loft subsequently became the rent party celebrated around the world, a launchpad for the musically, ethically and socially progressive wing of DJ and dance culture. 14, 1974 during a meeting with the SoHo Artists' Association in New York. And contrary to popular history's later segregation of disco dancers and hippie rock freaks, Mancuso tuned them all in.ĭavid Mancuso, photographed on Oct. Mancuso was also attracted to the psychedelic crowd of the nearby East Village, where he became friendly with, among others, LSD guru Timothy Leary, whose study groups ingrained in him not only ideas about psychedelic spirituality, but social progress. get to know people and develop relationships,' as he told author Tim Lawrence many years later. Often, that milieu was other private dance parties in people's homes all over the city, which he thought 'more intimate and you would be among friends. One also needed a nice cross-section of people, enough to turn it into a happening - and having grown up in a Utica orphanage, Mancuso was adept at making connections in whatever milieu he found himself in. One needed music, of course - Mancuso had been a record collector since his teens, also becoming an accidental hi-fi stereo enthusiast by purchasing his first set of Klipschorn speakers, (handmade, audiophile catnip since 1946) when he was 21.

Especially as Mancuso was well-equipped to throw such an event even then, he was innately attuned to the ingredients needed to foster the right atmosphere for a good party. A rent party, in the tradition of Great Migration-era Harlem sessions that involved music, dancing, and a donation to help the host make that month's ends meet, seemed about right. Valentine's Day.ĭavid Mancuso, a 25-year-old upstate-to-New-York transplant, was in need of money to pay the landlord of his downtown Manhattan loft, not yet The Loft, at 647 Broadway.

It started somewhat humbly on Saturday, Feb.

Paradise lofts gallery