‘Own the Dance’ is an editorial series in collaboration with The Willow Tree, a DAO and Web3 community with the goal of owning and operating a global network of events, nightclubs, and venues. The series will highlight the communities responsible for inciting the most profound changes across dance-music history.

For a large number of us, music serves to fulfill the need for community. People always look for things to identify with in order to feel a sense of a community or share common beliefs. This is why we form tribes, cities, and religions. As ravers, partygoers, and music lovers, we experience this sense of community every time we attend an event. The history of underground and autonomous music scenes can be traced back as far as the jazz clubs of prohibition-era America, but where does the contemporary rave have its roots in this lineage of underground music?

The story starts in New York, 1966. David Mancuso was walking down 2nd Avenue where he stumbled onto a “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” lecture given by psychologist and psychedelic godfather Timothy Leary. After taking some acid together that evening, Mancuso made it his mission to turn people on as a sort of psychedelic crusader. He would begin hosting LSD parties at his loft on 647 Broadway and would soon incorporate music into these parties. 

By 1970 Mancuso had figured out the recipe and hosted the first party called ‘Love Saves The Day.’ He continued hosting parties the subsequent weekends after. Quickly, a predominately queer community made up of like-minded individuals with a need for a safe place and a passion for dancing formed.

In pre-Stonewall NYC engaging in any gay behavior in public was illegal, this included holding hands, kissing, or dancing with anyone of the same sex. This meant LGBTQ+ people would head to gay bars seeking refuge and in turn police harassment at gay bars was relentless. It eventually led to a major moment in the gay rights movement: the Stonewall Riots. The riots were a response to a police raid on the Stonewall-Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. People wanted their voices to be heard—the gay movement, women’s movement, and black power movement were all taking off and cross-pollinating. The loft served as a site for this pollination; those on the fringe could congregate in a place where personal expression was a right and not a struggle. 

Among those seeking retreat were Legendary DJs Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan. That era of New York disco is often attributed to Larry Levan, but Levan learned it all at the Loft. Mancuso never took the Loft in a commercial direction, he was interested in fostering a community and creating an experience. You could get into the Loft as long as you had the invite, the change in your pocket wasn’t a factor. It’s likely for that reason that Mancuso gets overshadowed by Levan.

Several factors would make the parties at the Loft so desirable. Firstly, the event was by invitation only and served no food or beverages, this meant the Loft operated in a legal grey area that avoided New York’s loose licensing laws at the time. The invite-only policy created an allure and sense of attractiveness as only those in the inner circle of this scene could gain entrance. On any given weekend people could be seen loitering the Soho street, asking invite holders if they could take them in as a plus-one. 

Secondly, Mancuso carefully built the ambiance inside the Loft; he wanted to control the sound and atmosphere in a way that no one had before. In Tim Lawrence’s book, Love Saves The Day, Legendary DJ Frankie Knuckles stated that “David would get very atmospheric. He could have the most incredible energy going on in the room, and then all of a sudden would create a tropical rainstorm. The room would be completely blacked out, and you would hear this crackling of thunder and rain, which became louder and louder… and everybody would be standing there, some half-naked, whistling and screaming. Then you heard this wind blowing, and after a short while you would also start to feel it because he turned these fans on.” Along with creative ways of immersing the crowd such as that example, Mancuso wanted pure sound; he respected the value of live music and genuine talent so much that he was obsessed with recreating the sonic and more transcendental aspects of a live performance. So he tweaked his sound system to create a stereo vision that brought forth the entire sonic painting. He did this with the help of sound system specialist Alex Rosner, who installed four tweeters, as opposed to the industry standard single tweeter, into the Loft’s speakers. He would also purchase a set of subwoofers to reinforce the low-end frequencies, which at the time was relatively new and uncharted technology. They hung the sound system directly above the dance floor like some kind of alien chandelier. Acoustically, this meant the treble came from the centre of the dance floor and moved outwards, giving the impression that the sound was coming directly from the dance floor.

Lastly, the approach to playing music at the Loft was completely different from anything that had come before but paved the way for all that would come after. With help from Alex Rosner, Mancuso introduced the first DJ mixer alongside two turntables, so DJs could fine-tune and play tracks continuously out of his powerful sound system—although, according to Frankie Knuckles, David was never really too concerned about very technical blends. It was his track selection and delivery that mattered, he would play very eclectically and was never shy of mixing things up. By introducing this new technology, Mancuso helped elevate the art of mixing, but it was DJ Francis Grasso who saw the mixers true potential. After his sets at The Sanctuary (another influential New York venue), Grasso would head to the loft for its closing hours. It was then that he pioneered beat matching, although at the time they referred to the ‘mix’ as the ‘change.’

The air of exclusivity, incredible sound quality and visceral experience, and the new approach to playing the music are what separated the Loft from other venues. What happened at the Loft set the template for the dance party and defined what a DJ could be. Among other influences, it is thanks to Mancuso’s daring creativity and passion for high-fidelity music that we have Rave culture as we know it; without these advances, our culture might not have formed the way it did. What followed the Loft were venues that copied Mancuso’s template but for commercial gain, which is what would eventually bring Disco music into the public eye and pave the way for its overly-commercial success. An important point that should be taken away from this is the attention to detail that Mancuso put into creating a high-quality event. As practitioners in contemporary dance music, the objective should be to create a unique nightlife experience much like Mancuso did, and as such the Loft serves as a point of inspiration for The Willow Tree project.

As Disco made its way into the mainstream, it started to lose its soul; it started to lose the community aspect that birthed the scene. Disco went from the affair of a significant few to a worldwide craze and a commodity of the entertainment industry. Its death signal can be pinpointed to one single day, December 12, 1977, the release date of Saturday Night Fever (SNF). SNF’s soundtrack was the highest-selling LP until Micheal Jackson’s Thriller appeared six years later. Post SNF, Disco’s new commercial manifestation was watered down and articulated to the public in the form of compilation discs and books which contained diagrams of dance steps. Major labels released single after single of soulless disco tunes. Disco had officially left its home in urban centres and moved into suburban living rooms, it no longer belonged to the club goer.

By July 1979, Chicago-based radio DJ Steve Dahl orchestrated the “Disco Demolition Night,” which saw the destruction of over 20,000 disco records during a baseball game. It was clear disco’s commercial success had outstayed its welcome in the mainstream consciousness. Banners lining the stadium read “Disco Sucks,” as a crate of records was blown up on the field. What had once served as a powerful liberating tool for inner-city queer communities, got lost in the cycle of pop music commodification, and was misinterpreted by the masses.

As disco lost the eroticism it was once associated with and as its corporate label form was becoming more and more associated with wedding receptions, The LGBTQ+ community would now have to look for a new hedonistic pastime. This was developing in a South Side Chicago members-only gay club, continuing the legacy left by disco music. But for now, you will have to wait until the next article to find out that story.

Author: Alec Heritier.

You can find more about The Willow Tree and join the community via the Discord server here.