Loft Parties, dancing together, and why it matters
David Mancuso’s loft parties are well-renowned for carving out a dedicated space that invites party-goers to tune out of their daily lives for a few hours and tune into his utopian vision for dancefloors. Our staff writer, Ava, headed for the enigmatic event not only to experience it for herself but to get under the hood as to why it’s so much more than just a dancefloor.
It is Sunday afternoon in London, and in a few minutes the doors to the London Loft will open for their Beltane celebrations. When the dance floor takes flight, guests will come in and out of its orbit, led by a set of beliefs established by the Loft’s creator and original musical host, David Mancuso. Continuing our journey to understand what drives community and spaces for coming together, we spoke to the people instrumental to the Loft’s ever-evolving party scene that is seeing a resurgence in London.
When the Loft parties first began in New York in the late 1960s, segregation was widespread and lawful in the US. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Protests, Gay Liberation and the Women’s Liberation Movement, the Loft’s crowd was a mix of many heritages and backgrounds, ages, class status, parents and children. The draw? Guests were given hours to tune out of the daily demands of their lives and tune in to music from Mancuso’s legendary sound system. Mancuso refused to be restricted by genre or mixing, playing every track from beginning to end, with the sound levels purposefully set lower than many people were accustomed to, in order to improve the aural experience. The door fee covered a vegetarian buffet (for dancing sustenance) and a free cloakroom. Mirrors, clocks and cameras were banned on the dance floor, lest guests be reminded of the time, or made to feel self conscious. His egalitarian rules were so simple, you wonder why they don’t apply to all dancefloors.
Considered one of the most important figures in dance music history, Mancuso’s Loft parties counted Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles as regulars. At the start of the 1990s, another guest began to make a regular appearance: radio host and DJ Colleen Murphy.
“I just fell in love with the whole atmosphere, and the music, and the community, immediately,” Murphy tells me of her first visit to Mancuso’s Loft party in the early 1990s.
“I had been to clubs and some cool dance parties and I always had a good time, but none of them had ever reached deeply into my soul. I didn’t have that kind of emotional, spiritual connection. A lot of [the music] I didn’t know, but every song [David] chose resonated with me on a very deep level, both lyrically and musically, and the sound and sonically. I could tell that this guy was on another level.”
Music, festivities and parties had been a lifeline for Mancuso since childhood. Born in Upstate New York, at ten days old, Mancuso went to live in a children’s home, under the care of a nun, Sister Alicia. Here, Sister Alicia regularly hosted parties for the children who would come and go from the home, with balloons, crepe paper, a piano and a record player. This early experience started Mancuso’s fascination with music, and the flow of unorthodox families and communities that can be created through dancefloors.
“Out of everyone I’ve ever met in my life, I think [David] had the best ears,” Murphy tells me. “He taught me how to really listen. First he had a eureka moment when he heard Klipschorn speakers at his friend’s house, and he had to have them. He started building a soundsystem in his own home. Then he went to Trinidad, he was at a carnival and he had a second eureka moment, watching a steel pan ensemble and how the party atmosphere made him feel. He decided ‘when I got back to New York I just want to go to parties’”.
Against the backdrop of the end of the Civil Rights Era and months after the Stonewall Uprising, Mancuso began hosting parties at his home, in an old loft building at 647 Broadway: “David used the rent party model, and it was about bringing people together from different backgrounds of life, in a celebratory setting, enjoying music in the way the artist intended it to be heard on a beautiful soundsystem. Psychedelics would of course be involved, and it was the first time for a lot of Black people and white people to become friends, or gay people and straight people,” said Murphy.
“Single mothers were allowed to bring their kids, and it was about creating his own community and sense of family. It was about social progress: making an idealised community that brought down the divisions between people and using music as the way to bring people together. [David] felt strongly that music was a healing force, and he created a template that worked, which is why we’re still doing parties over 50 years later.
As kindred audiophile spirits, Murphy and Mancuso connected over their shared love for music, with Mancuso inviting Murphy to play records at the Loft. Over time, Mancuso, Murphy and the wider Loft family worked on expanding parties in London and Italy. While Mancuso passed away in 2016, his legacy lives on through the London Loft parties that Murphy now runs with a committed team of sound engineers, lighting technicians, door faeries and vegan chefs, taking on Mancuso’s mantle and sharing his hopes for the therapeutic nature of music and dancefloors with their invite-only parties twice a year.
As I wait to go inside, I am struck by how many people of different ages are here to dance. Families with young children and people of all generations are warming up for an interstellar few hours under Murphy’s guidance as music host. Seven Klipschorn speakers tower at the edges of the dance floor, with snatches of records reverberating for sound check. Pink, purple and white balloons fill the centre of the hall’s ceiling. Over at the door, the team welcomes guests with badges and sweets. It’s not just the incense: the feel of a children’s birthday party is well and truly in the air.
I ask Murphy what she thinks we still have to learn from Mancuso’s vision for dancing together:
“For me the social side of it is the most important side. It was the reason David did [the Loft]: the social movements, inclusivity, safe spaces and integrity. Music is a healing force, that’s something I’ve always known. Using music to bring people together and elevate their spirits, let them forget about what’s going on in the world and around them for a while, because sometimes you need a break.”
When I leave the Loft it is dusk. My ears don’t ring from the noise of the night, I’m not on edge from being shoved around a cramped dancefloor for hours, instead, I feel aglow. I’ve had small moments of fizzing exchanges from the Loft’s wider family all evening: people explaining what the party means to them, how many years they’ve been coming, why they find it so healing. Mancuso’s idea of bringing a community together to escape the pressures of their everyday lives began in the late 1960s, and yet it remains ahead of the curve in this century, when clubs, dancefloors and entire cities can so easily morph into unwelcome spaces. I feel buoyed from an evening of dazzling sounds and candid conversations; it’s like no club I’ve ever been to. I’m inspired by the team’s dedication to Mancuso’s utopian vision and their unwavering belief in music as a healing force. But most of all the idea that if we can create a dancefloor that truly feels safe for everyone, perhaps we can repeat that consideration out into our cities and our streets.