Interview: David Mancuso

On November 14th, 2016, David Mancuso passed away at the age of 72. As the founder of The Loft, a party he organized in his own private New York City loft beginning in 1970, Mancuso was a true pioneer, a founding father of dance music both sonically and emotionally.

Mancuso had a titanic influence in shaping core values of dance music that are now taken for granted, everything from an emphasis on community and the breaking down of racial or economic barriers on the dancefloor to a hard-nosed drive for audio perfection, which included his unique insistence on playing every record through from start to finish, with no mixing.

He was considered an unparalleled storyteller, creating narratives through his selections that could bring party-goers to tears, and a persistent idealist in his pursuit of transcendent musical experiences. In celebration of Mancuso’s life and influence, we are reprinting the full text of an interview conducted in 1999 by Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster, previously published in The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries, in which Mancuso goes in-depth in discussion of his formative experiences, DJing philosophy and thoughts on his legacy.

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