DAVID MANCUSO

DISCO TRAILBLAZER BORN 1944

Already aware of the power of the well-curated DJ set in the middle ’60s, Timothy Leary admirer David Mancuso saw the future when he held an invite-only, non-profit party dubbed Love Saves The Day at his Manhattan home on Valentine’s Day, 1970. By 1972 the space that would be known as The Loft was in new premises, and Mancuso was hosting regular all-night events whose utopian principle was inclusion – he was all about the social progress, he said – playing eclectic choices to dancers including Frankie Knuckles, Larry Levan, François Kevorkian and Nicky Siano, who would go onto DJ the message across New York and beyond at clubs such as The Paradise Garage and The Gallery. He also co-founded DJ resource the New York Record Pool, and famously eschewed mixing in favour of playing entire tracks on a top-flight sound system. As dance music grew internationally in the following decades, Mancuso never stopped throwing parties, and held his last on October 9. Ian Harrison