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Soundscapes NYC
The Seventies was a calamitous decade, a low point in the history of New York City. City Hall continually failed to balance budgets and turned to austerity, privatization, and sheer negligence when it came to running city services. Roads disintegrated, buildings and overpasses collapsed, garbage piled high, and crime ran rampant. The city literally crumbled under the weight of austerity.
At the same time, underground culture surged with energy, from subway graffiti to experimental theater and gay bars. Musical artists embedded in the urban fabric turned to their craft with gusto. They formed loose networks of like-minded artists who made and appreciated particular styles of music. Their world during this period, at times, reflected the disintegrating cityscape. At other times, their music celebrated the social constraints let loose in a time of crisis, when the city seemed to be falling apart.
Soundscapes is a podcast about how music created in New York has shaped the history of the city and how the city itself has been an incubator in which music has blossomed throughout its history. Soundscapes is a bi-weekly podcast series in which historian Ryan Donovan Purcell talks with artists, music industry professionals, and scholars about NYC music history.
About the hosts: Ryan Donovan Purcell is a professor of modern American History at Sarah Lawrence College while serving on the editorial board at the Gotham Center for New York City History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Soundscapes draws from his book Sounds of the City Collapsing, forthcoming with Columbia University Press.
Kristie Soares is an Associate Professor of Women & Gender Studies and Co-Director of LGBTQ Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Author of Playful Protest: The Political Work of Joy in Latinx Media (2023), Soares is currently conducting an oral history project that explores the role of Latinx disc jockeys in the development of dance music in 1970s New York. This is part of a larger book project entitled Macho Man: Performances of Latinidad in the Disco Era.
IG: @soundscapesnyc
Tt: @soundsacpes.nyc
Gotham Center: https://www.gothamcenter.org/
Soundscapes NYC
S2.E1. Love Saves the Day
The Loft was a dance party series organized by DJ David Mancuso in his Manhattan warehouse apartment at 647 Broadway from Valentine’s Day 1970 to June 1974. The parties offered an alternative to New York’s commercial nightclub scene. The invitation-only events featured an egalitarian space for music and dance with a top-of-the-line sound system, eclectic musical selections, and a racially inclusive and gay-friendly mix of guests. Attendees included the city’s leading disc jockeys such as Larry Levan, Nicky Siano, and Frankie Knuckles, who launched their careers in next generation clubs like the Paradise Garage, The Gallery, Chicago’s Warehouse, and The Saint— all influenced by the Loft.
In the premiere episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell introduces co-host Kristie Soares, in conversation with music and dance historian Tim Lawrence, to contextualize David Mancuso’s Loft. Lawrence is a Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of East London’s School of Arts and Digital Industries. He is the author of Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-79 (Duke University Press, 2003), Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92 (Duke University Press, 2009) and Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-83 (Duke University Press, 2016). Outside of academia, Lawrence hosts his own dance party series called All Our Friends, as well as a podcast about music history called Love Is The Message.
The opening anecdote draws from Tim Lawrence's Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-79 (Duke University Press, 2003).