By Francesca Harding
Until recently, when it came to the state of the DJ world, there were unwritten truths that we held as self-evident: Music lovers with a passion for songs falling outside of the mainstream knew with certainty they could flock to an underground club to quench their thirst for a left-of-center fix. There’s the phenomenon of the celebrity DJ – individuals propelled to superstar status for their production and turntable skills, or simply for their larger-than-life personalities. There’s the remix – a reimagined adaptation of a pop song weaponized to ignite the dance floor. And we’ve all stood mesmerized by the staccato flashing of programmed lights, the thump of a pristine bassline buzzing within our core and us, open-hearted, certain that the DJ and the music would save our lives.
Like all institutions the DJ world has a moral code, a set of standards responsible for our culture being able to thrive. These values exist to ensure that DJs conduct themselves with integrity and exhibit the utmost respect for the craft. Now accepted globally, these principles were in fact, unconsciously created by Larry Levan, a New York-bred master of all trades. Born in 1954, Larry was just 23 years old when he positioned himself at the helm of the legendary Paradise Garage, the first underground dance club. During his decade-long residency at the Garage, the dots of his life would converge beautifully, soon forging him into the world’s first famous DJ: he was Black and gay, meticulous and inquisitive, had a golden ear for music and a voracious appetite for a good time. His parties quickly turned into family affairs where folks of all types were welcomed under one roof to release stress, celebrate life and to affirm their racial and sexual identities, all while sound tracked by Levan’s marathon, cross-genre DJ sets. By 1987 when the club had run its final lap, Larry had cemented his legacy while providing a blueprint for party throwing that generations of DJ’s, producers and club-promoters would do our best to follow. At a time when the future of DJ’ing hangs in the balance, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s all the more fitting to highlight Larry Levan, a visionary whose legacy persists throughout every core aspect of DJ’ing as we know it.
The DJ as Storyteller
Who hasn’t experienced those nights at the club where the DJ is so tapped-in that every song is a crowd favorite? Where every transition, loop, scratch, juggle, and backspin is so perfectly placed that it feels like we’re telepathically communicating what our bodies want to hear? In revisiting old interviews, documentaries and first-hand accounts from Paradise Garage regulars, it’s clear that Larry’s primary concern had always been song selection. His DJ sets told the stories of the attendees within that room, and he wove those stories together by placing more importance on matching the feel and vibe of records over beat-matching. Beyond an ability to read his crowd and know almost intuitively what songs would work, he reveled in taking creative chances: Larry didn’t hesitate to play what we now call open-format - weaving disco, funk, soul, Chicago house and rock all into one of his notorious, multi-hour sets. He was one of the first DJ’s to have live accompaniment, inviting musicians to play instruments over the tracks as he spun. He would let a song play in its entirety and then stop the music completely, the crowd filling the silence with chants and screams for more before he’d drop the needle on a new tune. And then there were those instances when he’d loop a song lyric over and over and over again until the party, firmly in the palm of his hand, would teeter on the edge of explosion.
Larry Levan embodied the now nostalgic way that DJs used their platforms to introduce new music. While another DJ might stick to playing recognizable hits during the club’s peak hour, Larry would drop an unreleased tune at the height of a night without hesitation. If a song he believed in didn’t go over well, or cleared the dance floor, he’d continue to incorporate the song into his sets, sometimes playing the remix version, until he essentially programmed his audience to love the record. It wasn’t long before he had colossal influence over what songs became popular enough to cross over to mainstream radio. It wasn’t uncommon to see lines wrapping around the block at vinyl stores with people clamoring to purchase records that Larry had played at the Paradise Garagethe night before. From literally shining disco balls while a track was blaring, to running out onto the floor to re-adjust speaker positions, to controlling the lighting throughout the night, Larry Levan was ubiquitous - an undeniable trendsetter who normalized the art of using every resource at his fingertips to speak love to his audience and elevate his DJ sets.
Parties as Safe Spaces
Underground clubs have always had a greater function than simply playing the music not specifically intended for mainstream consumption. People who find themselves marginalized by society have for decades turned to clubs as places where leaving themselves at the door isn’t a necessity, where they can find their tribe and feel secure to honor their individual identities. Through the years, the term “safe-space” has become popular within the lexicon of event promoting and is a goal that many DJ’s work hard to achieve. But how did we get here?
As club lore tells it, The Paradise Garage was the world’s original underground party. While other NYC clubs preceded the Garage and contributed to the practical ways an event could act as a buffer to an intolerant world, it was the Paradise Garage that solidified the underground as a viable club-type and movement. At the onset of the Paradise Garage’s launch onto the scene, however, the owner’s intention was never for it to become a haven for Black and Latinx gay men. But in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots and with Larry Levan at the helm, the Garage’s clientele would quickly become predominantly Black and gay. Every Friday and Saturday night, club-goers became a united family, committed to loving one another and to surviving the brutality of bigotry that lay just outside of the club’s walls. The Garage’s stringent door policy helped to safeguard patrons by being strictly word of mouth and requiring membership for access. People could apply for membership during off-hours at an undisclosed location that only other members would be able to identify.
In many ways, the Paradise Garage stood as the antithesis of Studio 54 happening in mid-Manhattan at the exact same time, known for its hollow celebration of celebrity and restrictive door policies based on one’s appearance.The Garage was special in how it differed, perhaps lacking in glitz and glamour but teeming with heart and soul. Devotees went to dance, substituting fancy sequins for sneakers and sweatpants. The club itself had an industrial feel made entirely of concrete. A stage housed the likes of Grace Jones, and other live acts, who performed in between Levan’s DJ sets. There was a movie theatre in the back, beautiful art pieces commissioned from artists like Keith Herring on display and a rooftop created to feel like club-goers were in the Pines on Fire Island. Not least of all was the club’s award-winning sound system that Larry and famed engineer Richard Long designed to give the space a type of three-dimensional sound that many claim to be the best ever heard. With the Garage, the love was in the details and every facet of a guest’s experience was attended to. It was here, under the explicit curation of Larry Levan, that “the underground club” was birthed, where the very act of being oneself, of expressing joy, and of existing unapologetically on the dance floor was a true act of political resistance – the type of movement that is as important as ever now, some thirty years later.
The Rise of the Remix and the Birth of House Music
In all of the ways that Larry Levan would forever shape DJ culture, his most immeasurable contribution was his influence in house music’s creation. As the disco era began to wane, a more electronic sound, based around syncopated drum machine rhythms, took root in the belly of the predominantly Black gay clubs that served as part therapy, part celebration.
Larry’s musical input helped to pioneer the evolution of disco into modern dance music. His remix style for artists such as Gwen Guthrie, Esther Williams and The Peech Boys was sparse, dub-heavy and electronic. He amassed hundreds of remix credits to his name throughout his career and inspired up-and-coming producers to both mimic and develop this sound. At the same time in Chicago, Levan’s childhood friend Frankie Knuckles was cementing house music as a genre with his own original productions while resident DJ of The Warehouse- a gig he secured when Levan turned down the offer and recommended Knuckles in his place. Similar to the Garage, The Warehouse was predominantly Black, Brown and gay. Knuckles, who had begun editing disco breaks on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, was praised by patrons for providing a musical experience that was deemed religious in nature. His congregation eventually gave name to the electronic music emanating from Knuckles’ DJ booth-turned-pulpit, calling it ‘house’- short for The Warehouse- and a nickname for Knuckles’ sonic approach. Some 800 miles away, Larry was also shepherding the multitudes to spiritual ecstasy. His weekly residency had been nicknamed “Saturday Mass” and his eclectic DJ sets and remixes were the sermon. As the first NYC DJ to consistently spin house records coming out of Chicago, his was a crucial contribution in fueling the reach and scope of this new genre.
Larry continued to put his personal touch on disco and boogie tracks of the era and to strengthen his signature sound as a remixer. Noting Larry’s influence, record labels began to create house remixes of pop songs and place them on 12-inch vinyl records with the specific intent to have Larry play these house-remixes for his audience. House or “club mixes” as they were often called, could turn a pop song with not much buzz into a megahit after being exposed to the Paradise Garage’s trend-setting crowd. Labels simultaneously began to hire DJ’s to create club remixes, Larry of course being a natural go-to. Before long, 12-inch singles containing house mixes of mainstream tracks proved to be quite lucrative: the musical oasis that Larry established at the Garage undoubtedly led to 12-inch singles flourishing and becoming a standard for music-lovers and vinyl-diggers around the world.
In short, house music and the rise in popularity of the remix were born out of the creativity of Levan and Knuckles. It was further solidified by Black, Brown and gay patrons, using music as their chisel, to carve a slice of sanity and inclusivity for themselves from societal prejudice. DJs of today inherit a responsibility to understand the genre’s evolution and to proudly credit its pioneering creators, solidifying their place in history.
Levan’s Lasting Legacy and the New Normal
With the 2020 pandemic still lingering, everything we’ve known about the DJ world has been turned on its head. What the future of DJ’ing will look and feel like in the months and years to come is anybody’s guess, this painful truth made more real by the numerous closures of venues faced with the impossible task of surviving this economic recession. Musicians and DJs have already begun to pivot in hopes of finding new, sustainable systems to forge ahead.
Uncertainty aside, the essence that Larry Levan embodied remains. He was by no means perfect, but it’s doubtful that his community was ever looking for perfection from him in the first place. What they wanted, and needed, he supplied with generosity – a love of the music and an endless focus to ensure that every person who walked through the Garage’s doors felt free and uplifted, and by the end of the night had had a damn good time. The lessons that Levan has left behind should inspire us all to strive for perfection, and to push the limits of our creativity each and every time we step foot behind the decks.
Levan died much too soon, as superstars are prone to do, succumbing to a dogged drug addiction that took his life when he was only 38 years old. But what a tremendous life to have led. Frankie Knuckles once shared that when it came time to DJ, Larry was the idol he turned to for inspiration. Knuckles wasn’t alone in this; Larry’s life work continues to inspire generations of DJ’s - whether they know his name or not. In truth, no matter how dance culture will evolve in the face of the new normal, the groundwork of Larry Levan’s genius will survive the test of time.