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It's 6.30am on a beautiful Sunday morning in New York. Rather than making our way back from a night out, we've actually woken up to take a short ride to the City's longest running house club, where we've been told by various heads both in London and while digging for those disco and boogie classics down in the East Village, "It's best to arrive around seven in the morning".
Opening in 1991, The Shelter has become a sanctuary where racial and sexual diversity are a force for togetherness, and where the post-Garage dance community can express themselves freely among friends. Following the closure of the weekly Body & Soul party in 2002, the club started by DJ Timmy Regisford, Freddie Sanon and Merlin Bob has taken on even more importance and meaning, within the increasing sanitisation and restrictions of post-Giuliani New York.
Arriving on a deserted Varick Street in West SoHo as the hum of a bass drum
emerges through the exterior of an anonymous building, we enter one of Manhattan’s last subterranean havens. Rhythmic, deep and very intense, the gospel release of Dennis Ferrer’s ‘Church Lady’ summons us to the heart of the dancefloor, where the dancers are immersed, womb-like, in the music.
Through the loud yet beautifully clean sound system, the whoops and call-and -response hollers of the congregation create a profound spiritual intensity, as the ritual of the dance unfolds. While the community from Harlem across to Queens are just waking up and dressing for church, a middle-aged black woman walks slowly across the dancefloor, her arms raised in exultation towards the booth, where DJs Timmy Regisford and Sting International move monk-like in the darkness. Opening my eyes just as the heavy strings and drum break of Inner Life's 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' raise the hairs and send a shiver up the spine, I survey the scene around.
To my left on a small sofa, two Garage elders in Adidas bottoms nod out as
if in a lucid dream of days gone by, while one of their topless soul brothers screams in synch to Jocelyn Brown's devotional lyrics. As talc is scattered around the borders of the spotless dancefloor, Lonnie Liston Smith's 'Expansions' increases the energy. Somewhere between the swirling angularity of Wildstyle-era breakers and the balletic grace of eighties’ jazz troupes like The Jazz Defektors, a young crew drop some incredibly elegant yet raw moves, while a lone dreadlocks plays imaginary keys on the dancefloor. Lost in the groove now, a young Japanese girl smiles knowingly at us first timers, while Sting International works the EQs between Babe Ruth's 'The Mexican' and Man Parrish's 'Hip Hop Be Bop' before dropping into a trio of classic acid cuts including Mr Fingers' 'Can U Feel It'.
Looking around at the euphoric faces and sweaty embraces, Larry Heard's Trax classic needs no answer. As we step out into the afternoon sun, refreshed and inspired by our Sunday morning epiphany, I make a promise to return to New York to tell the story of some of those who have made Shelter their home.
It's early June when I land back in New York having arranged to hook up with Ben Johnson, the Londoner who has become Shelter's warm up DJ and owner of the Syam Music Group including Un-Restricted Access (URA), in partnership with Timmy Regisford. Sitting outside a SoHo Café in the humid Summer heat, he explains why the DJ dubbed ‘The Maestro’ had such a restorative impact on him when he arrived in New York in the mid-Nineties.
"When Timmy was rocking The Shelter back in the day it was one of the only places you would here Afro-Beat and jazz and all these different types of music. He could do this and make it work partly because he had the courage to play 12-hour sets, feeling the connection with the dancers."
It is the combination of mood and movement that makes Shelter such an intense experience. "When I first saw the dancers I was just amazed," he recalls. "There were guys doing capoeira moves and back arches, landing on one arm. And then all these different fusions, from African, Latin, tap and breaking and then the two-step with everyone just so together and accepting, it was just beautiful - rhythmic and very spiritual."
Meeting up with Freddie Sanon later in the day he explains the genesis of the club. "After the radio show at WBLS had finished around two in the morning we had nowhere to go, so Timmy, Merlin and I started talking and said we needed a place, somewhere we could call home. We felt the only appropriate name to call it was The Shelter because with the Paradise Garage closing there was nowhere else for us to go to – we were homeless."
Starting out as a reunion party for The Garage, The Shelter soon became a regular weekly. "We wanted to continue what the Garage had, which we felt was special, a club where all these interesting people could get together and get loose, he continues thoughtfully. "A place where you could be gay, you could be straight, black or white - somewhere that you could get release from everyday life. We wanted to keep that going – a feeling of being at a house party."
When Sanon first started going to clubs like the Gallery in the mid-Seventies it was as an under eighteen and for him it is vital the crowd at Shelter crosses generations. “We need a place where everyone is accepted. When you come to the club you can see a sixty year old dancing next to a 15 year old who has sneaked in. The only way of keeping this scene going is to bring our kids and our nephews down to the club. That is our only hope that this lovely thing we have will continue. We need to pass the culture on for this to survive."
Read the full article in the September 2007 issue of Straight No Chaser |
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Words: Andy Thomas
Pictures: Dustin Ross |
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