Music at the Mirano

To understand the Mirano of the 1980s, you first have to forget the disco clichés the collective imagination sticks onto that decade. This was light-years away from that. Music was not décor: it was the backbone of the night, worked on as carefully as the posters, the sets or the costumes, and the dance floor of the Soirée Or of May 1982, with Aldo dancing among the golden silhouettes, shows it better than any speech.

There were tracks that crystallised that identity. “Les Tomates”, played and replayed, had become an informal anthem of the Mirano: not the most expected track from a 1980s nightclub, but a record that worked on the dance floor and stayed in your ear. Its repeated presence in the parties sums up the spirit of the place: what mattered was the right moment, not the label.

The iconic DJ of that era was Jean-Claude Maury (1948-1998). His programming was fiercely eclectic: new wave, funk, obscure disco, italo, Belgian sounds, unfindable rarities, everything crossed paths within a single night. Historian Katarina Serulus, who has devoted academic research to Brussels club culture, describes this crossroads where music, fashion, architecture, design and counterculture met, and places Jean-Claude Maury among the central figures of that scene.

Belgium had a unique tradition at the time: popcorn, named after the Popcorn club in Sint-Niklaas, where people slow-danced to records played at reduced speed. That taste for slow, strange tempos prepared the ground, a few years later, for new beat and then house. Within that lineage, Jean-Claude Maury held a place the whole world would come to recognise: Alfredo, the legendary Ibiza DJ, cited him among his inspirations, and his mixtapes have been shown in a museum, in the Vitra Design Museum's “Night Fever” exhibition.

Carl was then a customer of the Mirano: he did not work there yet, but he spent night after night on that dance floor, watching and listening. From Jean-Claude he kept the idea that a night is built like a story, that a DJ can take a whole room on a journey without ever giving in to the easy option. When Carl began working at the club, Jean-Claude was no longer behind the decks, already withdrawn by the illness that would take him. They never worked side by side, yet the influence is very real, and that is why Jean-Claude Maury has his place in this section, among the mentors.

Among the documented tracks from that period, “HAFT 80's Version” was played by Jean-Claude Maury at the Mirano in 1984. Produced by Dan Lacksman and Marc Moulin, the track can be heard on YouTube.

Jean-Claude Maury left more than fifty private mixtapes, several of which have been shown in exhibitions; but of his Mirano nights themselves only one recording survives, made during the “Viva Dario!” Saturdays of summer 1986. Its sound is very poor and it remains irreplaceable: it is the only document that lets you actually hear what was played at the Mirano in the 1980s. You can listen to it here, without leaving the site. In addition, a playlist gathers the tracks programmed at the Mirano in the 1980s as they can be found today: the diversity of the selection speaks for itself.

The exact dates of Jean-Claude Maury's residency at the Mirano have not been established to this day; archives and testimonies continue to be gathered, and this chapter will grow as documents come in.