South African dance floors are in for a treat of Turntablism next weekend when both the legendary Carl Cox and the hugely influential DJ Food collective (from the Ninjatunes label) hit clubs across the country with their unique displays of DJing skills.
Recent years have seen many international DJs taking an interest in playing to South African audiences, but unlike some of the shoddy, past-sell-by-date bands that we have had to endure, (Michael Learns to Rock, Toto and Smokey come to mind), the DJing fraternity are sending out their most current and happening ambassadors of dance culture to rock our floors. None more so than ”The World’s Greatest DJ”, Carl Cox. ”He’s big, he’s black and he’s back!” reads the press release announcing Cox’s third visit to South Africa, but this time he has a whole bag of new tunes from his soon-to-be-released album, Phuture 2000, to showcase.
Cox has been considered by many to be the world’s top DJ for years now, earning himself numerous awards and accolades for both his mixing and live performances, but respect among the world’s dance tribes did not come overnight. It took many years of experimentation on the fringes before he earned himself the deserved title of Supreme Mixmaster.
Cox, who was born in Manchester in the Sixties to immigrant parents from Barbados, began to experiment with communicating through the medium of sound when he was a youngster. His parents were big entertainers and regularly threw parties for friends and family at their home. Young Carl took on the responsibility of supplying these bashes with relevant sounds. South London, where the family had settled, was a pool of interesting musical genres in the Sixties, and Cox began to develop his eclectic tastes by dipping into soul, jazz and funk and through a strong connection to Motown giant James Brown. The problem he had with his vinyl was that none of his 45s could cut it for long enough to give him the continuous, sustained sound he was looking for.
Working as a DJ during the early warehouse days and through into the acid house scene of the Eighties, Cox began to perfect his technically mastered continuity, and he became big news during the hardcore whistle posse years, emerging as one of the champions of the techno scene. The ”Rave DJ” tag stuck for a while, but Cox is far too much of an artist to be labelled and linked to any one sound, and he has gone on to even greater heights.
Since his rise to prominence, Cox has been touring the world to play club gigs. He’s played everywhere from Greece to Moscow and back via New York and Amsterdam, stopping off to entertain 800 000 people at the Berlin Love Parade.
He also runs his own record label, Worldwide Ultimatum, and a management company called United Music Management, has a residence at New York’s Twilo club, and a monthly mix for Radio 1.
But unlike many of his contemporaries, Cox maintained a home base on the club floor, never isolating himself in a tower above the dancers. Everyone who has worked with him locally says that, despite the way the international dance community reveres him, Cox is by no means a typical, egomaniacal DJ. ”He’s very professional, funny and dedicated,” says Total Exposure’s Dianne Chidrawi, who handles his local publicity. ”I think his popularity is not only because he plays brilliant music, but because he is a human being and he treats people well. That comes across in everything he does.” If you’ve had the opportunity to see this man at work, you will already have booked your ticket. If not, get to it. Just watching him maintain three decks at a time is worth the price.
And if it’s deck skills that you’re after, you’d better make a date with Ninja Tunes collective as they rock Johannesburg’s Old Fort and Cape Town’s Steelworks on April 9 and April 10 respectively. Expect to be blown away by the mixing wizardry of Kid Koala, Amon Tobin, the DJ Food collective and a host of local kwaito and hip hop acts.
Kid Koala plays decks for jazz-funk band Bullfrog, remixes tracks for Coldcuts and tours Europe and America with the Beastie Boys. Amon Tobin funks and grinds ”dark millennium drum ‘n’ bass interwoven with raucous Brazilian percussion and chopped and spliced samba rhythms”. His debut album for Ninja Tunes, Bricolage, is a rich psychedelic mix of jazz, blues, samba, hip hop and darkest psychodynamic jungle – ”pure sampledelic genius”.
DJ Food is a fluid group of DJs who’ve been on the break beat scene since the early days. DJ Food’s Jazz Breaks albums (volumes 1 to 5) were seen as some of the most innovative and original jazz hip hop albums around when they launched in the early Nineties. Since then they’ve put out Recipe for Disaster, an essential item for any hip hop/jazz dance DJ collector, and the Refried Food remixes that feature loads of good people. Their four- decks-at-a-time live approach puts out fiendishly eclectic sounds that run through jazzy, bebop, funked-up, hip hop and some earthy flavoured dance instrumentals that could get the dead to dance. Strictly Kev and PC will be mixing up a fiendishly eclectic dancefloor scratch-mash.
It’s a weekend for forward-thinking dance enthusiasts, and a damn fine excuse for getting loaded.
Carl Cox plays in Cape Town at the Three Arts on Friday April 9; in Johannesburg at The Blue Room, South Station, on Saturday April 10; in Port Elizabeth at Club Indigo on Friday April 16 and in Durban at Capital Radio Studios on Saturday April 17. The Ninja Tunes bash takes place in Johannesburg at the Fort, Kotze Street, Braamfontein on April 9 and in Cape Town at the Steelworks (a new and excellently obscure venue at 3 Evans Avenue on Gunners Circle in Epping) on April 10