For DJs, a global spin

There’s a brick building at the end of Jamieson Street, past the auto repair shops, past the blood red duplex and the squatters who have claimed it as their own, behind a set of overbearing wrought-iron gates. At one time, it was a printing factory; before that, a brothel; and before that, an Asian seaman’s club.

But on this warm Southern Hemisphere night, there’s music blasting out of the windows -- beats and raps, blips and samples; high-pitched, oscillating wails. Tonight, 32 Jamieson St. is home to the Red Bull Music Academy, and the squatters down the street watch the third-floor window where a young man screams along with the guttural hip-hop while another dances, seemingly randomly flailing around to the beat. A third twentysomething manipulates the music, slows the rhythm down, and brings it to a halt.

It’s 9 p.m., and for these students at this international academy for DJs, the night’s just begun.

“Being a DJ in America, you get a little bit jaded,” says Vivian Host from San Francisco, one of three American DJ students in this year’s academy. “But when you come here, you realize how little access people have to new records, to new sounds, to DJs from other places. You can help expose people to something they might not otherwise get.”

That attitude of discovery runs rampant throughout the program, which brings together students and lecturers from all over the world to discuss and perform electronic music in all its guises. The music the students make ranges from loose, spacey jams to hard-thumping beat symphonies. But it has one thing in common -- it’s music that can be made with synthesizers and computers, with instruments often taking a back seat to electronic sounds.

The students range from a Polish DJ who specializes in American hip-hop to a French producer who conjures up ‘80s synth flavor from his PowerBook to an inseparable German-Finnish duo that spends all of its time tweaking live drum sounds in the academy’s fully loaded studio. The international flavor of the event mirrors the appeal of this electronic-based music, which (with the notable exception of mass-produced hip-hop) has had a slow build to cult status in America but claims a whole generation of worldwide devotees.

On this particular evening in late November, Host crates up her records and heads to a two-story club on Cape Town’s main drag, Front Street, where she spins British two-step and Caribbean dancehall music to a packed, sweaty dance floor, full of locals and tourists. The cordoned-off VIP section will belong to a revolving-door group of other academy DJs who stand behind Host, suggesting records, critiquing her technique. To an outsider, it may look as if Host is just pressing “play” on her turntable, but to these students -- and their electro-geek ilk -- there’s much more to the artistry of being a DJ than pushing the right button.

That’s where the Red Bull academy comes in. Started five years ago by a team of Austrian and German DJs, music fans and publicists and sponsored by the soft drink company, the program has turned into an annual affair, with two two-week sessions every year. The ones in Cape Town each attracted 30 students representing more than 20 countries. Every year, the program is held in a different locale: 2002’s sessions were in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and next year’s will be held in Rome.

When the academy started, the founders wanted to make sure that that focus wasn’t limited to music-making, says organizer Many Ameri. “We came up with four main subjects: music history, technology, the business side, and then [music] skills -- skills weren’t as important as all the rest,” he says. “We thought that people had to have an understanding of different music styles to be good musicians.”

Audiences hungry for the new

That multifaceted perspective helped the academy become something of a validation ritual for its knob-spinners-turned-students, some of whom are already locally established in their native countries. In Cape Town, which is still adjusting to the demise of apartheid more than 10 years ago, these young artists find opportunities that couldn’t ever have been offered to them at home. A white Italian DJ is treated like an old friend at an all-black club after proving himself with an hourlong set of underground reggae music. European house DJs experiment with kwaito, South Africa’s youth music, which melds traditional African sounds with of-the-moment manipulated beats. And musicians from disparate parts of the globe trade their favorite songs every night for an audience hungry for something new -- a rarity for artists used to having to provide something recognizable.

But it’s not just the club-hopping nighttime sessions that are a draw (though many of the students admit that they’re a highlight of the program). Daytime speakers for this first session range from little known techno artists like British broken-beat guru Seiji to near-household names like Bob Moog, the creator of the now-ubiquitous Moog synthesizer. Also in the lineup: sampler pioneer Steinski; the German songwriter Patrice, who discusses “real” vs. “electronic” instrumentation; and reggae producer Clive Chin, who gives a history lesson on the genre.

There’s also an on-site radio station that broadcasts throughout Cape Town, with every student and most presenters given a musically open-ended broadcasting slot. The station’s opening night is a champagne-fueled affair spun by New York producer Jneiro Jarel, who opts for mostly underground West Coast hip-hop. Throughout the session, the station can be overheard in traffic and blaring from tenement windows -- a testament to the word-of-mouth nature of the workshop itself, and a perfect example of the academy’s attempt to reach out to Cape Town’s active music community.

Like many of the academy’s students, Jarel says that one of the program’s highlights was a community-driven session called the Party in the Park. A brainchild of the academy’s organizers and hip-hop DJ Ready D, a well-respected local spinner, the event takes place in a park in Mitchell’s Plain, a low-income township known for both pre- and post-apartheid gang violence. The students pass miles of aluminum shantytown suburbs on the way to the park, a far cry from the European-style villas in which they’re housed in downtown Cape Town. They arrive at a graffiti-covered, barb-wired wall and a weeded park the size of a soccer field, with a solitary blue tent housing Ready D surrounded by perhaps 50 local kids.

On the outskirts of the park, a team is whitewashing a brick wall that faces the spotted grass. There’s a skeletal half-finished building the size of a city block on the opposite corner, its exposed steel glistening against the noon sun. A man who appears to be in his late 20s stands on top of a building above the tent; it’s not clear whether he’s standing guard or getting ready to pounce.

But as the DJs arrive, a curious thing happens. Plastic sheets are placed on the ground, and some of the kids who were watching Ready D spin take turns break-dancing in the middle of the park. As academy DJs stand behind the turntables, outstretched arms seek free Red Bulls -- and the DJs’ autographs. Eventually, the park fills up with parents and grandparents and teenagers and kids. Dreadlocked Rastas sit in a circle passing a pipe, nodding their heads in time with the beat. The township’s gangsters make their presence known, but nonviolently; they stand by cars and walls, glaring but never making a move.

Freestyle King’s big day

The day’s kicker comes in the form of an “8 Mile”-style rap battle. When Jarel grabs the mike, it seems that he’ll be the hands-down favorite. But he’s quickly upstaged by a number of South Africans, the most impressive a 15-year-old named Elroy who prefers his stage moniker: the Freestyle King. Heavily influenced by Eminem in everything from his flow to the hoodie pulled down over his eyes, he knocks down competitors in English and Afrikaans, his jabs both high-brow and below the belt. After the King wins, Jarel approaches him with congratulations -- and an invitation to join him in the academy studio later in the week.

The promised session between Jarel and the Freestyle King, unfortunately, doesn’t materialize (Elroy’s classes conflict with Jarel’s schedule, despite attempts to rearrange). It becomes the great regret of Jarel’s experience in Cape Town. But, he says, there may be another chance. “I’m coming back,” Jarel vows.

Jarel and the other participants realize that they may never get another chance to replicate this kind of experience. “Music is life for everyone here,” says French DJ Guillaume Bariou. But the most enthusiastic endorsement of the Academy on Jamieson Street comes from Nicholas Wilson, a DJ from Sweden. Over a traditional African dinner, full of shared plates of oxtails, ostrich and kudu, he starts gushing -- about the Party in the Park, the club-hopping late nights, the workshops. Asked what will stay with him most from the program, he pauses and then says, “I’ll always remember coming back from the club at 7 a.m., and then having tea with the man who invented the synthesizer. It doesn’t get much more surreal than that.”