makala / -gailu; selector and musical collage asier leoz
I -gailu The end of the nineties. people dancing. some of them in the darkness of a club thinking of nothing but the rhythm of the music being played by the dj. others lost in everyday things, like ants, rushing around in a big city. bilbo. traffic cameras. people dancing. “Makala plays Novophonic” (Novophonic, 2002) is a collection of the mixing work done by Mikel Unzurrunzaga in a non-stop session. That just might be one of the rules of Dj-ing: no stops. It’s not the only one, however.
“By definition, anyone who plays a record is a DJ, but I think there’s more to it than that. The DJ must have something to say, musically or technically, the way he mixes, the way he evens out speed and tempos. That would be one of the most important aspects of being a DJ, but the key is the music in my opinion, what songs he chooses and what value the music he chooses has. That would be more of a Selector’s job rather than a DJ’s. That’s why I identify more with the word selector.”
Is Selector not a Jamaican word?
“Yeah, they started organising sound systems or dancehalls ages ago. An awful lot of people were poor in Jamaica in those days and still are today. That’s why they’d get together on certain days, on Sundays for instance, have parties and play all the records they could manage to rake together between them. That’s where Selector or Selectah comes from. More names were used later on. Toaster is one example.”
The group Trio Kempes is all the connection we need to bring up –Gailu. Luis André has made up a collage from images taken from traffic cameras in Bilbo, Mikel Abrego has helped out musically and the following list of fans of Kempes also take part; the rest of the members of the group Bap!, Anari, Zaloa (Kokein) and Hendrick Roever (Del Tones / Hank). The people here are dancing too. But they don’t listen to music – that would come later thanks to Mikel Abrego.
“We wanted to show what the city of Bilbao is like from the morning straight through to night. We wanted to show the different rhythms created, the rhythm of the city, how people go to work in the mornings, rush hour traffic. Things that happen everyday in a city. The start is very dark and the music is very atmospheric. Later, I try to show the rhythms created by traffic lights.”
It took Luis André six months to get all the permits he needed to be able to film the images that are fundamental to the project. He then sent the filmed images to Mikel Abrego who stuck them in his computer and used a sampler to make a musical dressing for them. That took another six months.
“In the beginning my work was to take bits and pieces – Jazz, Pop, Rock and Punk – and stick them together. Later when you hear it, you wouldn’t say that it was Jazz or Rock. The end result is a kind of musical collage.”
“By definition, anyone who plays a record is a DJ, but I think there’s more to it than that. The DJ must have something to say, musically or technically, the way he mixes, the way he evens out speed and tempos. That would be one of the most important aspects of being a DJ, but the key is the music in my opinion, what songs he chooses and what value the music he chooses has. That would be more of a Selector’s job rather than a DJ’s. That’s why I identify more with the word selector.”
Is Selector not a Jamaican word?
“Yeah, they started organising sound systems or dancehalls ages ago. An awful lot of people were poor in Jamaica in those days and still are today. That’s why they’d get together on certain days, on Sundays for instance, have parties and play all the records they could manage to rake together between them. That’s where Selector or Selectah comes from. More names were used later on. Toaster is one example.”
The group Trio Kempes is all the connection we need to bring up –Gailu. Luis André has made up a collage from images taken from traffic cameras in Bilbo, Mikel Abrego has helped out musically and the following list of fans of Kempes also take part; the rest of the members of the group Bap!, Anari, Zaloa (Kokein) and Hendrick Roever (Del Tones / Hank). The people here are dancing too. But they don’t listen to music – that would come later thanks to Mikel Abrego.
“We wanted to show what the city of Bilbao is like from the morning straight through to night. We wanted to show the different rhythms created, the rhythm of the city, how people go to work in the mornings, rush hour traffic. Things that happen everyday in a city. The start is very dark and the music is very atmospheric. Later, I try to show the rhythms created by traffic lights.”
It took Luis André six months to get all the permits he needed to be able to film the images that are fundamental to the project. He then sent the filmed images to Mikel Abrego who stuck them in his computer and used a sampler to make a musical dressing for them. That took another six months.
“In the beginning my work was to take bits and pieces – Jazz, Pop, Rock and Punk – and stick them together. Later when you hear it, you wouldn’t say that it was Jazz or Rock. The end result is a kind of musical collage.”
