- The Observer, Sunday February 1 2004
In a small studio off Long Street in the heart of Cape Town, Tomas, a 20-year-old bank-teller from Slovakia and Adrian, a 30-year-old casting director from New Zealand, are bonding over their love of Canadian experimental musician Venetian Snares, whose credits include the track 'I am a Fucking Idiot'. It transpires that Snares's most experimental album features the manipulated sounds of him and his girlfriend enjoying sex in five different countries (including the sound of 'microphone insertion'). For someone whose tastes run more to Burt Bacharach, this is an education.
Tomas and Adrian are two of the 30 'pupils' at the Red Bull Music Academy, a two-week annual dance music workshop now in its sixth year. Bedroom DJs and producers from around the globe have congregated to hone their skills in deejaying and producing music and to learn about the business aspect of the industry from a group of experts. Past tutors have included Brazil's Gilberto Gil and the man who invented the Moog synthesiser - Bob Moog. Visiting dignitaries ths year include Radio 1 hip hop DJ Tim Westwood and New Yorker Prince Paul, who produced De La Soul's groundbreaking album 3 Feet High and Rising.
The pupils, whittled from over 2,000 who applied through a Red Bull website, have been subjected to a rigorous application process. Chiara, a beautiful Italian magazine editor, dressed in a tight pink and black leopard print vest, was the first female DJ to play in Kosovo after the war ended. She applied to the Academy because she wants to move into producing music, rather than simply playing other people's records. 'If you want to go worldwide, you have to produce,' she says.
Others have never deejayed outside their own bedroom, but have released records on independent labels back home. Their musical preferences cover the broadest definition of dance - from Brazilian lounge music to Dutch minimalist trance via Glaswegian hip hop and Slovenian breakbeat. The only universal factors at work are a desire to improve and a deep-rooted pas sion for music. 'But we all have something in common,' says Rachel, a trance DJ from Panama. 'Music is our way of expressing, and it is also a way of communication.'
A hand-held brass bell is rung to signify the start of each class. Just like real school, there is a strict timetable of daily lectures, and homework is set and playtime allocated (when the pupils are allowed to muck about on the mixing decks on their own). Just like real students, this lot spend a good deal of time chain-smoking, sleeping through class, and bunking off the boring bits. Each night when school's out, and DJ practice is done, the students are booked in to play records at various venues around the city.
Day one, and there's a getting to know each other session in the main lecture room as the students are asked light-hearted questions by two of the academy's organisers - a German sporting an ironic sunvisor, and a German sporting an über-ironic 'Jesus is my homeboy' sideways baseball cap. But attempts to break the ice with questions such as 'Superfly, Blowfly or Fly on the Wall?' and 'Do you like spinach?' come unstuck because no one in the room knows the Slovakian for spinach, for instance. The group responds better when a pupil from Brazil takes the floor for a spontaneous demonstration of capoeira, Sam from Boston does an Ol Dirty Bastard rap, and a Colombian reels off impressions of Al Pacino's Tony Montana in Scarface.
The first lecturer is Westwood, who began his career washing glasses at Gossips nightclub. A recurrent theme from the floor, and one he plays to well, is the multi-billion dollar global enterprise that is the rap game today. 'I've done hip hop when it was small and broke,' he says, 'To see how big and powerful and rich it is now - I think it's a beautiful thing.' He offers advice in typical Westwood vernacular: 'A lot of people player-hate, but focus on your own career. You've got to specialise in heat, stand next to the heat, embrace it ... It's like selling crack, you've got to keep on putting the product out.' If the Slovakian had a problem with the word spinach, he is having a hell of a time translating this.
Some of the more idealistic pupils take exception to the way in which hip-hop stars market themselves as brands with their own clothing and perfume lines, but most recognise that the only reason that any of us is here in the first place is because an 'energy' drink manufacturer wants to associate itself with youth culture. Recognising that the Academy offers an opportunity to sell themselves, some students have been fervently promoting themselves with business cards and mix CDs to peers and tutors alike. As Westwood says: 'Don't knock the hustle.'
Today we are learning technical skills - everything you ever wanted to know about decks but were afraid to ask. As the tutors bicker about who was the first person to use distortion on a techno record, the conversation becomes like 'Revenge of the Nerds - the white label remix'. Producer and tutor Patrick Pulsinger even receives kudos for the revelation that he once mixed the sound of his beard into a track by electronica star Matthew Herbert.
Then it's on to the first production class: drums. You might think that sitting next to a small metallic box for two hours listening to the emission of electronic bleeps and pulses was the sonic equivalent of watching paint dry. You might be right. But for Sam, Chiara and the other pupils gathered, rapt, around this particular 909 drum machine, the hi-hats, bass and snares filling the room are the start of something very exciting. These are their raw materials for making music, and suggest a world of infinite possibility.
After learning the basics of production, the pupils will work on creating their own music over the course of the fortnight. Their efforts will be judged at the end of term by mastering legend Rick Essig, whose CV features artists as diverse as Charles Mingus, Yoko Ono, and N-Sync.
For someone such as Tomas, whose life is usually spent behind glass in a bank in Bratislava issuing PIN codes, this sort of opportunity is invaluable - he emails me after the fortnight is over, to tell me that 'the academy was the best event of my life'.
The following morning, Westwood and I head off with two students to see a different side of Cape Town. The post-apartheid city remains split, with Table Mountain acting as a huge physical divide between a Euro-influenced enclave of privilege, and an African landscape of poverty. Long Street bustles with boutiques and coffee shops, but the streetkids maniacally sniffing glue a block away from the Academy provide a reminder of the immense inequalities that still exist.
The temperature is in the nineties as we travel to the 'coloured' township of Leonsdale in the Cape Flats. Our guide, a local and obese MC named Mr. Fats - who is dripping in gold chains and rings - explains to us the problems of inter-racial apartheid among blacks and 'coloureds'. Poverty and gangsterism are rife - on a recent trip the Academy made to another township, a knife was pulled on one of the team, who was flashing a camcorder around. It is impossible not to be moved by the welcome that we receive. Kids dressed in knock-off Calvin Klein and Liverpool football shirts, crowd joyfully round Westwood as he hands out some baseball caps and stickers, despite the fact that they have no idea who he is. We drive the half hour back to the city feeling subdued. 'That was definitely the most real thing I've experienced here,' says Westwood. 'That, if nothing else, will leave a personal impact.'
The thought of spending the rest of the day listening to the Germans pontificate about 'Rappers Delight' seems distinctly unappealing but by early evening it's homework time, and the real fun has started again. Brazilian Roberto is impressing Bostonian Sam with his bossa nova reworking of Nirvana's 'Come As You Are'. Monica from Detroit is sharing deep house records with Moretimang, one of two students from Cape Town. Across the hall, the Belgian, the Greek, and the Portuguese are fiddling around in a cross fader ménage-a-trois. It really ain't where you're from, it's where you're at in this place.
Though if where you're at is next-door neighbour to the Academy, then the clash of Estonian techno, Croatian electro and Panamian trance filtering out of the windows is probably your worst nightmare. Peace and quiet are sorely missing, even in the toilets, where a stencil inside the door informs visitors 'There is no such thing as silence.' And they mean it - anyone using the facilities is greeted by the unnerving sounds of coughing and applause that are emitted randomly from a speaker stashed behind the loo.
Later that night, the class moves on to a local bar, where it's Sam's turn to impress his schoolmates with his musical taste and mixing skills. With his floppy hair and baby-face, he looks like an extra from The Wonder Years but in fact is an Ivy League graduate, currently doing a research fellowship in reproductive endocrinology. He references de Toqueville and Tennyson in conversation as fluently as 50 Cent does 'bitches' and 'hoes'. 'My life so far has basically been centred around going to school, but I've always felt like I've needed an artistic output,' he says. 'Meeting the tutors here has been incredible, but I've realised that I can do what they do. And it's been amazing to meet the other students, from all over the world, and to learn from their experiences and establish some meaningful connections.'
It is at the bar that all cultural and language barriers are truly broken down. As Sam mixes seamlessly from his own compositions, to jazz, hip hop and French house, even hardcore trance and technoheads like Chiara and Tomas come together to dance, flirt and have fun. It's like the scene in Fame where everyone gets down in the street - except with more sweatbands and bad Eighties hair this time round. Sam finishes his set, which he's played off his laptop and decks, to rapturous applause. He blushes, grabs a well-earned beer, and joins the others. For all the woofers, tweeters and technical brilliance in the world, dance music is about the dancefloor - and against that criteria, this bunch look like they'll pass with flying colours.
· The Red Bull Music Academy will be held next year in Europe. For details, visit redbullmusicacademy.com. Application forms will be available on line from May.
School report
Who: Victor Nwankwo
Born: Chicago, USA
Age: 21
Job: student/marketeer
Last track of the night: 'Walk on By' by Isaac Hayes
Who: Tomas Lipka
Born: Bratislava, Slovakia
Age: 20
Job: bank officer
Last track of the night: 'That depends on my feelings at the time'
Who: Dagmar Quadder
Born: Cologne, Germany
Age: 32
Job: advertising creative
Last track of the night: 'Rockafella' by Calibre
Who: Chiara Graziani
Born: Naples, Italy
Age: 30
Job: magazine editor
Last track of the night: 'Good Life' by Inner City
Who: Moreti Mokagesi
Age: 19
Born: Guguletu, SA
Job: just left school
Last track: 'It's you, it's me' by Cascade
Who: Racquel Policart
Born: Panama City
Age: 25
Job: restaurateur
Last track of the night: 'Silence ... '
