A new exhibit looks at the history of Filipino American DJs.

By Oliver Wang

THE ROMANTIC VISION of the contemporary DJ – promoted in movies like 1999's Groove or the recent turntablist documentary Scratch – is of a lone professional with headphones draped over the shoulder, an aluminum record case by his or her side, sweeping into town, flooring the crowd, and leaving like a latter-day gunslinger: Have vinyl, will travel.

For the generation of DJs that preceded today's turntable icons, the business of disc jockeying was anything but a solo affair. Throughout the 1980s the Bay Area was home to hundreds of mobile DJ crews – even though mobility was difficult when one was lugging around several hundred pounds of speakers, amps, lighting truss, DJ equipment, and records. Despite the labor involved in setting up, these crews were hyperactive, fueling a massive party scene that lasted for nearly a decade.

This part of the Bay Area's vibrant DJ history comes front and center in "Tales of the Turntable: Filipino American DJs of the Bay Area," a new, unprecedented exhibit that's opened at the San Mateo History Museum. That many of the Bay Area's most renowned DJs – QBert, Mixmaster Mike, Apollo, etc. – are of Filipino descent is well known. However, says exhibit curator Melanie Caganot, a 29-year-old insider who in those days was know as rapper Lani Luv, "no one's ever done something on the whole mobile DJ scene."

Caganot emphatically maintains that the scene was vital to both the Bay Area and its Filipino American community. "We've made contributions to the Bay Area in terms of music," she says, explaining what led her to put together the exhibit. "I just have this feeling, when we get too far down the line, we may forget these stories."

One such story belongs to DJ Ren (Rene Anies), founder of Electric Sounds, one of the very first Filipino American DJ crews. Raised in San Francisco's Excelsior District, Ren was bitten by the DJ bug at 14. "I was a freshman in high school in 1979," he says. "We went to a dance, and there was a group called Sound Explosion that was one of my friends' brother's group. And they were mixing, like things you'd see on TV, at a club, nonstop music. We said, 'Hey, that's pretty cool, we should do that.' "

Like many fledgling DJs, Electric Sounds had to rely on whatever equipment they had at their disposal. "When we first started, we didn't even have a mixer!" he says, laughing. "Our first gig, we used two separate stereo systems. We equaled the sound level, and we were mixing from one stereo to the other."

The scene came a long way in a short time, in size as well as professionalism. DJ crews began one-upping one another with better equipment and more elaborate setups. Caganot estimates that at its zenith, in 1987, there were more than 100 crews, offering as evidence flyers from old sound clashes and showcases that list dozens of participating DJs, as well as page after page of business cards bearing such names as Lifestyle, Non-Stop Boogie, Style beyond Compare, Dynamic Sounds, etc. – almost all Filipino crews.

The interest in DJing wasn't strictly a Filipino thing: the Bay's Latino and African American communities had their own mobile crews as well. But DJ Apollo, one of the fathers of the current turntablist scene and an erstwhile member of Daly City's Unlimited Sounds, argues that disc jockeying had a vise grip on the Filipino American community. "It was the biggest thing," he says. "It was, at least that I knew, what the Filipino community did for activities as far as fun. I mean, everybody had a DJ group, and they were parties all over the Bay Area every week. It was a place for the kids to go, for us to DJ. We would do them anywhere we could." "Anywhere" included garage parties, community halls, high school dances, weddings, pep rallies, and the all-important sound clashes.

"Tales of the Turntable" looks at the role showcases and DJ battles played within the scene, especially the Imagine series. Sponsored and promoted by a flamboyantly gay, Tagalog-speaking, thirtysomething white real estate agent, Mark Bradford, Imagine began specifically as a showcase for Filipino DJ talent in the Bay Area. From 1983 until Bradford's untimely death in 1991 – in an unsolved murder – Imagine was the premier event. "The showcases were just grand," says Caganot, who attended several and became friends with Bradford. "Mark produced 10,000 flyers per gig. He was the first to [host events] in big halls, to have several DJs under one roof. He had trophies; he had the whole program. There was just this big ceremony about the whole thing."

DJ Ren credits Imagine with helping to attract more interest in the scene. "We were having battles back in '81 and '82, but again, it was such a small crowd, it was always the same groups. But when Mark Bradford came along, all of the sudden all these DJ groups started popping up from different parts of the Bay Area, and they were trying to be part of the battles."

"[Bradford] gave everybody a platform to do their thing, because everybody, at that point, they just wanted to get on," Apollo says.

The payoffs for participation were numerous and preparation extensive. "If you did an Imagine gig, you would have tremendous exposure," Caganot says. "People would go all out; they'd bring a 100 feet of truss and all their lights and borrow stuff from other groups. People would come out with their craziest stuff. If you had new records to break, you'd break them that day. If you had new mixes, you'd do them that day."

Glory awaited the winners. "When you were known as a DJ, that was our little Hollywood," Ren says, and many crews, including his own, would create custom jackets sporting the mobile's logo. "One time we were wearing our jackets on 24th Street, and we were getting chased because people thought we were a gang. We were running, but we wore them with pride."

Caganot says the scene peaked in 1987, when Bradford hosted an Imagine at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds, attracting several thousand people. After that the mobile community began to slowly disappear. DJ Ren blames the decline in part on the rise of his cousin, QBert. "People started getting into the scratching, and you can't scratch at a mobile gig, right? No one can dance to it. Those are two totally separate animals, and as turntablism became so popular, the mobile DJ started to fade out."

Still, almost all of the Bay Area's major turntablists got their start doing mobile work. "We were all from different [mobiles]," Apollo says. "I'm from Unlimited Sounds, QBert's from Lifestyle, [Mixmaster] Mike's from Audio Technique, Short[kut] had his own group. Everybody had their own group; that's how big it was. That's how everyone got started – don't make no mistake."

Eventually the individualism of turntablism undercut the group dynamics of the mobile scene, and younger Filipino American youths were turning to other pursuits, including car racing. Nonetheless, the mobile DJs walked the point for the Bay's flourishing DJ community, and they have a special place in Caganot's exhibit. "I think everyone had such a fond memory of it," she says. "You know, this is the high school days, people used to travel down to Union City to San Francisco to Vallejo, just all over. I think this is an important part of our culture. The excitement and enthusiasm that I get, it's obvious [the former mobile DJs] feel the same way. If today's kids only knew."

'Tales of the Turntable.' Through Feb. 25, 2002. Open Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m., San Mateo History Museum, 777 Hamilton, Redwood City. $2. (650) 299-0104.

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