DJ Juan Data takes you on a shaolin cumbia journey with the addictive Mersaholic. Born and raised in Caballito, a middle-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Juan Data discovered hip-hop and dance music culture at the early age of 13. Years later after relocating to California he moved to San Francisco and since then he has been playing, non stop, at house parties, clubs, bars, lounges, restaurants and concert venues all over the city and beyond. Still a freelance music journalist by day (and a comic book aficionado) Juan Data puts on his wrestler mask by night and transforms into his DJ alter-ego to rock the party with his characteristically eclectic play-list, experimental mixes and outrageous performances. We first got familair with him after discovering the Linyerismo episode I and the more recent Linyersimo episode II and where blown away by it. Hands down for this music journalist (you can read up on his articles and reviews on latinbutcool.blogspot.com, Billboard En Español, Remezcla and our own crackforyourears.com), DJ and person in general for this new gem: Mersaholic (direct download)!
"I just think that it's a lot better for people to listen to it first before checking out the play-list"
What's the concept behind Mersaholic?
There are many different concepts behind it. The main one, I'd say was to do something completely different from what's out there. There are a lot of people mixing cumbia nowadays, so I wanted to mix it in a different way. I don't know if this qualifies as experimental, but it certainly was an experiment for me because I was trying out all these different techniques. I applied mixing techniques (and cliches) from hip-hop, dub and house to cumbia music but mainly hip-hop because those are my roots as a DJ.
I had this crazy idea in my head for a while now. You know how in the beginnings hip-hop DJ's didn't spin any rap music? Nowadays to say "I'm a hip-hop DJ" is wrongfully equated to "I play rap music," that's a misconception. The original hip-hop DJ's (Afrika Bambaataa, for example) didn't play any rap music simply because there weren't any rap albums out yet. They played a mix of breaks from funk, soul, disco and rock records, what was available to them, and the result was hip-hop. So my idea was, what if instead of playing funk and soul and all that stuff, those early hip-hop DJ's were given cumbia records? Can you play cumbia breaks in a hip-hop way? Why not? It's all music with African roots and steady four-by-four beat structure. So I imagine this parallel universe where hip-hop evolved from DJ's mixing old school Colombian cumbia records instead of James Brown's funk.
Music wise what do we hear pass the revue?
I listen to all kinds of music. From the very commercial bubblegum pop, to noisy hardcore-punk, to hip-hop, to old school salsa, to house. I'm very versatile and it's hard for me to say "I play such and such music styles" because I like to mix it all.
As a music journalist I receive tons of new music on a constant basis and I give it all a chance regardless of the style. Most of the music I get is crap, but I love crap too, I'm particularly attracted to the "so bad it's good" category. That happens a lot with cumbia, it's a music style very commercialized and bastardized (especially in countries like Mexico and Argentina) where 99% of what comes out is pure garbage, but sometimes it's so embarrassingly bad that's amusing to listen to it. A friend of mine recently compared my DJ style to an encyclopedia of disposable music. There's definitely a lot of irony in my music selecting.
If alcoholalics like beer, what are then the cravings of a Mersaholic?
Mersa means tacky and ghetto-fabulous in Argentinean vernacular slang. When a poor person with lower educational levels tries to dress fancy with shiny clothes or matching color outfits or over-accessorize with bling-bling, that's referred to as mersa in a derogatory way. Of course everything associated with cumbia culture in Argentina is regarded as mersa.
I grew up in a different environment, very traditional middle-class and eurocentric, where I was taught to avoid everything mersa and aspire to some sort of higher culture (if there's such a thing). But later in life I became very curious about all low-brow culture and embraced it with pride and of course a big dose of irony.
Nowadays I live in The Mission, a Latino immigrant working-class neighborhood of San Francisco where you can't walk two blocks without running into mersa music, art, decoration, clothing, etc. It's all over the place and I love it like that. I'm addicted to it. I'd shoot myself if I ever had to live in a white-washed "safe" suburban town. The Mission is also a recently gentrified hipster neighborhood where most of the neo-cumbia scene has developed in the last couple of years.
There are many references to my hood and my city in Mersaholic, I think it's a nice soundtrack to listen to while you walk these streets. However if you take your ipod earplugs off and listen to the music coming out from the passing cars and stores, what you get won't be very different from Mersaholic.
"Once again I was able to count with the invaluable help of my long time friend and partner in crime Gabriel Di Matteo who did an impressive work with the graphic design, as usual. Without his magic touch, my drawings look like amateur crap."
Did you ran into any problems while puttin the mix together?
Too many. I had no plan of where it was going when I started recording it, I only knew I wanted it to start with a tribute to the Wu-Tang Clan and "let's see where it goes from there" so I ran into many dead ends where I had to go back and start the whole thing again from scratch. This was particularly difficult because of the way I record my mixes without using any loop-sequencing software and using only two (virtual) decks and a mixer and recording everything in real time. It's a lot easier to play one song, fade it into the next one and so on. I was mostly just playing break beats of no more than 20 seconds from each song so maybe after a full day of work my mixtape would grow less than a minute in running time. In the end it took me about a month to finish it.
Were you suprised that the Linyerismo episodes were so well picked up?
I was very surprised by the great reception of Episode II which I think up to this date is the most successful creative project I've done in ages (and I've published tons of creative stuff, rap albums, comic books, movies, novels...). That pushed me to keep mixing music but also put me under a lot of pressure to come up with something new and better. I still don't know if Mersaholic was better than Linyerismo II, I tried very hard to do something completely different, but in the end I think they are very similar. I don't know, it's hard for me to judge my own stuff.
Are you holding back the playlist on purpose?
If you go to my play.fm channel and listen to Mersaholic you can see the playlist there. I'm not hiding it. I just think that it's a lot better for people to listen to it first before checking out the play-list, because it's full of funny bits that work only as a surprise and if you know what's coming up next, then the surprise factor is gone and it's not fun (unfortunately most of those surprises are only funny for a few, like inside jokes that only Spanish speakers and those from my generation and my nationality will truly understand). Also because some of the songs I used, I just used 5 seconds of it, sometimes even less, so it's not right to say I'm playing this or that song when in reality maybe I just used one drum or vocal sample from that particular song and it was processed with so many that in a way they're barely recognizable.
Many thanks to Juan Data!
