Ministers of sound

Cover story Over the past decade, a cadre of young, talented DJs has transformed the UAE's musical landscape.

Over the past decade, a cadre of young, talented DJs has transformed the UAE's infertile musical landscape into an internationally renowned clubbing destination. John Mather meets the mixmasters who started it all. Photographs by Rich-Joseph Facun.

On the floor of the Etoiles nightclub at the Emirates Palace, a husky man dances in a slim-fitting white shirt. As his biceps and pot belly bulge, the stage lights reflect off his shaved, polished head. His moves are more deliberate than spontaneous. He sways his torso to the laidback R&B song thumping from the speakers as he tries to attract the attention of a nearby group of women. Standing 10 feet above him in the sound booth is DJ Bliss, who has decided to show off his skills by disrupting the dancing man's groove. Bliss, whose real name is Marwan Parham, cues My Rolex, a fast-paced garage track. He smiles as he turns up the volume. The dancer fights to move with the faster tempo, the rhythm disrupting his calculated act. He tries to keep up for a few seconds before walking over to sit on the couch in defeat.

"I completely threw that guy in the white shirt off," Bliss says with a chuckle and a smirk, his headphones slipping down the back of his neck. "He's like, 'What am I supposed to do now? It's too fast'." Bliss is the puppet master of the dance floor. When he showed up for his set around midnight, Etoiles was nearly empty and those milling around showed little interest in the CD mix running through the speakers. But within 30 minutes of Bliss starting, the dance floor is full of shouting and hollering in approval of the DJ's taste. A potential dud of an evening is transformed by one man and his turntables. Bliss, who plays Etoiles every Friday, says he just understands what people want to hear. "Half the crowd likes R&B and half the crowd likes house," he says.

"How do you know?" I ask. "You can just tell." Local DJs, Bliss told me earlier, understand local tastes, so he thinks they are often the better entertainers. For instance, he says people's tastes in Dubai differ: they either like house or R&B, a common division of tastes in nightclubs. "They will just stand there with their arms crossed when you play music they don't like." At 27, Bliss has a reputation as one of the Emirates' best DJs. After winning the top prize at a Middle East DJ competition in 2005, which gave him the opportunity to play at London's renowned Ministry of Sound club, his status hasn't ceased to climb. He hosts the drive-time show on Radio One and spins at the private parties of superstars such as Kanye West and Akon. What makes him more interesting is that he believes he is the only Emirati DJ in a country where hundreds vie to play in limited venues.

In fact, there seems to be an endless supply of men (and they are almost always men) who put the DJ initials in front of their name or a pseudonym. And while Dubai's growth in the past 10 years seems like an ideal opportunity to gain recognition, for many local acts, the opposite has happened: they have been overshadowed by international stars invading a relatively small number of clubs. However, as the country's musical tastes mature and Abu Dhabi comes online as an entertainment destination, things are once again looking good for local DJs behind the turntables.

Clad in an LA Dodgers baseball jersey, Danny Neville leans back in a chair in his production studio on Sheikh Zayed Road. He is explaining why he has recently become less cynical about the music scene in the Emirates. Neville, a Lebanese hip-hop DJ and producer who was born in the UAE, says it all began when he was in Los Angeles last year. There, he heard Arab Money, the single by US rapper Busta Rhymes, for the first time. The song, as the name suggests, plays to stereotypes about the region, pronounces Arab with a long "a" and drops lines like: "Sittin' in casinos while I'm gambling with Arafat". In one remix, the song included a verse from the Quran. Needless to say, Arab Money stirred controversy.

For Neville, it was the epitome of ignorance, something he didn't expect from a respected rapper. "As soon as I heard the track I said, 'I am going to go back to Dubai and do something about it'," he says. "This thing shook the Middle East so badly." Neville teamed up with Yassin Alsalman, known as The Narcicyst, an Iraqi rapper who grew up in the Emirates, to record a response: The Real Arab Money. The remake uses the original's track and corrects the pronunciation of Arab, among other things. The song quickly became a underground hit, making its way to New York's famous Hot97 radio station. In early December, Neville was working in his Dubai studio with the US rapper Loon when the phone rang. It was Busta's manager saying his client heard the response and wanted to apologise. Loon turned the phone on speaker. Busta not only said he was sorry, he promised to pull the single off the album, the radio and eventually the internet (though it is still played on his website and is for sale on iTunes).

"That was a big moment when you stop and think," Neville says today. "People are talking about us." It created a buzz around Neville, who says the hip-hop world is taking an increasing interest in the Arab world. Triple R, a single he produced for Karl Wolf and Snoop Dogg, is on the radio frequently as many artists are looking to include Arab-influenced hooks in songs. This has come as a relief to Neville, who has watched house music dominate Dubai for years. "I feel good about the future," he says. "The music scene was not comfortable for the past couple of years. It's getting comfortable again."

It wasn't just the prevalence of house, though, that bothered Neville. It was also the fallout from Dubai's new-found status as an international clubbing destination. The past few years have upset Neville in particular because he is part of a small community that helped build the Dubai music scene. He went to high school in Sharjah, where his friends learnt about music from MTV while they listened to hip-hop and R&B tapes. "Whoever came back from the US would sneak in a few tapes here and there," Neville says. "We didn't necessarily think it was good music, but we listened to it because it was snuck in."

In the 1990s, he says there was only one club in Dubai, which is now Chi at the Lodge. In their teens, he and his friends would sneak in to hear the music, while Neville himself got his start the same way many DJs do: playing house parties. "It used to happen here in Satwa," Neville says, laughing. The music mixed the best from the US and Europe, a fusion that continued as the city gained international recognition. "It was beautiful growing up in Dubai. We got the best of both worlds here."

The exposure increased significantly in 2001 when the Virgin Megastore opened, says Haneef al Raisi, who runs the Middle East's only independent house record label, Raisani Records, which he started in 2004. Before then, at age 21, he was the head buyer for Virgin in the UAE. Al Raisi isn't hesitant to credit himself for helping introduce house music to Dubai. Before Virgin, he says, there were no record stores of note or a prominent music scene. With Virgin, event promoters found a partner to help publicise shows and concerts. The challenge, of course, was convincing hotels to let them put on a house night.

"We'd go to a bar and say 'we can bring 500 people in here if you let us throw a party'," al Raisi says. It was a tactic that often worked because Dubai was simultaneously experiencing a boom in western interest. Expatriates and visitors brought traditions of dance clubs, making hotels amenable to staying open until 3am. Al Raisi says Dubai nightlife peaked from about 2003 to the beginning of 2008. "This was a time when a lot of promoters were doing a lot of things, bringing DJs every weekend. It was like high season."

The biggest names in the business, such as Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk, Armin Van Buuren and Erick Morillo, became regulars at clubs, specifically Peppermint, which set up shop primarily in the Fairmont hotel's ballroom, and Trilogy at Madinat Jumeirah. The problem with celebrity DJs, Neville says, is that they got paid two to three times their normal rate to play in Dubai. This led to fewer opportunities and less money for local DJs. To make matters worse, local DJs struggling for gigs began undercutting prices just for some stage time.

"DJing has become very political, very dirty," Neville says, adding that money has replaced music as the driving force behind events. "DJing is a hobby. It should be done for the love of music, not to make money." This experience is one reason al Raisi has moved from Dubai back to Abu Dhabi - "there are no clubs, so there is no point in going out" - to focus on his two labels, charity work and other ventures. He has turned his music ambitions internationally, building the Raisani brand with a series of releases that are gaining popularity in the world of house.

While the hype circling Dubai and its fallout pushed al Raisi to look overseas, it pulled Mike Bufton, known as MrMr, to Dubai. "I was just doing the same old thing in England," he says. "I got bored and read about Dubai a lot in the press." "The same old thing" was working as a house DJ and hosting a pirate radio show in the UK. In Dubai, though, he saw a specific need for his style of electro house music. "When I first came it was a clean slate for what I wanted to do."

He established the AudioTonic Friday nights at 360, a renovated shisha cafe in Jumeirah. The show is broadcast live on Radio One, and attendance for the cutting-edge electronic music set has ballooned in three years. Bufton has worked hard to attract people to his shows without resorting to big-name acts. "Quite frankly, it's just insane," he says about promoters spending upwards of ?20,000 (Dh97,000) on acts. "The guys paying DJs massive amounts of money have left the smaller guys in a sticky situation."

His formula - relying on word of mouth and strong resident DJs - has succeeded, and he isn't bothered by an overflow of promoters. "It's not as bad as everyone makes out. There's healthy competition." He has no issue if the big promoters, like the well-known Peppermint and Vibe groups, are successful. "I know all the guys from Vibe and Peppermint. I wouldn't ever wish their events didn't do well."

Since it opened in 2004 Peppermint has done quite well, says its former resident DJ, Ahmad Ajam, known as DJ Madjam. The company spent the first year and a half building a local reputation for throwing good parties - complete with big screens, laser shows and creative themes - before approaching the celebrities. And once they did, the company began bringing someone over once a week. The club sees more than 1,000 people per event, which for Madjam means he was doing what is most important for a DJ: entertaining the crowd. "It's always about the crowd. They're spending the money, they're dressing up, they're going there, they get to the door, they pay, and all that's left is the music."

And while he admits the price of a crowd-pleasing, top-ranked DJ is outrageous, he says what's true in Dubai is true in Cairo and Beirut. "Let me answer it this way: the whole Middle East overpays for DJs?they know we are stupid and will pay that much." While he refused to say how much Peppermint has paid for a high-ranked DJ, he did say "it costs more than a car? it ain't a cheap car. It's not Korean."

It is worth it, though, Madjam believes. In Dubai's competitive state, it's almost pointless to throw a major event without a major DJ. "Even the smaller international names would get less numbers." There are signs the overheated, frenzied market is changing to a point where local DJs can headline again. While Peppermint is enjoying larger crowds - it anticipates around 4,000 people for Armin Van Buuren on February 5 - it has reduced the frequency of its events from weekly to monthly. And Trilogy, once one of the most popular night clubs, closed last year after reportedly trying to institute a membership programme. (It has since re-opened as The Rooftop, with a focus on chill-out music.) Other than Van Buuren, the only other celebrity DJ lined up for the near future is Fatboy Slim at the Dubai Marina on February 11.

These signs give hope to DJs such as Neville that just as the scene has changed significantly during the past five years, it is showing signs of morphing again. Madjam sees it too. "Nobody in Dubai lives in the same house for 10 years. It's part of the fast-paced changing landscape of Dubai." He admits he is "kind of upset" about Peppermint moving to fewer nights. After being able to open for some of the biggest names in house music, he cites his final party as the highlight of his time with the group. "It was the most emotional for me."

Madjam moved back to Beirut for "a more relaxed lifestyle" after Peppermint went to monthly events. On his last night, he didn't even take a bathroom break during the trying five-hour set. He usually picks one person in the crowd to focus on to gauge her emotions and reaction. That night it was a woman he had seen before. By the end of the set she was crying. "I got on the mic and said, 'I am going to miss you guys and I hope to see you soon.'"

Madjam says the issue is a lack of locations that are big enough for Peppermint's draw. "There were always great crowds," he says. "The weakest night in our whole four-year history was 800." The average crowd, he estimates, was between 1,200 and 2,200 people. Finding venues for this many people is a problem for all promoters. Since limited places can apply for liquor licences, clubs are almost always in hotels. And there, al Raisi says, the spots are run by food and beverage managers who aren't ready or willing to take on the responsibility of a late-night club. "Everyone is in their comfort zone. People don't want to take a risk on something they don't know about."

It's a problem he doesn't see going away. "I don't think it's ever going to change. I don't know, maybe in 100 years." 'There are only so many clubs, but there are a lot of DJs," says Bliss. He misses Trilogy, the three-storey club where he put on many events. "It was a real icon, people loved it." The good news, he says, is that more places are opening all the time. For instance, he is now playing occasionally at Atlantis' new club, Sanctuary. He thinks there will be more opportunities for local DJs at new spots, in part because the demand and hype for big-name stars has cooled. "People have started to realise a big-name DJ won't necessarily play their best in Dubai."

Neville also thinks Dubai's musical tastes have matured, becoming more eclectic, as it used to be. He is pleased to find that he can see a hip-hop show almost every night of the week in Dubai at places such as Elegante, New Asia and Zinc. He thinks people have come to their senses about celebrity DJs, and so the nights are less popular. "I think it's because people caught on to it. It's a rip off."

Abu Dhabi may be where future local stars get their start. The city is beginning to make a name for itself by hosting some of the world's biggest performers: Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and George Michael. "I think Abu Dhabi is the next place to be," says Neville, who played a show at AMPM at the InterContinental recently and is interested in a residency somewhere in the capital. "I think Abu Dhabi has a hip-hop following. A lot of people there love R&B and hip-hop."

Bufton is also turning his sights there. "Every week I think about AD, getting out there and checking out the place more often. I hear lots of good things about new venues opening up. And it will be the place to be in five to 10 years time." For Bliss, Abu Dhabi is the place to be right now. He is quite pleased with his Friday gig at Etoiles, and not just because he gets to stay in the Palace the nights he plays. He says it's because the crowd is willing to dance to almost every type of music, which lets him have fun as a DJ.

Back in the booth he's in the thick of his set. Rarely does a song last longer than a minute and a half before he mixes in a new one. One after another, his songs switch from R&B to house to old school, and in step with the DJ, the crowd shows no sign of relenting. "That's why I like Abu Dhabi more, people are willing to try it. See, there's a couple there," Bliss says, pointing out a pair in their thirties carrying an air of maturity who look slightly out of place. "They probably like Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue, but they're still dancing."

This time he decides not to spoil their fun.