“Disco's been a part of my life since the very beginning, it’s definitely been my first and most important school and has been there when I played a 134-bpm remake of Indeep's ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’ or Robert Hood sampling Kool & The Gang 5 or 10 years ago. It’s like the air I breathe - I don't think about it, I just breathe.”
Sao Paulo DJ Benjamin Ferreira started DJing aged 11 after being inspired by listening to the records of two DJ uncles in his hometown of Belém in the Amazon. Kicking off his professional career six years later at his local Belém gay club he discovered the internet simultaneously, opening his ears to the world outside the Amazon.
“I became independent from local DJs and radios and was able to meet new people and listen to different kinds of music,” he recalls.
“I started playing techno and big beat - from underground stuff such as Dave Clarke, UR and labels such as Code Red and Cosmic Records to mainstream acts such as Underworld, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, but house was always there, too, especially the French touch - Cassius, Daft Punk, Crydamoure Records, and Chicago masters such as DJ Sneak and Derrick Carter ” he smiles.
DJing at his first outdoor rave in 1999 (with green hair) he quickly teamed up with Pragatecno, a Brazilwide collective dedicated to popularizing underground dance music beyond Rio and Sao Paulo establishing a northern side of the group Cotonete.
“We started a radio show and invited Brazilian and international DJs to send in mixes and promos then after a year we started inviting DJs to come and play at our parties,” says Benjamin.
“We persuaded DJs such as Marky and Renato Cohen to play in Belém for the first time, both in clubs and raves and local press and even TV became interested in what we were doing and the scene grew. Though by the middle of the decade the scene changed,” he says.
“Psy-trance started to get bigger and bigger and we started losing money in our parties, so we went back to smaller parties. I then decided to move to Sao Paulo and in 2006, two weeks after graduating I moved here.”
Four years on Benjamin has played most of Sao Paulo’s biggest clubs (including Pacha, D-Edge and brand new uber-club du jour Hot Hot) as well as alternative institutions such as A Loca and Vegas (where he’s a regular guest at Camilo Rocha’s Discology)
“The same percentage of people who like underground music in Belém also like it in Sao Paulo but Sao Paulo is a much bigger city so things happen easier here,” he suggests.
“That's why you have more underground clubs, DJs, promoters, audience and money. The crowds and their reaction, however, are quite similar - people are usually friendly, dance a lot, ask for track IDs.”
As passionate about music as he’s skilled in his DJing, he uses Ableton, CDs and vinyl to mix disco and house with all sorts of styles and flavours (from techno to afro and Latino and rock).
“I've always listened to different kinds of music, so what I try is to mix as many different references as possible in a coherent way and according to the crowd I have on the floor,” he says.
“It's all about balancing the music I love and what I'll think will please my audience. I usually say that I may not play everything I love, but I love everything I play,” he smiles.
Benjamin has just joined the IHOUSEU team as an official IHOUSEU DJ and we’ll be covering and linking to his upcoming productions, gigs and DJ mixes on an ongoing basis. Download his latest mix ‘Dizzy Me Disco’ here: http://tinyurl.com/yahdfqk
IHOUSEU: When and how did you first become involved in DJing?
Benjamin Ferreira: “Two uncles of mine were DJs in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, and one of them gave me my first mixing hints and most of my early musical background, which consisted of disco, funk and house. I can remember how fascinated I was with all those records around the house since I was just three years old. When I was a child I didn't use to ask for toys, I asked for records and sound equipment.
I started as an amateur DJ when I got my first pair of turntables in 1990 when I was 11. After that, I used to hassle relatives and friends to play at any possible parties I could and in 1996 I landed my first gig at a local gay club in my hometown, Belém. The club scene used to be really commercial, as the Internet was still taking shape then so we depended on the local radios and DJs to know what was new in music.”
IHOUSEU: Belém is one of the biggest cities in the Amazon, how much did you grow up in a jungle environment?
Benjamin Ferreira: “I've always been a city boy actually; music and my records mattered to me the most though my father loves fishing and he’d sometimes wake me up at 5am to take me and my brother on a small boat fishing. The places we went fishing weren’t virgin jungle but there was (and is) enough nature around so that we can call these areas jungle, I’d certainly feel that way. The rivers would cut through forests of huge trees full of animals including beautiful birds and terrifying snakes, they were all much more fascinating than the fishing itself.”
IHOUSEU: When did you get serious about DJing?
Benjamin Ferreira: “After my first gig at the gay club I still had three years of almost no gigs but in the same year I started accessing the net, and it changed my life completely. I became independent from local DJs and radio stations and was able to meet new people and listen to different kinds of music. In 1999 I played at my first rave and I made friends with some guys from the northeast who had a collective with members in different states called Pragatecno. The collective’s aim was to promote underground electronic music outside cities such as São Paulo and Rio. In 2000, a friend of mine and I decided to open the northern side of this group, called Cotonete, named after those sticks you use to clean your ears with. We chose an aggressive name because we were tired of the commercial music we had to hear in the clubs.”
IHOUSEU: The press in Belém started supporting you enormously, how did that come about?
Benjamin Ferreira: “We started a radio show in 2001 and began connecting up with a lot of big Brazilian (and even international) DJs who used to send us mixes and promos for the show. One year later, we started inviting DJs from São Paulo to play with us, and we brought names such as Marky and Renato Cohen to play in Belém for the first time, both at clubs and raves. As we always had a good relationship with the local press in Belém and the journalists were interested in what we were doing, we would be in the newspapers very often, sometimes even on TV.
But then psy-trance started to get bigger and bigger in the middle of the decade, and we started losing money in our parties, so we went back to throwing smaller parties. And in 2006 I moved to Sao Paulo permanently after Camilo Rocha (one of Brazil’s best known DJs and writers) invited me to stay with him.”
IHOUSEU: What's your approach to DJing: what do you try to achieve in your sets?
Benjamin Ferreira: “I try to tell a story through different groovy chapters creating a patchwork of different styles that fits together like a colourful, happy blanket. I also always try and surprise the crowd. As a listener/dancer, I consider it very important to play tracks or elements that people are not expecting, and when I'm in the booth, I always try to do the same.”
IHOUSEU: What is it about disco that interests you in particular?
Benjamin Ferreira: “Disco was not only the soundtrack and inspiration for gay liberation, it also started today’s DJ club culture. It can be sweet or hard, slow or fast, sacred or lascivious, trippy or down-to-earth, sophisticated or camp, have vocals or not, and it will still be disco. I love it.”
IHOUSEU: Brazil's a very dangerous place (by reputation); what's been the most dangerous situation you've encountered when DJing?
Benjamin Ferreira: “One situation I’ll never forget happened when I was opening for a famous Brazilian rock band in Belém. The venue was huge but me and a friend weren’t performing on the main stage, we were in a small tent out in the arena. Belém is very humid, and on that Sunday afternoon there was a huge storm, so hundreds of people tried to shelter inside our tent.
At one point there were too many people inside knocking the decks and making the needles jump so we stopped playing but then some crazy kids started shaking the pole in the middle of the dance floor and it almost fell on top of us. To make matters worse, water then started flooding into the tent and our feet were underwater. As we tried to get out squeezing under the tent my hand was on the metal turntable when a bolt of lightning struck the tent and I had an electric shock. Thank God it wasn’t enough to send me to the hospital but it reminded me of what happened to my grandfather in the 40s.
He was a wind instrument player in a small town on the countryside of Pará, where he, my mother and their family used to live. Once he was playing a metal flute with the city's orchestra in the backyard of the mayor's house when a lighting bolt struck them. A lot of the musicians collapsed to the floor and passed out but sadly my Grandfather was killed. Mom was 8 months old.
I wish I had had the chance to get to know him, but I think he's always with me anyway. I think he loved music as much as I do, and he died doing what he loved the most, he died for music. I'd die for music, but I still want to live long enough to make a lot of people happy and to spread a love that comes from a long time ago, a love that I'm sure is in my blood.”
Benjamin has just joined the IHOUSEU team as an official IHOUSEU DJ and we’ll be covering and linking to his upcoming productions, gigs and DJ mixes on an ongoing basis. Download his latest mix ‘Dizzy Me Disco’ here: http://tinyurl.com/yahdfqk
