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MUTAMASSIK

Interviewed by Analog Tara via e-mail, February 2003.

Mutamassik's DJ sets and studio productions combine traditional Egyptian and pan-African musics with hardcore and hip hop beats. Whether she's all over the decks at hometown Frank's Lounge in Brooklyn, or tearing things up in Dubai, the locals can't help but feel it: she's fusing rhythmic energy with political awareness, an infectious combination that she describes as "incitefulness/insightfulness." Below, she discusses her early habits of absorbing and archiving music, her current techniques for producing tracks, and some thoughts on how music intersects with gender and cultural politics.

Q: When did you come to the U.S. and to New York City?

A: I was born in Italy to an Egyptian mother. We came to the U.S. when I was 5. I moved to NYC when I was 22. Before that, I lived in West Virginia, Ohio (my formative years) and Pittsburgh. In 2000, I went to live and work in Cairo for a year. Now I'm back in New York.

Q: Has music always been a big part of your life?

A: Absolutely! My parents both loved to dance and were always blasting music around the house - mostly African, South American and everything in between (James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Muhal Richard Abrams, Chopin, Tarantella, Oumm Kalsoum). I started playing piano early and jumped around on sax, violin and whatever else I could get my hands on. My older brother and I were big hip hop fanatics until I was about 12, at which point I started getting into other stuff. By 13, I was deep into punk rock, started really forming some strong political opinions (with guidance from my favorites at the time, Dead Kennedys). Simultaneously, I started really getting into classical European music, especially Baroque music. I can still point to my influence in its mathematical, relentless rythmicality, counterpoint, etc. This led me to study the cello at 15 and join some punk-rock/experimental bands playing cello and drums all through college.

Q: When did you start DJing?

A: I started officially in '95. All through college, I worked in the library in the music resource center. my job was to play people music, dig out parts of scores (not to mention mindless data entry)... I was always a natural archivist. As early as I can remember, I would obsessively make loops from tape to tape of parts of songs that just drove me nuts - so good I couldn't get enough of them - that inner "spark-plug" going off every time. I'd sit there for hours doing that, happy as ever. In college, I was in a lot of bands (Telecorps, Pledgedrive, Year Zero, LPN, Schick Strings, etc.) and also had friends who invited me to guest on their radio shows. I started by playing cassettes of Egyptian folk music and reciting some absurdist political manifestos. I really started DJing once I moved to New York in '95.

Q: What made you want to be a DJ?

A: In retrospect, it seems natural because of my music library days. (Funnily, one of the first records I ever bought back in the early '80s was "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.") Mainly though, I was dancing every night in New York (mostly jungle parties - my favorite DJ was Cassien) and eventually I just wanted to hear what got me psyched. Also, I had just come back from a trip to Egypt before moving to New York and brought with me a suitcase full of cassettes. I was so overwhelmingly excited about this Egyptian dance music that I just wanted EVERYONE to hear it. I was like a traveling salesman for this stuff... I was going around each friend's house to play it to each individual. When I finally got offered a spot at SoundLab in '95, it seemed like the most efficient solution for my obsession.

Q: How did you happen to choose "Mutamassik" as your DJ name?

A: I found it in an Arabic language book. It means many things... mostly "stronghold," as in someone who hangs on firmly to their beliefs (the extreme of this is fanaticism). To Egyptians, it has a religious or cultural connotation, usually a bit old-fashioned. For Saudis, it can mean a "holding" as in a bank or share "holding."

Q: How would you describe the mix of music that you play? What musical traditions or styles do you draw upon?

A: Afro-centric breakbeat. Relentless rhythms from the immigrant sound sources. First-generation punk jaw electronic pan-African derivatives. Depending on what kind of night it is now, I'll interject all of my influences, from Sun Ra to punk rock to hardcore to hip hop to jungle to dancehall to soukous to Egyptian baladi. I mostly enjoy hard syncopated beats. I really started very specifically doing jungle/hip-hop mixes all the while mixing in Egyptian breaks as well. I would say I got my early chops from the hardcore jungle parties I was spinning at (Konkrete Jungle, Rumble Sessions, etc.).

Q: Any favorite record stores or sources for vinyl (either locally, or on your travels) where you've picked up some choice records?

A: I used to shop at Throb, initially, and then Breakbeat Science and Rock n Soul. I'm not motivated by much coming out in the stores these days as far as dance music goes, and I don't find the surplus cash to buy records with either. That usually gets funneled into gear. Lately, I'll go to Beat Street (for hip hop and dancehall). I'll stop by A-1 sometimes to poke around for something really eccentric. But my favorite shops are in Paris and Brussels. They have African-Arabic stuff just busting out of the seams there. The Clignoncourt market in Paris is the best for older stuff. The old people selling dusty records on the side of the road, too. The promo vinyl people send me has been the best bet lately (as far as fresh and alive go).

Q: For the tracks that you produce, what gear are you using? Any particular piece of gear that inspires you to create, and why?

A: I use Cubase VST, Akai S3000, [E-mu] SP-1200 and a minimum of outboard stuff (I like my Lexicon MPX-1), and a nice warm 24-channel Topaz board. I love the combination of MIDI and digital audio. I started on an early version of Cubase on the Atari ST1040, and the mistakes it would make would be awesome! I can't get that loose on the Mac G3 or G4! Of course, they can do a lot more, but [they are] so uptight relatively. There's a lot of exciting soft and hardware out there... now they're actually creating programs that simulate what it's like for someone to misuse gear - it's too easy. The beauty of technology is using it in ways other than the manufacturer's instructions. This is how DJing began (subverting the brainiac's invention in a brazen display of resourcefulness and artistry)! Technology is only a tool - so even if I might get ideas from a piece of gear - the inspiration comes from a source way beyond the gear or even the people who made the gear. Gear doesn't bring tears to my eyes (not even when I can't fix it).

Q: What's your method for putting tracks together? Are you sampling from vinyl? Do you set out to make something in particular or do you just mess around in the studio and see what comes out?

A: I started out strictly sampling from vinyl and cassette. My intention, at first, was to exalt these old, crusty Egyptian tapes, sort of re-master and remix them. Mix them with hip hop beats to draw the musical dots very clearly. I felt that the first people that it would touch would be heads in search of cultural roots (re-education through music, in a way, because growing up in Ohio we never learned about the vastness and depth of African civilization, only the humiliation and savagery - truly scandalous) then it would just take its course. Now that I feel I've done that initial thing, I'm pretty aggravated with sampling (always some exceptions), but I feel a responsibility now to play stuff and record it myself. I've been recording percussion, cello, background vocals, rappers, guitarists, bassists and getting into playing my own drum loops now on my trap set. This is the ultimate goal. Sampling can still be an amazing thing as long as one does something really new with it. For me, it was more of what was available at the time. Just making tracks by any means necessary. Now, I can't set out to do anything specific because the creative process makes me run off in so many different tangents.

Q: What musical elements most inspire you - rhythm, melody, bass, texture, something else?

A: Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. I didn't wanna have anything to do with singers or lyrical/melodic elements in the beginning. I was actually very antagonistic towards those elements because I was so fed up of the ratio of things... melody=foreground, rhythm section=background, which has so much to do with cult of personality and not with music. Or the tradition of the virtuosic jerk-off soloist, etc. I'm still rhythm-obsessed but I'm open to the fact of using the melodic in the same way that Egyptians do, actually... to counterpoint the beat, to make it pop out of the background and not the other way 'round.

Q: How did you learn DJing and production skills? Mostly working by yourself, or working with other people?

A: DJing I learned by myself. Bought a pair of Technics from some teenagers from Staten Island who owed some party promoter dough. Locked myself in my bedroom for months upon months and hacked it out on my knees on the floor. Production came later when someone offered me to work in their studio because they saw the relativity of what I was trying to do with the Egyptian and Afro-American. They sat me down a few times for the basics and then let me figure things out. It helped immensely to be working in an environment where there were people who knew what was going on to ask for tech support.

Q: I've seen you perform a couple times at Frank's Lounge in Brooklyn, but I hear that you've been traveling around the world lately. Tell me about these more far-flung gigs - any particularly memorable performances?

A: I just played in Dubai this September - that was a trip! - at a club and in their Virgin Megastore in this enormous mall. Dudes walking around in their dash-dishes (traditionally gulf garb) juxtaposed with Arab Britney Spears look-alikes just staring at me trying to suss it... like the Arab Las Vegas... very weird. But the club gig was great. Local breakdancers that just went ballistic and couldn't believe some American-Egyptian was so on their wavelength.

Traveling is an awesome factor though. My favorite gig was in Brussels a few years ago at a free outdoor street festival... those are the best, 'cause you get grandma, the kids, the businessmen, the freaks, the immigrants, etc. Clubs, in comparison, have become horribly banal as kids are so jaded and just wanna party and get sodomized by the bass (not all clubs of course).

I guess I've been pretty nostalgic about Paris, too. The huge North African community really gets my shit there (and I get theirs)... I mean, it's like the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York who have figured out how to "assimilate" (as much as the government will let them) and not let go of their cultures, and imbue everything around them with their flavor.

Cairo was mostly stressful to play in because they're very proud of their music (all surrounding Arabified countries look to Egypt for the hot, swinging style), so to accept anything else (especially some half-breed flipping it) is, needless to say, very difficult. But I felt it was very important to be there. I learned so much.

Stockholm was cool, other than a middle-aged Swedish woman demanding that I play some "real, Oriental music" in the middle of one of my sets and cursing my music as "not Oriental." Wow! The authority that critics give themselves! I guess she wanted the Sheherezade, 1001 nights, harem, genie fantasy.

Q: So what makes a "successful" or satisfying performance for you? A good mix? Making people dance? Communicating some sort of message or vibe with your particular style of music?

A: One of the most successful gauges is when people are like: I've never heard anything like that before. Or even just seeing the expressions on their faces. Making people dance is great, but too easy. I'm more satisfied to flip their wigs a bit, make them see something in a way they hadn't thought about, and/or make them feel that thing that can't be described in words. Euphoria isn't quite it... that intangibly sublime quality of music that makes all feel connected to the greater pulse that runs the universe. Combining that with a cultural and political awareness (I'll mix in Jello Biafra playing the dual role of the U.S. secretary of war and Margaret Thatcher or a speech that I'll hack up by Charles de Gaulle or a hard beat with an Algerian rapper mixed in and out of an American rapper) - attempting interconnectedness, relativity and an adrenaline rush. I guess you could call it incitefulness/insightfulness. It's like, OK, let's recognize these worldly issues that divide us and bind us all (religion, politics, race, etc.) so that we can then move on to inspiration. Music is so amazing like that because it can teach us about the world and things and each other and languages and cultures, and then transport us beyond that same "knowledge" into another sphere completely.

Q: Do you feel that gender is a significant element in your experience of music, either in your professional experiences (i.e., how audiences perceive you) and/or in how you express yourself musically?

A: No, although I'm sure there's some scientific argument that my ovaries and estrogen have something to do with something, but if that were the case, I would say then that I must have a high level of testosterone. I also think so much of it is how we've been socialized. You know, the stereotypes that girls sing and are melodic, and therefore melody is feminine, and rhythm is hard and belligerent and aggressive, and therefore masculine. But when you look at how many cultures the women have been making the drums and beating them as well, you realize that we're living in a secretive Masonic society or something that has tried to make official rules to some old invented game between men and women. I really don't think gender has much to do with my creative impulses. I know this to be true from my earliest memories of those impulses. There was and is something so incredibly pure and transcendental about art. It goes so far, way beyond hormones and tits and dicks and twats, quite frankly. I just stick to this truth that I knew when I was little and not get caught up in bullshit.

It's interesting that just based on my sound and name people have mistaken me for a man. I used to get a great kick out of it because I felt somehow that I had a very strong, present legitimacy in people's minds - moreso as a man than a woman - now I realize how sad this truth is - what it says about how we think about sex. In my opinion, the more interesting people in the world are those who recognize both their female and male aspects. That's why I can't get with neither the self-pitying whining girly circles, nor the man-hating dykes, nor the gash-fearing fags, and especially not the "manly"-type pigs.

Q: So what are your current/upcoming gigs and recording projects?

A: As far as recording goes, I just finished a 12" for Sound-ink records that will be out before the summer called "HIGH ALERT" (featuring rapper 4th Pyramid), a soundtrack for the MEF documentary "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land" (on Palestine), some remixes for the Norwegian group TRANSJOIK coming out sometime this year. I also just finished an album with guitarist Morgan Craft called "ROUGH AMERICANA" - hardcore grit-prov; also played on Burnt Sugar's new album (I've been touring with them, a 15-piece conducted band). This Saturday I'm playing at a huge Palestinian benefit, called Artists Against the Occupation, at the Knitting Factory. That's the kind of gigs I've been doing lately. I find it increasingly harder to do work that doesn't address what's going on in the world.

Q: What are your plans for making music in the future? Do you think you'll be DJing, say, 20 years down the road?

A: I don't know if I'll be DJing in, say, clubs in 20 years. I would like to take ROUGH AMERICANA on the road... It's so exciting to be on stage with someone else that gets you pumped up and pummels. I'm not super social. Operating in large crowds can be draining. I do love using the turntables more and more as instruments (punching them to play bass or percussion, tapping the needle head, etc). My dream for the future is being more solid in the studio. Really having a full-on production company (albums/soundtracks, etc.), playing drums and setting up all my instruments to record (right now I only have 1 Shure 58 mic). Also, combining my first discipline (visual arts) into the company�making album/book covers, etc. That's more where I want to be. Hopefully having the platform to get messages across. That's what is so shameful about the industry in general, all these people that are adored and followed all over the world (e.g., Puff Daddy, etc., etc., etc.) and having the largest megaphone to their lips and only taking that opportunity to flaunt their wealth and shove more corrosive vomit (hookers, hookers, hookers; pimps, pimps, pimps) down their young fans' throats!!!

Check out Mutamassik's releases at www.sound-ink.com.