DJ Mutamassik
Just before she made her first appearance in Ljubljana,
someone whispered in DJ Ritu’s ear, ”People here like techno and rave. So your mixes… I don’t know… I wouldn’t expect too much of a
positive response”. This illustrious backstage voice could not have been more
wrong: the audience danced ecstatically for hours to the music of the Asian
underground. When the Druga godba and City of Women invited her a
second time (1997), she was awarded ‘Best Foreign DJ’ of K4 Club.
So, we predict, without a shadow of doubt, that DJ
Mutamassik can expect a similar reaction. City of Women invited this
Egyptian-American DJ to celebrate its 5th anniversary closing party.
Her
sets bring traditional and popular Arab music together with hip-hop, jungle,
and hard-stepping drum'n bass. This “...highly regarded post-techno DJ ...” (to quote MTV News) began her career playing obscure Egyptian tapes at parties at David Linton's underground club The House of Ouch (in New York's Chinatown). She switched to turntables and started spinning at New York's illbient mainstays (Soundlab, Abstrakt, Konkrete Jungle).
For his Hyper Civilizado album Arto Lindsay asked her for a remix. The result (Mundo Civilizado Illumineti Mix) was praised as being the " ... closest thing to Lindsay's own concoctions in its grafting of disparate elements into something completely new".
Later she would remix the king of Latin ska, King Chango, for David Byrne's Luaka Bop-Iabel. But Mutamassik has also made a number of distinctive turntable appearances with musicians such as Butch Morris (she played alongside James Blood Ulmer, Melvin GI and Hahn Rowe in Morris' Holy Ghost Ensemble), or cornet-pl ayer Graham Haynes (in his Tones the 21st Century).
What makes the sets of this ‘Queen of the Nile’ so
attractive is not only that they are the product of the hands and ears of a
great musical talent — making it great music to listen to – but they are also extremely danceable.
If City of Women is the place where tradition meets
experiment, and where seriousness goes hand in hand with fun, then Mutamassik is the ideal ‘Master of Ceremony’ for
its closing party.
Organised by Mesto žensk
In collaboration with Klub K4,
ŠOU Ljubljana in Študentski
kulturni dnevi
