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DJ Reach is biting on his nails (figuratively) in
his uptown apartment as time is ticking. As we are
wrapping up his interview, he mentions that he needs
to get downtown to Marquee, one of NYC’s most
exclusive (midtown) clubs, for his Thursday-night
residency. Tomorrow he will board an airplane with
several crates of records to his Friday residency
at Tao, Las Vegas’ premier nightclub frequented
by Hollywood stars year-round. We spoke with superstar
DJ Reach and found out in this month of ‘giving’
how he reached the top of the club DJ game.
Given the Tools
Semu ‘DJ Reach’ Namakajo received a
turntable for Christmas at the age of 13. His brother
dabbled in DJ’ing and already owned a turntable
himself, so with that hand-me-down, the DJ setup
was (almost) complete. Reach definitely needed the
equipment, but the real story behind his development
as a DJ lies in the music.
Growing up, Reach was exposed to music from all
corners of his life. His Hip-Hop influence came
from his first roommate: his older brother. The
music he played - The Jackson 5 to UTFO, BDP, A
Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Slick Rick -
provided the background music to his teenage upbringing.
“I’d be playin’ with my toys while
my brother would be on the phone with girls, all
while this type of music was playing in our room,”
Reach recalls.
It was at private school outside of his hometown,
Harlem, where Reach met friends with a taste for
alternative music. While Reach still loved Hip-Hop,
away from home he was introduced to bands like Guns
‘n’ Roses, Nirvana, and Bon Jovi. It
was this broad exposure that gave Reach his “mental
rolodex” of songs to run with, which gave
him an advantage in building his niche as a DJ.
Giving Up Meals
“I would have $5 for
lunch money everyday. I could buy my stuff cheap
at the supermarket and make a sandwich for lunch,
I could get two slices of pizza, or I could get
records,” says Reach. It wasn’t much
of a puzzle for him as records soon became the only
way he quantified money. “Twenty dollars would
buy 4 singles, or an album and 2 singles.”
Giving it a Shot
Reach has been attributed
to being one of the first people to put in high
energy Rock & 80’s music into a Hip-Hop DJ set.
“I don’t wanna say I was the first guy, but I really
pushed forward with it and to make it a staple part
of my set.”
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While it wasn’t the norm of the party scene even less
than a decade ago to introduce different genres of
music in Hip-Hop sets, Reach was upright in his approach
to it all. Sometimes it wasn’t received well. “Some
people would look at me like I was crazy, but you
know that they made that mix CD with those exact same
songs, jamming in their room.”
This gut feeling that he was doing something right
by diversifying the music format kept him on track
with his soon-to-be-successful style of DJ’ing, even
with the unforgiving looks. “I’d be playing a Nirvana
album cut or Bruce Springsteen cut among my staple
Hip-Hop and even DJ’s would be coming to me asking
me, ‘Who is that? Who sings that?’ Not to discredit
those DJ’s, but bands like Nirvana just weren’t on
their radar because they weren’t exposed to it.” It
was with these varying musical styles in his cohesive
mixes that helped get Reach in the doors of New York’s
top clubs like Marquee, Pangea, Life, Lot 61, and
Sweet 16.
Giving Up on Vinyl?
With so many DJ’s
making the move to Serato and the conveniences it
brings, it is a wonder that Reach continues to play
out with only vinyl. “Not to sound like a
dinosaur, but I have a certain level of attachment
to these records.” He asserts, “I spent
my lunch money and work money; my peers were spending
their time playing ball and chasing girls. When
I wasn’t chasing girls myself, I would be
going to Jersey or one of the boroughs to get records
that I was searching months and years for.”
Reach’s ability to rock the house without
the use of Serato attests to his sheer ability to
read the crowd and please them without the comfort
of bottomless digital crates and automatic cue-points.
“I feel like I will be switching [to Serato]
in ’07,” Reach confesses. Slightly hesitant
to do so as he considers it sabotaging all his efforts
to resist the temptation, he admits that the new
technology “makes it seem like the possibilities
are endless.” Again referring to himself as
a dinosaur, he compares his use of vinyl as a DJ
to the movie-buff still on VHS tapes rather than
DVD’s. Reach does make it clear before the
end of our conversation though that he’ll
“always incorporate vinyl into [his] sets.”
For more info on DJ Reach,
check him out at www.dj-reach.com or
myspace.com/djreach1
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“The Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital
of New York Presbyterian is the oldest children’s
hospital in the country,” says Joan Bompane,
the hospital’s Child Life Director. “The
hospital is the children’s whole life; they
live there, they receive treatment there, they get
their education there and even play at a playground
that’s actually inside the hospital.”
The room is filled with chattering children, while
the DJ’s are setting up to showcase their talents
for their eager audience,. “Some of these children
have families, some don’t,” says Mrs.
Bompane. Those with families sit constructing
reindeer of paper machete while some nibble on the
festive Christmas cookies. Those without families
were group together around nurses.
Grandwizzard Theodore greets her with a warm smile.
Before he has a chance to show the little girl how
to put the needle to the groove, the rest of the children
jump up and partner with a DJ for the day’s
lesson. 