DJ chat: Afroboogie

e+ gets cosy with some of Dubai's most popular DJs. This week: DJ Afroboogie aka Nelson.

In brief
My real name is Nelson. Afroboogie is one of my artiste pseudonyms and my record label's name.

Plays at
Peppermint Club on Friday nights.

If he wasn't a DJ he would have been ...
A football player.

Favourite singer
Bono or Dave Gahan.

Favourite band
Depeche Mode, Duran Duran and U2, couldn't just choose one.

Musical influences
Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Stone Roses, N.E.R.D and the many producers of so many of the tracks I play.

Earliest memory of music
Singing Tainted Love by Soft Cell in front of the family as a kid.

Most memorable DJ experience
Playing to about 20,000 people at an outdoor rave in Johannesburg.

Why a DJ?
I have been a music collector for as long as I can remember. I started DJing in a club 16 years ago. It eventually became a career as I have been actively playing in clubs all these years. It was more like a natural progression for me rather than a chosen career. I have never really considered anything else, but if I could turn time back, I would probably have dealt with a few things slightly differently in my career.

Music makes the DJ ... his take
That's a very bad way of looking at it. If it weren't for the DJ, the people would never get to hear most of the music. It was always the DJ who made music famous, that was until video killed the radio star and MTV took over. On the other hand, from a club DJ's point of view a really bad DJ can have clubbers hotfooting it for the exit, reason why some clubs have such a short lifespan.

Are live bands better than DJs?
I am into all kinds of music whether it is played live by a band or off vinyl or CD by a DJ. The big question is whether that said stage act can make me have a good time. The context of this question however can be deceiving because if I go to a club I surely don't want to listen to music I have on a CD at home or that I can hear on radio every day. Honestly I would prefer to hear a cutting edge DJ that can blow me away with music I haven't heard, now that is what I call open mindedness and the will to not be a sheep all your life. On both sides of the spectrum it can go either way, you can have a DJ that has no presence in the booth and just looks down the whole time never making eye contact or you can have a band that just doesn't have what it takes.

The difference between a good mix and a filler
It's all about the vibe a track can create. Will it send everyone into a "hands in the air" move or just grooving to the groove? The fun part is to try and get people with their hands in the air by playing plain grooving tracks and mixing them to make great tracks.