Arriving in America as a youngster in the fall of 1979, Dmitry Brill -- the future Supa DJ Dmitry -- may as well have landed on Mars. "Mork & Mindy" and "Dukes of Hazzard" ruled the tube, the Pirates had brought the World Championship to Pittsburgh and disco had reached its apex with the ascendance of dance-floor anthems by Gloria Gaynor, Anita Ward and the Village People. Glasnost groove spun
in the USASupa DJ Dmitry has forged a
beat that is truly multinationalBy Shawn 'Speedy' Lopes
slopes@starbulletin.comIt was a crisp autumn day when he touched down in New York to visit family, Oct. 30, to be exact, a date that has little meaning to a youngster from the Ukraine, but for his American peers, it was the night before Halloween -- Hell's Night.
"This is the night I arrived," he says with a chuckle. "I'd never heard of Halloween and I saw all these weird people dressed up in costumes, acting crazy and throwing things. It was like, 'Welcome to America!'"
Though he was immersed in a musical education since the age of 6, growing up in the former Soviet Union also meant limited exposure to pop music. "Finding new music could be problematic at times," he explains. "You know, you could work for a couple of months before you could buy something worth listening to. It was really rare to find vinyl, too."
Insulated from Western influence behind the Iron Curtain, Dmitry says he was not familiar with a lot of the funk, soul, disco or R&B hits of the era. "But even when I listened to the rock records, my favorite was always the funky ones. I was gravitating towards that kind of sound even then."
Where: The China House, Chinese Cultural Plaza, 100 N. Beretania St. Supa DJ Dmitry
When: 10 p.m. today
Admission: All ages
Call: 550-8815
His family resolved to stay in the country and received refugee status. Adjustment took time. Although Dmitry found himself far ahead of his high school classmates in a variety of subjects (thanks to a well-rounded Soviet state-sponsored education), he realized he had some catching up to do musically. When he was old enough to participate in the New York nightlife, Dmitry drew inspiration from watching some of the city's finest nimble-fingered club jocks and eventually procured his first set of turntables.
"One of the turntables didn't have pitch control and here I was trying to mix records," he says, laughing at the thought. "I didn't even have a table to put them on. I would just put 'em on the floor and lie down trying to mix."
It would be years before his first successful musical project -- the barrier-bounding and fashionably funky Deee-Lite -- popularized club music for the masses, but by the mid '80s, Dmitry and Kier Kirby (Lady Kier to the Deee-Lite faithful) were already expanding their musical vocabulary as a funk-based group, which came about, he says, "as a result of a psychedelic experience."When the acid house music scene exploded several years later, their love of rump-wiggling grooves, psychedelic imagery and one-world idealism found a perfect meeting place on the dance floor. It wasn't long before Japan-born DJ Towa Tei joined the World Clique.
"Towa used to come to the club I used to deejay at and hung out in the corner with friends -- all Japanese," remembers Dmitry. "One day he came up to me and gave me a tape. I thought, 'Oh, a tape. Thanks. Cool,'" he deadpans. When he finally got around to popping the tape into his deck, Dmitry was impressed enough to invite Towa to jam with his band. A recording contract with Elektra Records and global success for Deee-Lite in the form of a string of club and radio hits were just around the corner.
When the worldwide whirlwind psychedelic party ended in the mid '90s, Deee-Lite members went their own way, touring the world as heralded DJs-for-hire. The last Dmitry heard, Kier was living in London and Towa moved back to Japan to start a family. While he has been flown to every corner of the globe, Supa DJ Dmitry counts his visits to Hawaii -- once with Deee-Lite and another time as a solo act -- among his favorite all-time gigs.
"I loved the party I did on Maui," he recalls. "It was nighttime when I got there so I couldn't see much. But when morning came as I was doing my set, you realized you were in a forest. There were only 200 or 300 people there, but it was really one of the more memorable ones I've done. If the people are really, truly into the moment, that's more important to me than anything else. My whole reason for deejaying is getting that vibe across."
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