COURTESY OF COLUMBIA RECORDS
DJ Rap (Charissa Saverio) does it all: Playing in dance clubs worldwide, produces and writes music, does documentaries and a bit of acting.
The similarity between wine and dance club music jelled during our conversation with DJ Rap. Who but a full-time wine connoisseur can keep track of the countless varieties of fermented grape juice that are out there these days? And who but a world-class deejay can knowledgeably categorize and define the ever-growing list of genres and subgenres in dance club music? Vintage spinning
Drum 'n' bass gets poured out
By John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com"There's basically a zillion different types of dance music," DJ Rap explained via cell phone from somewhere in Southern California last week. Born in Singapore, based for most of her illustrious career in England and now living in Los Angeles, the christened Charissa Saverio will spin at the Maze tomorrow night.
Honolulu club-goers will experience DJ Rap in her element as a specialist in "drum 'n' bass and break music," but this female pioneer is also a multifaceted artist and evidently quite adept at multitasking as well. She's the head of Proper Talent records and an active artist-producer who writes and records original music ("That's kind of like the commercial side of me"), and also performs as a vocalist.
Her current projects include promoting a recently released retrospective on her early work titled "Propa Classics Volume One," preparing for the release of a new CD in July and working on an album of new music that she plans to release in 2004. As if that's not enough, she also expects to do a television show, and will be going to Africa later this year as part of a human rights project to document the use of children as slave labor in the African chocolate industry.
Where: The Maze, Waikiki Trade Center, 2255 Kuhio Ave. DJ Rap
When: 10 p.m. tomorrow
Tickets: $10, 21 and over; $15, 18-20
Call: 591-3500 or 921-5800
"I'm doing two documentaries later on this year where I go to the Ivory Coast and we try to make people aware that a lot of chocolate growers use slave labor, with children carrying 40-pound sacks of cocoa beans on their backs and getting beaten and stuff like that. We're trying to make people aware of the chocolate growers that do that and those that don't ... and we're going to be putting up a list of the 'good chocolate' and the 'bad chocolate.'
"I'm going to be roughing it," she said, explaining that her film project isn't a do-gooder celebrity's high-profile junket or photo op. There'll be no luxury hotel suites or limos involved, just a sincere grass-roots effort to make a positive contribution outside of the music industry.
"I'VE NEVER been just a deejay," she said in explaining her other activities.
"I started off in 1989, producing tracks, before I became a deejay, and I've always been about doing eclectic music styles. I have two radio shows ... and there alone I'll play four different types of music (and) I'll have guests that do different stuff, so I could have jungle, breakbeat, trance, house, you know. And I'm just all about music, period, doing as much as I can do that I'm capable of and not just sticking to one thing."
It was at that point that the similarities between wines and dance club music kicked in.
And just as the subtle difference between wines are best appreciated by tasting them, the nuances of dance club music can't be conveyed with conventional musical terms.
"I could say to you that techno, trance and house music, has a four-to-the-floor beat, and it's a pulse ... whereas (with) breaks and jungle, it's beats that are broken up. But you still have to experience it -- explaining it is like trying to explain what a Picasso is like," she said.
"On the 'Propa Classics' album, you're hearing the early drum 'n' bass that I helped pioneer. It's the early stuff from around '89 to probably '96, '97, maybe '98. It was in its baby steps then, drum 'n' bass, and it was all new. The stuff that I'll be playing in Hawaii is more modern, but I always throw a few classics in."
With so many projects going on simultaneously in her wide-ranging career, it's not surprising that Saverio has been studying acting as well.
"I've been offered two parts in different movies, and I wanted to understand that world. If you were presented with an opportunity, you'd want to research it, too, and make sure that you knew enough about it and had the skills required. ... So if the right thing comes along, I'll know what it entails and how much time I'll have to put aside.
"Music is my career choice, but because these opportunities have come my way, I wanted to be well prepared. People understand that I can pretty much be a chameleon and put myself into a situation so long as I believe in the product or the event. It's important to do that."
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