COURTESY OF GO VENTURES
DJ Reza is always a popular guest with local club goers.
Reza returns for
more no-2-alike mixes
By John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.comDJ Reza will be giving away 100 copies of his latest mix CD when he plays the Maze tomorrow -- and that'll be the only way his fans here in Honolulu will hear it. The mix is less than a month old, but Reza won't be using any of it during his two-hour set.
Where: The Maze, Waikiki Trade Center, 2255 Kuhio Ave. DJ Reza
When: 10 p.m. tomorrow
Tickets: $10, 21 and over; $15, 18-20
Call: 591-3500 or 921-5800
"As a deejay, I feel I'm kinda like an artist. My music is my tools, and the picture I paint is the mix that comes out with them, and I'm always using different colors," Reza (last name Gerami) explained during a telephone interview from his Los Angeles office this week.
"Every time I play, it's a different set. I play what I feel, how the dance floor's going -- every set is different. You'll never have me playing the same records in the same order."
That could be good news for hard-core denizens of the local club scene, since Reza is one of the more frequent visitors here. He presented a two-night Coastal Collective event with local promoter and deejay G-Spot in January, and he'll be back on June 7 for the Honolulu version of the Love Festival, a multimedia event that will include both live performers as well as a sound-and-light show.
"I play all over the country when I'm not touring my own parties, and Hawaii is one of my favorite stops," Reza said.
Reza got into deejaying several years after he founded Go Ventures in 1991 and established himself as a successful promoter of club events. In 1995, after amassing a extensive record collection and putting in "years of practice at home," he made his debut as a club deejay. From there he graduated to raves, after hours, festivals and concerts.
"I've been getting more gigs and playing bigger shows year after year, and just building on a base," he said.
Reza's base includes his position as CEO of Go Ventures, now a multifaceted production and promotion company that presents the Coastal Collective, the Love Festival and several other dance events. The company also represents several other deejays, as well as Reza's project with DJ Lenny V. that's called the L.A. Turntable Orchestra.
Reza says that his interest in different styles of music, and the depth of his record collection, is the key to his success as a deejay.
"I play an extraordinarily different type of music than your average deejay because I play a genre that represents about 14 years of collecting. ... The music I play is all dance music, on the house format, but I expand it to all different types of genres -- you'll hear a lot of tribal, a lot of drum sounds, a lot of big beats and a lot of build-ups in my set.
"It's a very crowd-responsive set, very audience participation-formatted. The music goes everywhere from jazz to funk to breaks to tribal to techy. It's really funky and it's really danceable."
His advice to aspiring club deejays: "Create your own music, develop your own image and don't forget the people who help you along the way."
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