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DJ WONKA: BMNCIN’ THE Hll> HOP
W hat is the music scene in this indie rock
centric town coming to? There are
tumtablists running around on the loose
with vinyl records and ProTools and CD burners
and no one's doing a thing to stop them. I even
heard one abusing a cross-fader.
And Athens disc jockey Chris Frankenberg is
the worst kind—a ruthless hip hop, trip hop,
down-tempo scratch DJ who wants to "make
people think." Now you can catch the former
host of 90.5's 'Organic Compound" on CD. Under
the moniker "DJ Wonka," he independently
released his first hip hop mix Certified Organic
this summer, and for the most part did things
"the hard way," handling the whole process
himself.
It doesn't take much to get this soft-spoken
UGA grad to yak about his music.
"There's so much homogenous music in this
town; there's also a lot of good music too," he
says, trying not to step on anyone's toes. As far
as tumtablism in Athens is concerned, it seems
there are "so many jungle DJs, it's kinda hard to
sift through." But fortunately, for diversity's
sake, "people are trying to expand that." And
for some reason, with all of the musical innova
tion in Athens, the urban sounds of turntablism,
and in particular hip hop, are slow to take root.
It was DJ Wonka's mission not only to intro
duce his favorite tracks to radio listeners in the
Athens music scene, but to showcase the under
ground electronic sounds people are not really
used to hearing (i.e. not the type created with
guitar amps in a garage).
The tracks on Certified Organic are meant to
be "something you can touch—like Jeli-0—it's
gotta stick to you a little." Perhaps the earthy,
indie-rocker types of this town find the idea of
listening to hip hop a little bit daunting." DJ
Wonka's advice (continuing with the Jell-0
metaphor) is to give it a chance, because "at
first, you think it's a solid, but then you realize
that it just has edges and you can stick your
finger in and get inside and that's where all the
real fun is... It comes into pieces and you can
put it back together again and squish it
between your fingers and squish it between your
teeth and then swallow it and let it grow inside
you and stay with you."
Yet he describes his compilation as the
antithesis of the typical mix CD, because it
tends to get slower and slower, more introspec
tive. At the beginning, it's all about having a
good time "without any pretension, like small
talk." It'll get you on your feet, or at least
doing a head bob from your chair to its smooth,
housey grooves. But the tone gradually turns
more somber.
"It's like when you get to know people, you
think they're great, but when you get to really
know them, you find out that they're just as
fucked up as you are," he says. "And if all you
do is small talk for 73 minutes—that's life’ess
to me."
On the air, DJ Wonka took turntablism one
step further, combining his DJ skills with his
talents as a production engineer to create some
thing different from what he could deliver live.
There's a lot of layering tnat you just can't do
with two wheels and a mixer. By using the dig
ital-audio workstation, including ProTools and
SoundHack, DJ Wonka was able to "mess with
things electronically" and experiment with
deverb, reverb, true-verb, compression, time
expansion, equalizing, phase shifting, panning
information, volume information—"all kinds of
neat stuff' he learned in Electronic Music
Composition at the university.
He also believes that there are two camps of
DJs: the camp that meticulously plans every
thing before it actually materializes, and the
types that just show up and create something
that "they Jidn't know they were going to
create." He claims to be part of the second
camp, and he may be when it comes to perfor
mance, but considering all the careful planning
put into Certified Organic, his work is very inten
tional and precise.
The messages behind DJ Wonka's album are
just as focused. In his remix of the DJ Krush
track, he overlays samples taken from a series of
short stories read by Charles Kurault. These
poignant and simple statements have surpris-
i n qly strong feminist overtones. He explains that
although there are positive things about the
position of women in Athens, "especially with
some of the organizations around here, I feel
like so many people have self-esteem issues."
He continues, "Hip hop is at a disgusting
point right now—ever since money got
involved, it's just gotten way out of hand. The
position of women in hip hop is unnerving to
me."
That's why he included a track featuring
strong-minded and sharp-tongued Sara Jones,
who "calls people on their shit." When he first
heard it, he knew he had to put it in his mix, he
said.
Same thing goes for Saul Williams. "Along
with the racism, feminism, sexism—every
thing—" says DJ Wonka, hesitantly. "I feel like
there's a potential, that I have benefited from
the fact that people whether or not they
know... 1 guess, in this town things are pretty
White. At hip hop night, it's wonderful to see a
more diverse crowd. It's not just black; it's
Asian; it's Indian; it's everything and I like that.
It could be a lot better, but it's Athens. What
are you going to do?
'The people in power in this town are mostly
white, but you look at the music situation in
this town—everyone's white who's in control of
some kind of club, some kind of magazine, some
kind of web site, any kind of venue, any kind of
media outlet."
DJ Wonka feels that the stigma attached to
hip hop events because of past tragedies like
the Fifth Quarter [where violent and unruly
crowds marred weekly events] are completely
irrational: "You never see anyone shooting any
body at "Day of Soul"... it's like Tet's make
some laws and keep them off the streets after 2
a.m. because they're so dangerous.' Give me a
fucking break."
He seems to have surprised himself a little:
"I guess I'm one of the few DJs with a social
agenda." And by the looks of things, an agenda
that is far too underrepresented in this town.
Cara Daly
DJ Wonka is relocating to New York City this
month. His new CD is currently available in record
stores downtown. 90.5 FM's "Organic Compound"
continues with host Nate Peeves every Saturday
night from Midnight to 3 a.m.
Jackie, Dana, & Joni
love their students!
WELCOME BACK.
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IS FLAGPOLE AUGUST 16, 2000