THIS IS MUSHROOM JAZZ
House DJ Mark Farina keeps it on the down-tempo with his latest mix-CD
Hip-hop and house music are like oil and water, with rap fans pegging their up-tempo brethren as soft, and house fans saying the blunt-happy hip-hop game has gotten too materialistic. It's a sad impasse for two cultures born of the same inner-city 'hoods and both bred for party-rocking. There was a time in the late '70s and into the '80s when rap and up-tempo dance music were blood, when "Rapper's Delight" was based on the disco of Chic's "Good Times," when Blondie's Deborah Harry rapped to Studio 54 grooves on "Rapture," when MCs sported decidedly disco fashions such as leather pants. But as hip-hop went gangsta and house found its gay and Latin soul in New York, the two cultures gradually grew apart. Today, few seem to know that these genres share ghetto roots.
Few except house DJ Mark Farina, who has been on a one-man mission to showcase the cutting edge of dance-floor "down-tempo" - essentially hip-hop without a lot of rapping, or breakbeat house music slowed down to a jazzy pace. The sound is a reflection of Farina's upbringing in a Windy City that seemed to integrate sounds. "It was a great DJ breeding ground," he says of Chicago. "You would pull up to a stoplight next to black gangsters in a Cadillac who would be playing the same radio mix show as your Celica, except maybe more boomin'."
Farina's passion for down-tempo has made him one of the world's most in-demand disc spinners for the rare genre whose proponents also include the likes of Thievery Corporation, DJ Krush, and Tosca. But those artists have moved on to more experimental and organic sounds, while Farina has carried the torch for pure head-bobbling bliss and boom-bap beats. His latest mix-CD, Mushroom Jazz 5, isn't afraid of rap (DJ Numark's "Chali 2na Comin' Thru") or bass-heavy, bell-bottom beats (his own "Cali Spaces"). Farina's a hip-hop fan who's keeping the pose mellow - no playas or booty models required. Mushroom Jazz 5 is a fresh, nonstop journey of bling-free jams, mixed back-to-back. "It started out as an alternative to house, playing something different," says the DJ, who'll be 36 next week.
Actually, for Farina, it started out as a demotion. After taking to the turntables seriously around 1988, he became part of Chi Town's second generation of house producers, a rare middle-class white boy who infiltrated the black club scene. Growing up in suburban Park Ridge, Farina inherited his mother's love for radio, and by his teen years he was listening to first-generation house pioneers such as DJ Pierre on WBMX. Soon he was working at the city's Gramaphone Ltd. Vinyl shop alongside legends Derrick Carter, Ralphi Rosario, DJ Heather, DJ Sneak, Diz, and Miles Maeda.
In the early '90s, after rocking the radio with Carter on Northwestern University's WNUR and holding down the main room at Chicago's Shelter, he was kicked down to the club's Paramount Room, a side lounge. Farina had to tame his usual "jackin'" Windy City tempos. He found himself playing James Brown, De La Soul, and British "acid jazz." He commemorated the shift with a mix-tape compilation he called Mushroom Jazz. It flew out of the record shops, and Farina collected $10 on each sale, which he would then reinvest in down-tempo vinyl. By the time he moved to San Francisco in 1992 and '93 - "It was a slow move," he explains - he'd found a much larger audience for his funky, jazzy style.
"When I came out to San Francisco in those early '90s, there was actually an acid-jazz scene going on," Farina says. "And people would actually dance to it, which I had never seen."
To this day, Farina still draws large crowds as a big-room house DJ, known the world over for hand-raising house music with that telltale Chicago thump. But five Mushroom Jazz compilations after he first laid down his slow-baked vision on tape, he maintains a cult following that feeds off his down-tempo-only gigs for lounge crowds. Indie hip-hop, rap instrumentals, and funked-up soul live on next to house music, thanks to Farina.
"I always saw the two together," he says of down-tempo and house. "But Mushroom Jazz has become its own sound."Published: 03/17/2005
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