Louie Vega's Master Work
Veteran remixer is up for a Grammy, but his first true solo album is an even bigger milestone
It's a clear, cool winter's night, and the streets of Hollywood are deserted. Icy offshore winds sweep the sidewalks and scrub the deepest skies, revealing a sharp panorama of the heavens bright. Nary a soul stirs along Schrader Boulevard, but inside the rumbling walls of club 1650, there's a musical sermon going on - and the flock is thick, hip-to-hip, and havin' it. The godfather of house music makes a commanding stand behind the stage-top turntables, letting 'em rip with Latin bass-lines and sun-splashed disco grooves that tickle the stomach like food for the soul. Feet planted apart, he leans in to each deck and spins away. He has something to say, on vinyl: I'm happy, I'm carefree/I'm brave, I was born this way, sings a male voice, as the crowd amens with woots, whistles, and hollers.
Louie Vega is no longer "Little." At 38, he's all grown up, soaking it in, raising a family, releasing his first true solo album, and keeping his fingers crossed that his third Grammy nomination for a remix - as part of the Masters at Work production team - is the charm. Over the holidays, the Recording Academy's voters will be considering their final choices for the 46th annual awards, and Vega's looking for this big-time validation of his decades in dance music.
"I've been called 'little' for 25 years," Vega says, relaxing on a couch in his room at West Hollywood's Mondrian Hotel. He officially dropped the nickname this year. "It's time for a little bit of a change."
Masters at Work (MAW), which comprises Vega and partner Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez, was nominated for its remix of the Latin Project's "Lei Lo Lai," which reached No. 1 on Billboard's dance chart last fall. The track chugs forward like a steam engine but still jams out with celebratory lyrics and improvisational Spanish guitar licks. It's a dance-floor burner, but Vega worries that Grammy voters haven't heard it and might choose the remix of a more familiar name. (MAW is up against remixes of Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé feat. Jay-Z, Seal, and Tori Amos.)
"People who vote for Best Remix sometimes might not know the producer, but they know the song," he says. "You hope the voters recognize your name. It's a matter of campaigning and letting people know."
MAW remixed some of the most popular acts of the early and mid-'90s, including Michael Jackson and Madonna, but back then the Grammys didn't have remix categories; the dance awards were first included in 1998. And, as times changed, MAW's organic sound - the duo tends to add live music to the mix - gained in critical favor what it lost in popularity. Cheesier electronic trance and "progressive" house are today's remix styles of choice. Top remixers aren't trying to put jazz musicians on the dance floor.
Vega helped pioneer Latin-infused dance grooves and is beloved for his studio collaborations with clubland outsiders such as Tito Puente and George Benson. MAW brought respect and musicality to dance, a genre long dismissed as repetitive, hedonistic, and simplistic. By tapping his salsero heritage and dusting off unsung, orchestral disco, Vega made club sounds legit. For that, his crowd is ecstatic and thankful. The New Yorker calls Deep, DJ Marques Wyatt's night at club 1650, a second home for Vega. And it's going off like Sunday morning at the First A.M.E. Church. Other DJs attend just to take mental notes.
"Out of anybody who's done house, Masters at Work are the ones who brought it to a different level where it can be recognized as good music as well as dance music," says club Giant's DJ Sol, after observing the Sunday-night sermon at Deep.
Vega was born into New York salsa royalty: His father, Louie Vega Sr., was a sax player, and his uncle, Hector Lavoe, was a star salsa vocalist. "Hector Lavoe, Willie Colón - all these people being around my house, I have that in me," Vega says.
The connections would later help him gain entrée into a world of musicians otherwise closed off to the dance floor. Raised in the Bronx, Vega started spinning Latin "freestyle" singles at age 18. By the mid-'80s, he was the resident DJ at the reopened Studio 54, where house music pioneer Todd Terry turned him on to house-music. In the late '80s, Vega remixed such artists as Noel ("Silent Morning") in a freestyle fashion, but by the turn of the decade he'd converted wholly to the burgeoning post-disco thump of house. He paired with future salsa star Marc Anthony, who as a child had looked up to Lavoe, to produce a well-received 1991 album that included the No. 1 dance hit "Ride on the Rhythm" and an appearance by Puente. "He was like a father to me," Vega says of the Latin percussion star, who died in 2000.
The DJ feels he has a responsibility to Puente. "He said, 'When I'm gone, I'm going to need guys like Louie and Kenny to carry my music on' - and we will be doing that," Vega says.
Throughout much of the '90s, MAW churned out hit remixes of pop stars' work while maintaining an underground base with keen house-music production (working with vocalists Jocelyn Brown and India, a future Spanish-language music star whom Vega would marry and later divorce). In 1997, the duo dropped its pièce de résistance, its Nuyorican Soul project. Vega tapped old family friends and others to assemble an all-star roster that produced heartfelt salsa-house, down-tempo soul, and jazzy breakbeats. The historic album featured Puente, Benson, Brown, India, Roy Ayers, and others. A critical success, it helped the duo not only gain recognition but also achieve legend status in the clubs.
"What Kenny and I did with house, no one else had ever done," Vega says. Although some considered the genre's 4/4, thump-a-thump rhythm monotonous and stifling, MAW opened it up to endless possibilities while giving new life to salsa and jazz. "We brought in everything to that style of music," he says. "The Nuyorican Soul project became a turning point in dance music."
Indeed. Now Vega has found his personal turning point with Elements of Life, his first true solo artist album, set for a March release. Featuring his nine-piece salsa-jazz band, the collection is smooth and reverent, stepping through Bronx ballroom grooves with the lightest of feet and celebrating the joys of being. The single "Elements of Life," already leaked to dance floors worldwide, is a conga-fueled, sunshine-filled ode to his new family - vocalist Anané and son Nico. Several tracks feature playground sounds and babies' giggles. The album attempts to put the darkness of the post-9/11 era farther behind and foreshadow brighter days.
"My son was a year and a half [old] when 9/11 happened," Vega says. "'Brand New Day' was about him, to let him know we're not going to let anything bad happen to him. That's what it's about," he says of his music, "family, life, spirituality, culture, and language. It's a mix."Published: 12/24/2003
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