David de Barce makes happy people

Not Another Dj

So you can slap on a record or two. And your music idols are Sasha and Digweed and your favorite album is the "Ibiza Chill-out Ethereal Beach House compilation #64." You think Kraftwerk is a brand of string cheese and have no idea how '70s funk influences today’s techno hip hop. You've got the decks to get the chicks. Or you may be the opposite–the DJ geek who can trivially pursue some obscure Coltrane sample on track no. 15 of a really obscure German label that presses a record only once a year. You lock yourself in your bedroom mixing and hacking away with your two-handed techniques. You scoff at people who "just don’t get it."

Whatever. In the zeroes’ post-everything post-scene non-scene, the DJ as God is dead. Enter the unassuming bonhomie of bo-homie Frenchman David de Barce. At 18, he found himself on the twilight shores of Ibitha, lulled to a dreamy-waking state by the methadone rushes of tunes culled together by a certain Jose Padilla. It was morning-after-pill music, and it was to be forever immortalized as "chill out" in Padilla’s "Café del Mar" series. Swayed by its downy beats and cushy temperament, David fell into the life of playing downtempo music, via bartending, around clubs and bars in Barcelona. Describing what he plays, he says, "It’s a mix of downtempo, Latin jazz, rock, with an electronic beat… all good music!" David doesn’t really want to define, he prefers that you check into BBC’s Hotel Costes event and have a listen. "I’m going to start using the word NovaLounge in Paris!" he declares, claiming it’s the perfect term for all the stuff he’s been trying to express back on the Continent. A bit ironic that a collective from some random banana in South East Asia would come up with this all-encompassing phrase, seek David out and make the connection.

Hotel Costes is this really swank and posh restaurant/bar in Paris known for its A-list clientele and chokingly expensive drinks. The man who has institutionalized the hotel’s name as not just one but six de rigeur back-to-mine mixes is Stephane Pompougnac, himself the superstars’ DJ. Some years later, David was recruited to take over Stephane’s residency, a rather intimidating task considering, but he chose to differentiate himself immediately by laying down some roots, mixing old stuff with the new. "I would play some Marvin Gaye, some Doors…but nothing like Light My Fire, because the Doors have an immense body of work that not everyone is familiar with," he rustles in his deliciously twisted French-dipped accent. Something for everyone, he hopes. "I cannot really describe what I do, pardon my English, I only know that people like it." Stephane may equal the exclusive Costes, but David declined to be commercially associated with the brand name and chose instead to produce his own record in Barcelona, where the people were less hoity-toity, less fashionista, and more about good vibrations–hence his album name "Barcelona Paris", still elegant, but with more than a sprinkling of some tasty Latino lovage.

Trading in the traditional beret for a tweedy newsboy cap and grungily wearing a t-shirt, cut-off camos and tsinelas, David looks more like a beachy backpacker than someone who just flew in from the costly Costes. "I’m a simple man, really, and my work is simple." He doesn’t claim to be doing anything experimental or revolutionary, nor does he place himself in the ilk of either beat-mixing fanatics or superstar DJs. What he does is provide a kind of background mood music to beautiful imagery, be they people, a place, or an event. "The DJ is fading," he says. Rising to the forefront instead is a visual concept. If anything, he would like to call his musical work "cinematique", and this is, so far, as close as he can get to fulfilling his original passion, which was to make films. "I did not really intend on becoming a DJ, like how one plans on becoming a doctor. DJing, for me, is just an opportunity–I really wanted to make movies and music, but that was inaccessible to me because of study." Not one for the shackles of a 9-5, David followed the music, and this is where it took him.

Later That Night

We were standing outside the Vbar, around a beer-slopped table, laughing with the world. Next to me were two other writers, a Guatemalan consul, a French génie hydroponique, Kara Tolentino (the siren who lured David to our shores), and David de Barce. We talked about classic rock, Blaxploitation films, and French authors, and David quoted the first paragraph of Camus’ L’Etranger, in English. "This is what being a DJ is about–just like being a writer", he said, thumping his beer bottle down on the table for emphasis. "Travelling, meeting different people. Simple moments like this, just standing outside of bars, talking."

From Hotel Costes To Hotel Hostage

I knew it was going to be a good night, because beforehand, everything went wrong. Friends were late, our car got stuck in a ditch, and of course, rampant coup rumors raged. But David’s friendly, peacenik vibe resonated in the music he played, and true to his word he did drop in some classics, like Bob Marley’s Is This Love and the Rolling Stones’ Miss You, which had everyone going "doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo", easing themselves into a happy, forgetting mood… until the time when the evacoup-ation was announced, but to his credit David did remain unfazed. Indeed he had been forewarned about our "dangerous" country, but heck, every country can be dangerous and he was not one to forgo experience for other people’s prejudices.

His album was not as widely received in New York when he tried to promote it there, because, you guessed it, there whiffed of something French in the name. Did they perhaps advise it to be redubbed "Barcelona God Bless America"? David had also lived in Bali for six months, where he had a weekly gig at the former Sari Club, but left right before it was blown up by Muslim extremists. It was utterly devastating for him. Another event I wrote about a couple years back was held on the same day those five bombs were exploded around Metro Manila, engineered by the recently escaped terrorist Al-Ghozi. International DJ Josh Wink was freaked out, rightly so. This country is actually, really quite dangerous.

Mutiny At The Mall (And Everything's For Sale)

In mad times, mad acts are needed. Let’s see if things do shake up, but as history and memory seem to be played out like a skipping record, the song remains the same. In the meantime, do all you can from letting your youthful, idealistic brilliance slide into laissez-faire lassitude and irretrievable corruption. David de Barce has followed a simple philosophy most of his life, and that is to "respect everyone on the planet. With what I do, all I want is to make happy people. And don’t give up, never."

"One Night Only feat. David de Barce" was a BBC (Big Ben Collective) production, along with Globe GenTxt, Rustan’s U and Essenses. Watch out for upcoming NovaLounge events.

* * *

Email audreycarpio@yahoo.com