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This month, it’s Mumbai’s DJ Pearl in our hot seat talking about her love for vinyl, her frustration with forced deadlines and what it’s like when two DJs decided to share their lives and record racks!
The Record: It’s great to see a girl behind a console! You’ve formed an electronic dance music collective called Submerge. Tell us a little about that.
Pearl: Yeah, there are three of us ~ [husband, DJ] Nikhil Chinappa, Hermit and me. We’ve had some amazing clubbing experiences around the world and every time we came back to India we found the scene kind of regressing. As an artist myself I didn’t like the fact that DJs were being treated like jukeboxes here! We wanted to do our own little bit to change the scene. A lot of other DJs we spoke to at the time were also extremely frustrated and were really cheesed off about being told what to play all the time. We wanted to portray the DJ as an artist, which is what they are. It’s like, you can’t tell a musician what to play. When you go to see a performance, you sort of submit to them for those few hours, go where they’re taking you and enjoy the ride!
TR: How difficult was it to take DJin up as a career?
Pearl: It wasn’t easy initially. It took a lot to make people take you seriously. Family of course were worried especially because of the whole security issue, like ‘How will you come back at night?’ and things like that. But I always had loads of friends there so there was always someone who would accompany me coming back home, I took care of that. It was also a lot of hard work. I spent hours playing records, I insisted on learning on turntables. I wanted to use vinyl. I gave it everything I could and I’ve picked up a little quicker than I thought I would. I did experience some insecurity from colleagues, which I think is very natural and exists in every profession. It’s a sort of healthy competition, I think. It’s good because that means you’re being taken seriously! [Laughs] I look at it as a good thing.
TR: The most memorable venue you’ve played at…
Pearl: I think more than memorable venues, I have memorable gigs. The most memorable ones are the ones where the equipment messes up! [Laughs] There were times I’ve changed six turntables in one set while playing! We had a set of turntables one worse than the other because a lot of clubs don’t really keep the ones we need and we changed six in the span of my gig. Then the headphones gave out so we had a microphone that we put in the output and I listened to the sound out of the mic basically as a headphone. [Laughs] There are some bizarre situations to be put into and I think you can only get it when you really play live in front of a crowd.
TR: What’s it like for two DJs to be living under one roof?
Pearl: It’s crazy because there are records everywhere you walk. We’ve got a bit organised now, we’ve got a record rack. [Laughs] We have loads of music all the time; it’s always on in the house. Nikhil likes different sounds from me ~ every DJ’s style is different. It’s nice because there’s some variation then. We have a lot of stuff to discuss, we promote Submerge nights together, we share new music that we hear with each other. It’s great! It makes life very interesting.
You can read the rest of our feature on DJ Pearl in the July 2006 issue of The Record Music Magazine available at your local newsagent.
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