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SXSW preview: New Orleans bounce with DJ Jubilee and Katey Red
I first stumbled across New Orleans bounce music back in the late ’90s when DJ Jubilee’s track ‘Get It Ready, Ready’ became a slow-burn urban club hit locally. Clocking in at nearly eight minutes, the song strung together a series of chants, snatches of song and shouted refrains over an irresistibly catchy 808 groove. It sounded like a full-force block party captured on tape and it instantly set a club off something fierce. I had never heard anything like it.
‘Bounce was in its full swing at that time,’ DJ Jubilee recalls. ‘We did (that track) in a studio (with) maybe 50-75 people. We brought a big old crowd. It was the first time in our neighborhood that somebody was doing something like that and they were so excited.’
Characterized by the repetitive drum machine grooves and a call-and-response song structure, bounce music sprang from the inner city streets and the projects in New Orleans. It has myriad sub-genres spanning everything from reggae to gansta rap. ‘We just incorporated every different kind of music in New Orleans and put it behind bounce music and it worked,’ Jubilee says. ‘We put Mardi Gras music behind it, a second line band behind it. We put every New Orleans flavor behind it and that’s what made Bounce more widespread.’
Dance was DJ Jubilee’s twist. His music drew on local dance crazes, calling out names of moves, cajoling the crowd to participate. While Jubilee never had a major break that put him on MTV or BET, his music traveled through the U.S. South on the collegiate circuit, and he has toured extensively through Texas and Louisiana. Signed to New Orleans-based Take Fo records, at the height of his popularity he was moving thousands of units through mom-and-pop shops and larger music stores.
Now with 18 years of experience in the music business, Jubilee spends his days as a special education teacher and recreation leader at a New Orleans public high school. The New Orleans crew heading to SXSW used an account on kickstarter.com, a fundraising Web site, to help finance their trip. Jubilee attributes the decline in bounce music’s profitability to changes in technology and the music industry in general as much as anything else. In the age of the Internet it’s hard for anyone to sell records. Nonetheless with a new album in the works he says he believes 2010 will be a special year. ‘The Saints won the 44th Super Bowl, Barack Obama’s the 44th president and I’m 44 years old,’ he explains, noting that his appearance in Austin will be his 793rd live performance. And the audience, he warns, will ‘need to be energetic and ready to dance.’
‘It’s gonna be a party,’ he declares. And his characteristic NOLA drawl has an implicit knowing wink.
‘Sissy’ rappers
New Orleans is a mighty unique place, and in 2000 as the bounce scene was booming, DJ Jubilee did something that would be considered unthinkable in much of the notoriously homophobic national hip-hop community — he persuaded his label to sign an openly gay rapper. Katey Red, the original ‘sissy’ rapper, is a 6-foot-2 transsexual. When Jubilee DJ’ed block parties in the projects, she used to show up with her posse to dance. ‘I didn’t know she was getting into the music business until one day I heard a street tape,’ says Jubilee. ‘I liked it because it was something different. It was going to add on to something to New Orleans. I knew it was gonna be a big hit.’ When he brought the tape to Take Fo the label execs were reluctant to take a chance on it, worried about how a rap outfit that signed a drag queen would be perceived. But Jubilee was persistent. ‘I kept saying man this is something new, something different. Watch, Katey Red she gonna set a new trend and everybody who call themselves a sissy would want to be a rapper. And that’s what happened. She set the whole tone, the whole movement of what’s going on.’
Incongruously, Sissy rappers rapidly became some of the most popular figures in the heterosexual bounce scene. ‘It’s just that the Sissies that are doing the bounce the people in New Orleans like,’ Katey Red explains. ‘Because the Sissies really know how to make you shake. They make the (women) shake like a dog, get on their knees and shake their (derriere) everywhere.’ Katey Red, who performs in full drag, is clear about the impact of her presence on the rap scene.
‘The message that I’m sending out is be yourself no matter who you are, no matter what you are, be yourself and be the best at it,’ she says. ‘I think if the bounce music gets around like it supposed to, like it should, you’ll see a lot more openly gay people (in rap).’
‘This is why bounce is still moving,’ Jubilee says. ‘Because bounce music is so intertwined with so much different flavor.’ — D.S.S.
1 a.m. Saturday at Submerged, 333 E. Second St.
If you like ‘Bounce,’ check out:
1. Bun B
2. Chalie Boy
3. Paul Wall and Chamillionaire
4. Killer Mike
5. League of extraordinary gz
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