The easiest point of comparison for last night’s epic Moombahton Massive at U Street Music Hall is the legendary 1988 Slam Dunk Competition at the Chicago All-Star Weekend. The finalists were Michael “Air” Jordan of the hometown Chicago Bulls and “The Human Highlight Film” Dominique Wilkins of the Atlanta Hawks. Both earned their nicknames and a place in the hearts of basketball fanatics and popular culture because they could dunk. It wasn’t even so much that they could dunk, it was that in the expression of slamming a basketball through a hoop, they were creative visionaries who had the ability to capture imaginations in the simplest of tasks.
Literallly every major producer of the gestating genre of moombahton was waiting for tonight with bated breath. This was indeed the All-Star Game for the genre. Much like the All-Star Games were in the image rehabbing and rising in popularity 1980s of the NBA, this was a joyous events behind the scenes as regional, national and international stars could meet. However, when tip-off occurred it was an exposition of the grace, energy and power of something exciting, different and on the rise.
Calgary’s A-Mac opened and ran through a retinue of his own lighter yet still tremendous pop fare, which as moombahton started seven months ago was seen as cutting edge, forward thnking and really fun. His edit of A-Trak’s remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Heads Will Roll” and Modjo’s “Lady” are still fantastic, but now sounds like Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” as compared with MARRS’ “Pump Up the Volume.” Both were #1 hits in 1987, and both have merit, but are horses of a different color and breed.
Turntable Lab representer and Bersas Discos Records founder DJ Sabo was up next, and altered the landscape of moombahton forever. Let’s call it “moombahstep,” and let’s talk about his giant edit of Bob and Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle,” aka the horns responsible for the opening of House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” The sound is an iconic call to preparing to mosh and jump, and moombahton went from just being a sexy, Dutch house, cumbia and reggaeton related two stepper to having explosive depth and and harder tone. Sabo is also the man responsible for introducing house, alternative pop and bhangra elements to the genre as well, as he has taken favor to Cam Jus’ remix of MIA’s “Boyz” to great benefit in that area. Sabo’s set cast a wide net and returned more fruitful than ever before.
The Netherlands’ Munchi, the best producer of any genre under the age of 25 in the universe committed felony assault on a crowd with basslines last night. In his US debut, the man who has been making beats since he was roughly 11 years old ran through his string of inventive instant classics, namely his and frequent collaborator David Heartbreak’s reworkings of Big Pun’s “100%” and The Beatnuts’ “Off th Books” bringing lilting woodwind melodies to the party, extending into new tracks from his forthcoming debut EP for T & A Recordings invoking the theme to iconic 80s 8-bit Nintendo game Tetris. Munchi is to moombahton as DJ Sega is to club music. We took a brief detour from moombahton into Munchi’s kuduro flavored club music, his remix of Steve Starks’ “Git Em” sounding like a DJ Sega track with tribal drums being danced to by a herd of elephants. The set was completely insane, and as Sega’s club music does, re-sets all previous notions of wild and bizarre directions where elctronic dance music is headed.
In Dave Nada’s headlining farewell to DC set, the pater familias of moombahton ascended to new levels of terrific. We’re all completely aware of Dave’s talents as a producer, and they were on display here. From the now iconic tracks that started it all to his latest work in his Sol Selectas tandem with DJ Sabo, he was magnificent. However, it was his skill in masterfully DJing a set that icorporated every single element by pretty much every single producer of what has made his seven month journey into manhood as a professional possible that was inspiring on this night. Dave Nada created moombahton. Somewhere along the way, because what he created is so great, he’s been blessed to have been touched by a team of creative sources that may likely be greater than he is at what he invented. But in syntheszing those elements and nurturing the genre by makng the jagged edges smooth, or in honing directions the movement makes, he’s the leader moombahton needs to succeed. Like Deep Dish, Tittsworth, Scottie B, Toy Selectah and a likely plethora of others (who we could never likely entirely name in full, even if we tried) who have all in ways we’ll likely never understand influenced Nada and shown him how to be a steward of dance, his set showed a conscientiousness along with the typical punk inspired face smashing and heart melting side of the top selector and producer. It was a magical moment and another point of arrival of a humble man destined to be a superstar.
Moombahton has finally arrived in full. The world is not ready.
Dale!
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