DJ and Artist Shaun J Wright with guest host Producer Wes Green on the Vintage House Show

0:00lot all three of you have done amazing you know have had amazing contributions to what we call house music you know this is the vintage house show and so part of what that is about is celebration and preservation this is lauren spraining but the celebration and preservation of chicago house legends and chicago house music what's up family this is the vintage house show on wnur 89.3 fm

0:39evanston chicago we have a pivot today we are not live in studio but we are live on the stream on our twitch youtube and facebook live pages with none other than sean j right and dj wes green louis green gentlemen what's going on hi how are you hey how's everybody doing yeah good welcome to the show of course louis green is part of the vintage house show fam he's been around for the 10 years

1:13we have been celebrating uh the history of house music but we have a phenomenal special guest that louis hooked us up with uh sean j right fresh off the chicago house music festival which it was a surprise to me to see you at that wonderful fest yeah how'd you feel about doing that talk to us about how that came about and your time at the chicago house music festival i was recommended by an old acquaintance and friend um andrew emel who goes by change request to um be a part of the

1:49festival i didn't know they were going to have me in the last slot so although that was a pretty big surprise but i was honored i um have really gotten a chance to play in um big spaces like that in chicago specifically like you know i've never done a pride festival here i've never done a big house music festival um to that scale so that was really really cool that is super cool and you know i was going to sort of save this to the end but you know we're just going to pop in and we're going to go back and forth and here and there on this but you know i wondered about that like you know that festival

2:23this year was really special to me i thought it was special i think you know it had been moving here and there the timing had gone from sort of memorial day weekend sort of sort of competing with detroit's movement festival and then it was in different neighborhoods it was a lot going on and my team the vintage house show team were part of the group that uh helped curate the um show for some time for about three years straight and so we were concerned like you know do people know what's happening

2:56you know did we get the lineup in and time enough did people know what's going on and i just felt like at 11 o'clock when that thing opened people were coming down people were at all three of the stages people were hanging out just having such a good time and i felt like that was a very special show um you know so unlike you know maybe some other times when maybe just hadn't been as as well received in different places throughout the city tell me some other places that you feel like you know you know where would you want to play so in chicago and outside of chicago

3:32nationally internationally what are some of your dreams of places that you'd like to to play sing dance spin um specifically in chicago uh the lodge post family gatherings with craig loftus um who was a big big hero of mine growing up um i used to sneak into the prop house many many years ago okay um

3:58one day would be an honor to like aspire to the chosen few stage to work towards that i don't know if my sound would necessarily be what fits there but it would be just like the greatest thing to have that like that under my belt that chicago moment nationally internationally give me some international um seoul korea so where's that what is that so korea so you said korea i was like

4:30i've had the fortune the fortune of playing a lot of places around the globe so i still haven't been to the continent so south africa i know there's some really interesting um musical movements happening in uganda and kenya so i would love to check that out um to to play there but also just to absorb the cultures um india as well yeah those are great places those are great places but okay so we talked a little bit about sort of what you aspire to but now we're gonna this is the vintage show and we talk

5:03about sort of your beginning how you're introduced to the music and of course you know the future of the music and you are that future but let's talk a little bit about your beginnings uh in the chicago suburbs tell us tell us where you were born where you grew up where you went to grammar school high school and how that in the music that you heard around those times what was impacting you musically it's specific because i was born in 1982 so i'm in maywood um in house music engineering and on the radios

5:37and uh just a part of the ether as a child so i didn't really recognize it as something uniquely special until i was about 10 or 11. and i attended um emerson elementary first then urban elementary and then roosevelt elementary my last year of grade school in high school at proviso east in maywood too and house music was just ubiquitous it was everywhere there was the music we danced to at

6:07schools um i remember like school dances especially in high school where we had the chance to like select who we wanted to dj if you were on class council or student council and we were able to acquire names like you know jamming jerald or wax master because the full tapes were really popular at the time so they had a huge influence on what we were doing and i was also dancing at the time in the like street dancing i was foot working i was in a group called mega sweat um which is a spin-off of main attraction if you're familiar with that underground juke what became juke culture but

6:43did you say mega sweat mega sweat yeah i was i gotta make i i love to make fun of the early dj names and the early groups it's like yeah like and you were like mega sweat that is tight man you're like this was the best yeah i can't claim the honor but the the year before i joined they went to the apollo and won shut up yeah wow that is so awesome yeah so my girlfriend who brought me into the group got to have that experience and like yeah they didn't make the television show but they won like one of the

7:17you know they would have rounds all throughout the week yeah so super cool that is so awesome okay so you grew up you were dancing in maywood with mega sweat i was dancing with mega sweat i started studying west african dance intentionally like we had um a dance troupe an african dance troupe at my high school at proviso east started by this wonderful teacher uh mrs robinson and she would um extend my

7:48lessons and take me because i had such an interest in it she would take me to mount two on saturday mornings and we would go to class every week she would just pick me up faithfully and we would drive to the south side wow um so that became a big part of my studies as well yeah that is so cool that uh you have such teacher i'm happy you can give her a little shout out yeah those are the kinds of influences that we all need certainly to take us to the next level so we have to be so appreciative of our teachers it was major for me gotcha yeah so what so then you know i would love to go down a

8:22deep dive on the dancing thing because there's a lot of djs i interviewed a wonderful dj who passed not too long ago uh dj cowboy he is from chicago ended up in atlanta for some time but he started out sort of dancing and then skate you know skating of course he was like a skater they had a skating crew and then they had a dance crew that he then went to mendel and start you know sort of dancing with and i see this guy and then you're like you don't even look like you can move okay like you i can't even tell you could do anything but you know that's how he started off and then became

8:56a pretty major dj it was a radio dj and then a sort of also a house music dj in atlanta for years was top of the line and that but it starts with sort of dancing and then sort of understanding the music so so you were dancing to sort of juke you were doing you know sort of that kind of thing and then so in high school so proviso east you know house music is music is everywhere and you decided to attend more house college yes i was initially intending to design roller coasters

9:28um but i always wanted to be a dj so in the back of my mind at 12 years old i'm like my mom got kind of religious and it became difficult to like listen openly to house music because there was an affiliation with like queerness and a discomfort around because her sister was going to the warehouse and she knew what that was and like there's this world of you know misunderstanding um and a little bit of ignorance that we've you know vastly overcome in the last 20 years but i had to like get the music

10:00so it was like my secret it was my special place but i thought being a dj was like this just radically far-off dream you know i didn't i didn't foresee it being possible i thought it was like a shaman who was ordained by some other higher figure because i had so much reverence for the culture right um and so my interests were elsewhere and i was you know thinking i'm gonna design roller coasters and i was gonna go to mit and then i ended up going to atlanta for a family reunion when i was about 16.

10:31and so all those beautiful black people and i was like i'm not going into college anywhere else but atlanta nice um so was your major engineering it started off as engineering and then i quickly realized i did not like physics

10:49i realized this in like high school too i was just like i just i could do it but it was outside of my realm of thinking like it was on the other side of my brain it was it was it was static in a way they were like definitive terms and ways of doing things you could explore outside of that but i just i was more i think creative okay driven so uh yeah i did that for the first i like literally graduated high school and went to college for a summer program for engineers the next day

11:22nice i couldn't get out i couldn't get out of chicago and maywood fast enough i gotta go and i left um and by the end of that summer i was like yeah i think i'm gonna register undecided it because i was fortunate enough to get a um a scholarship that wasn't necessarily focused in any particular subject it just okay general you know full tuition yeah so it was just like i can make i can maneuver with oh wow you had a full scholarship i did wow that's really great okay that is

11:52amazing you know i am gonna i'm gonna let louie jump in but i do want to go back to something that i think is very important to highlight as it pertains to house music and how uh older people and parents and more mature people sort of um how they treated the music form which is new which is birthright here in chicago and what they associate it with that could be negative uh some positive some negative people were sometimes afraid of the music um you know what are you listening to what are you going to you know

12:24like again if you think about i always love to think about back in the day probably before you're born when prince came out people thought it's devil music if you play the song the album backwards you're gonna these terrible things gonna happen to you you know it will be cast or something yeah yeah it's like it was it was seen as deviant in some regards yeah and also the association with it i'm sure she was facing fears of like you know like hiv phobia and all these things that are correlated with queerness that are necessarily true but happened to like be widely present and like propagandized at that time too so

13:01this is the 80s and 90s so she was like oh i don't know about this but now she's like she's team everything i do so in 1990 is when congress passed a law saying that insurance companies had to treat aids patients and had to pay for their uh for their uh medicine and so that was that was a huge thing in the fight against hiv at that time i remember that i remember watching the financial news network and saw that come across the screen and i like literally fell out my chair i was like wow that was

13:35amazing yeah it was an interesting time i would say around then too you know there's backlash just against so many people there's a lot of drug use of course hiv people are again so many things are happening and now you know we relive this as as adults with so many different things you know what i mean with covid with financial crises with war you know it changes all of our lives sometimes with different things but okay so we're gonna we'll we'll move forward we'll talk about sort of more house college so more house and then but first of all so you can sing so when did you realize you

14:09could sing and then how did singing jump into this you know sort of your career here i um i knew i could carry a tune my mom's an incredible singer and my family is not i won't say like hardcore musicians but fairly musical my grandfather could sing my grandmother was a beautiful singer um so i knew i could carry a tune but i didn't think much of it because you when you grow up in the church in those environments where singing is like very prominent i was like i'm not doing what they're doing so i didn't get

14:41into the vision myself in that space but um the first time i actually sang in public was eighth grade and you won't believe what i sang because my teacher heard me humming in the hallway and she she was like oh you're gonna teach you're gonna um you're gonna perform at the black history program and i was like what i was like i had never sang in public i had never just i had never sang before right um

15:05and she forced me to and she made me pick out my song and i picked out the shade damier or shay and ron trent's remix of day by day by da jay because it was an instrumental of the song on the maxi single okay um so imagine me like 14 years old at like irving no this is roosevelt in broadview illinois singing and i have like four background singers my friends and oh we didn't know what

15:35we were doing yeah yeah but that's how like important house music was to me i'm like oh i'm gonna sing a house music song nobody in the audience knew that song at all of course um but yeah that was just my conviction i just loved it so much and then the next time i sang i was in the gospel choir for one of my electives in high school and the teacher again he made me um he's like if you're not going to perform the solo then i'm going to fuck you so it was a threat it was like threats and then i didn't

16:06sing until i was about 27 from that yeah and that's a whole nother story when i drew hercules a love affair which was this band that kind of got me got my wheels going like okay i can actually do music this is what i want to do okay yeah okay i'll let louie you can jump in so since you were already talking about the music part like what what equipment do you use to make your music because that's something we don't really talk about a lot you know when we interview producers and djs

16:40like what what what what is your your favorite tools i'm super simple because i'm not incredibly tech savvy um but i i use logic and native instrument tools arturia machine okay i've fiddled on hardware before but it's not it doesn't there's so many sounds available now i'm in a different time so i find the ease of use um very convenient yeah yeah but yeah i tend to have a machine and yeah yeah i love machine

17:18too that's not pretty much that and use uh cubase for my mixing but i use machine for my production stuff unless i'm using my old school you know hardware yes he's no one and all that kind of stuff one of my production partners like a few of my product well my primary production partner who have a label with twirl she has some hardware stuff and so sometimes we'll work on her hardware stuff but oftentimes we just find ourselves kind of like back to arturia back to these um synth sounds that kind of emulate the old school thing yeah which also it also has like a different kind of pop to it

17:51right like it it sounds it's we can have the aesthetic of something older but it doesn't necessarily sound the way it sounded in the 80s or the 90s which is i think is a fresher approach in some ways because i don't believe in trying to recreate what has been done before i think i think using modern um technology or

18:15capacities affords us a a new landscape yeah definitely does it was back when i was doing it you had a four track a keyboard and a drum machine and if you had anything else you would probably burn it for somebody else like yeah and you would die to buy a great keyboard that had a bunch of sounds on it or something like that but you just didn't have the money so and look at the resourcefulness like what they were able to create what you were able to create um with the limited capacity i think

18:48that's also what draws me to like kind of working within these smaller parameters because there's something that happens um organically when you when you limit yourself to like i got five ingredients and this recipe is gonna work i'm gonna turn this recipe six different ways or 20 different ways it's five rest of like five ingredients you know yes that it is exactly you i'm a big proponent of mastering what you have and using what you have instead of trying to buy something else there's some things you have to

19:19you know buy something else but master what you have first and that's that's always been my advice to people um so i agree with you on that i wanted to ask you when when did you well okay when did you first start djing and then the follow-up question was who taught you how to dj um i first started djing well practicing in 2000 uh 2000 2001 and it was my best friend's cousin his name was jahan jones

19:49uh was a very local dj in maywood but he had a setup he had a cdj setup and he would let me come over when i was on break from school um because now i'm able to drive and move around i'm 18 19 years old so i'm like i'm i'm feeling grown so like i'm going over there he would just let me loose in his room and he would show me one thing and he was like okay now figure it out right which i was like you know you're just leaving me hanging but i didn't realize how important that would be right so like

20:20to problem solve when it comes to djing and like learning the mechanics was instinctual more so than like prescribed um which i think in the end i know i'm kind of rushing past that uh the question but in the end i think that helps to allow me to have my own way of making beats match and blending um because nobody actually told me you got to do it like this yeah so when i went to see you dj

20:53when steve hurley was djing at uh the smart bar and i saw you come on and dj at first i was like man you got to play behind steve hurley but then when you started djing i was like whoa like this dude like no he can spin you know i came back i told lauren and and mega and uh gas to me i was like this dude no for real he could spin i mean and then when you started bringing in the vocal tracks and you were hitting the jog wheel to keep it on beat you didn't even adjust the pitch i was like damn that's

21:26like what i used to do back in the day with records you just twist the knob you know the little record knob just to keep it on beat because you know you might have a slb uh you know uh turntable and you didn't have it was like a it wasn't a 1200 so hitting that pitch it would just go drastic so you didn't do that you just knob a little bit and you would you would i was like i was just sitting there like i was a fan man i was i was like this dude is killing it right now you know what i was like

21:58a straight fan you were killing it bro like real talk so i gotta stop because i'm gonna keep going into that but then we continue the the the lessons thank you so much for that um yeah playing at the steve so curly is like i feel like i've been able to reach a lot of the things that are effort like beyond what i could have imagined because that's such a cross generation like even though i'm not that young i um i started making my name later and i was closer to 30 than i was to 20

22:30working professionally in music so um to have that crossover with someone of his caliber um is meaningful yeah and i and i definitely um have benefited from his legacy and the work of you know everyone from that time and so it's an honor always um to not just be in their presence but be able to like be on the bill alongside them right like it's huge it's it's it's what my little 10 12 year old self was like whoa dreamed about this i dreamed about you know stays with the mr jack

23:07jack jack jack jack jack yeah that was crazy um honey jajon came and sat behind us while he was djing and while you were djing too you knew that right okay i've had a few chances to play with honey too and it's always been i mean she's a teacher yeah yeah she's she's masterful too so yeah it's a dream come true in a lot of ways but moving i want to throw in someone else who also taught me i think who had more of a hands-on kind of way of teaching me not just with um technique because he didn't really show

23:42me technique but he um showed me more so about flow and patience and understanding what a room needs it was a a co-worker of my best friend when we were living in harlem around 2007 or 8. uh he was a dj too he moonlit as a dj he worked in fashion he used to do a and r for a lot of different dance artists so he was in that world um playing in brooklyn but by the time we encountered each other he wasn't playing

24:13as much so he had time and capacity to show me and i was like you know i would love to further my education on this because i didn't have a setup of my own i just got a setup my dj set up properly last year really yeah okay i've been faking it this whole time okay take it till you make it bro but um he uh was incredible his name was bill brown okay um and i would he was he was like you know you're not going to really learn this by doing this in the room by yourself so let's have like a little

24:47get together and we started to have like these weekly brunches every sunday we called them the brunch they started like two or three and they were going to like midnight or one and i would just play for like seven or eight hours just non-stop just non-stop and all my friends would be there we would like potluck and cook and commune and it was just beautiful but sometimes i was just like play some techno or play whatever i was feeling right right and he was like let me get those decks for a minute and he would come play something soulful and the room would just like and i was like oh it would

25:20change right i was like oh yeah i'm not just playing for me i'm practicing like this was right this was and this went on for like two years so this is like before i joined hercules i joined hercules and then i started playing professionally after that but he really schooled me in like finesse yeah and you know i i was talking to somebody like a few weeks ago and i've opened a few times roy davis jr and um and i was telling one of the djs i said you know i asked him i said do you know the job of an opening dj and he

25:52said yeah you get in there you you you play your box you beat your box i said no that's actually not the job of opening dj i said the job of opening dj it's the first set the tone you know you have to you have to get first of all most of the time nobody's on the dance floor when you when you get on it so you got to bring people to the dance floor you got to figure out how to do that then after that the opening dj takes all the risk right so i'm gonna play soulful house i'm gonna play vocal i'm gonna play

26:26tracks i'm gonna play maybe even some techno you know whatever uh disco i'm gonna play all of it and then the headliner sees what people were reacting to what they weren't reacting to i'm gonna take all the rest and he comes in there and he knows exactly what to do because i played all the different genres i've taken all the risks right and that's and so you take the hit as opening djs what you're supposed to do i think that's becoming a lost art form in some senses i didn't mean to cut you off i'm sorry but like because because everything's so geared towards festival playing now and even clubs are

27:00starting to reflect that globally like the hour slot or you just like you don't really get to build a journey right so even if you are opening you get to play for two or three hours and that's like that could be a journey or just a dj playing all night which i love to play for six or seven hours because you get to not only like visit music that you might not typically play um because you're opening and closing for yourself but the people who are with you along for the ride get to see a full breadth

27:31of your artistry right and i think i think um yeah some of that is just being lost in the the formula is not i'll be i'll be happy when because the pendulum always swings i'll be happy when there's less focus on um maximum impact okay of the day you know what i mean instead of like in the box but i do like what is my role in tonight and making this an enjoyable experience for everyone exactly the bartenders to the security staff to the dance floor to the style of the lighting people who are

28:05instrumental and coloring them yes yes and see i wanted to go i wanted to mention something too and i guess it's the fan of me now because um when you played at the uh at the chicago festival you played last and you and you played in the i think the south was it the south shore uh it was the south stage yeah the south stage right yes so i was there and i watched the whole thing and i swear it was magic i mean you you had all the dancers that had been dancing all night everywhere else came to your

28:35stage they started dancing and you did something that nobody else did that night i watched every single performance that night that i could because you know i couldn't be more than one place at once but nobody else really took risk right you took risk everybody else played the same 30 songs for the most part and they buried a little bit here buried a little bit there but you were hearing the same music but you didn't do any of that and you took risk but you beat it so hard it was crazy and i'm

29:06sitting there like wow you you did it like you took risk and you beat it and it was like and you were in the perfect slot you closed it out and i didn't see nobody else do it like you did so thank you um absolutely i appreciate that that's a huge compliment um i don't think of it as risk taking really myself okay um because i've never been interested in performing under anybody else's guidelines okay um it's an organic thing it's the music that i love that i think other people would

29:40love or enjoy and i want to share that and i am not um again not trying to recreate that wheel that's already been rolled across the street um i can visit the classics and i love that um and you did some of that too yeah but yeah yeah but i don't i don't want to um um i i like that language of taking a risk because like sometimes and i don't want to make a comment

30:14commentary but i think there can be a stillness to the way that um music is approached

30:21and i understand why because it's oftentimes nostalgic or allowing people to revisit where they once were in their youth right um i didn't come up in that so those things that

30:36like i remember being a children here in life is something special and i've heard that song quite a few times prior to that but this particular moment it in that context it was special to me because i was around people who had embraced it and who had heard it when it initially came out and that's not something that i'm able to do i can't offer that right um so i don't try to offer that i try to offer my sensibilities my perspective my viewpoint um and gear that in a way that's uh

31:07acknowledging the say the sacredness of the dance floor and offering them something that's good and tasty right but i don't yeah it's just like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna play like anybody else and i don't want to you didn't play like nobody else like yeah but i've never thought about it as people say like you play weird sometimes or you're risky and i just don't it's like it's all good music but i grew up inspired by some of the weirder it wasn't weird yeah you just made it work though you it wasn't weird

31:38but you didn't play the the normal tracks that everybody else was playing and you made it work and there's nothing worse than cheap applause either right there's nothing worse than applause like because everybody knows that he loves it they make i the head in the air moment is earned when i think about like my imagination about what a rod what ron hardy was able to do which i was not there but imagine but my experience with like dj cedric from dc or craig loftus or these people they would play a lot of the same music but the way they would approach it it always felt fresh because it was

32:12new at the time right and like there's new things that are really just glorious that are being looked over yeah people want instant like recognition this is gonna work and it's like it's gonna work hard i did i did an interview with gene hunt back many years ago i never released it i finally put it out on on my youtube page but he talked about how ron hardy trained him how to teach people what good music is so you might want to go check that out it was very interesting but i would love to but ron

32:44ronnie wasn't so much into his blends so if you ever heard there's so many people back in the day putting out ron hardy tapes right and they would say this is a ron hardy tape this ron hardy tape and what it really was most of the time was somebody making a tape playing the style of music he played and selling it very few people actually had ron hardy mixes because he never really focused on the blends he focused on the music and he played people's music he broke new music like he would that i think that was the difference between ron hardy and frankie knuckles so frankie knuckles if you brought

33:15him some music it better be polished it better be mastered it better sound right it's gotta be mad for real and then he'd play it now you know ron hardy you bring him a little tape acid tracks like he played it four times that night when he first played it you know um chippy's uh uh time to jack his house like he played that like three four times that night or someone he played it the first time so that's what ronnie used to do and that's what made him special to me if you ask me he and

33:46i was controversial he is the the godfather of house not necessarily frankie knuckles i feel like frankie knuckles was part of it but anyway so that's we're going down the rabbit hole on that

34:00what are you about to say all right i have no idea right but all of them have um made space for i think freshness and newness and i and i appreciate when i hear artists who are exploring um you know the tradition and the roots while also bringing us forward right um so i was the next question was gonna ask you who are your three biggest and it doesn't have to be you know uh the biggest inspiration

34:31like djs uh coming up like who are your favorite djs favorite djs dj cedric for sure um who many people may not be familiar he was he is still very big on the black gay circuit um he used to play at tracks atlanta all the time when i was younger and um i think i was in the age range to really um feel and hear the music differently than i was when i was like a preteen or a 16 year old i was i was i was growing

35:05into my adulthood and um his sensibility and flavor it was a lot of gospel house but also a lot of tribal um and even some circuit music but like tasteful and really well done uh had a big impact on me another dj who i admire a lot is thomas sumo from um she's a resident at berkheim panorama bar

35:36um her partner lakuti are incredible together um and they're incredible people incredible human beings but i i feel like when thomas sumo plays alone in particular i just i'm transported into a different world every single time like i don't know any of the music she plays and it always i love to be educated on the dance floor that's like that's my like kink like it's great huh have you been to berkheim oh yeah i've played there quite a few that was the first show i ever did in germany

36:09it was at berkheim with hercules and love affair and we performed there a few times and i did another show there with um this outfit called stereogamous with our original material we did a live show in panorama bar then i started dj there like 2015. wow that's huge a lot of people haven't played burkheim that's that's pretty special yeah i haven't played in the last couple of years but i used i was playing i played over a dozen times for sure okay you can perform all right so who's your third one now third oh that's a i'm not gonna say any of my contemporaries because i have a lot of wonderful um amazing

36:51contemporary dj friends right but uh

36:58someone who like inspired me to want to push harder is a contemporary um nita avianz okay dj nita from new york a part of the kerry nation duo um uh she's incredible and uh we're peers but still i have a lot of admiration and respect so if i had to pick someone closer to me yeah it would be nita okay all right your top three records

37:34like growing up like what are the top three records that inspired you to dj when you heard these records she was like oh my god like yes maybe not to dj but inspired me to like even just like i just want to be enveloped in the world of house music yes okay um jump chico slams feel free okay it was featured on the new chicago house sound um from casual records okay and uh i was already a big fan of like dj and cashmere green velvet but i heard that song and i heard pieces of myself in

38:10ways like it revealed me to me i was like whatever this is happening whatever's happening here sonically is telling so many stories and there's like this funky bass line this jazzy loop

38:24a little bit of dissonance a repeating vocal um that almost kind of is familiar to like a negro spiritual but it's like it's like it's not a negro spiritual but i can hear the essence of i just hear such a like the repetition kind of thing it just feels like it's like if you told me this was made in the 1920s if it didn't have a kick i would believe you right you know like because it has this um suge avery color to it it just has this like okay rural 1920 georgia black warmth to it and

39:00by um sagat jump she goes slam that was his other alias okay you know um funk that which was huge on the radio but that song in particular um super inspiring um another song i would say uh i'd be remiss if i didn't say anything by dodge but i would say i mean fighter days just had me again it spoke to me um

39:31i thought it was a beautifully written song dana divine yeah yeah the the sense of the the the way that she was able to convey the lyrics uh yeah i think are even larger than like it's defies categorization like she took to me she's the the true queen of house music yeah um that's my mom's favorite song my mom's favorite house she didn't like house music but she liked that because you know it starts off feeling so blue it's just what should i do what should i do yes it's in the lyrics we need

40:10you to sing it shine no no no no i hear my nasal congestion right i love that because she felt like it was speaking to her like trying to make things all right and they turn out wrong wrong wrong and she just identified with it so much and um dana was like yeah i want to go speak to your mom and i was like she's already passed and she was like man but it was such a touching sentiment you know she was gonna go meet my mom because that was her favorite song you know but yeah but go ahead i'm sorry and if

40:44i had to pick a third one um

40:53a third one is gonna be hard because like there's 500 others that are kind of comparable right i would go for um let me something definitely from masters at work no i would i would say i won't waste your time by joy carwell okay um it was like her fred jorio it came out on tribal america um it's just beautiful it's sweet it's softer than most i don't usually play a lot of soft music sometimes i do depending on

41:26my mood i can you know do whatever but switch it up but this is i think the lyrics of these songs are particular are what resonate with me even more than the like the music them itself is beautiful for brighter days for feel free by judge chico slam um i won't waste your time but this poetic lyricism in house music to me is just the ultimate like ecstatic experience okay okay what keeps you inspired

41:56like to just keep doing it like you know don't i mean sometimes you feel like why am i doing this or whatever people don't really respect the art of djing anymore people want you to come out dj for free you know whatever all that kind of stuff like what keeps you motivated it's a spiritual journey um and it's really for me close to my relationship with the divine with god um and so i'm in conversation i think

42:26oftentimes with um that which brings me life so i never i'm not yet i won't say i never will but i've not yet had a moment where i have regretted or didn't want to continue okay i feel like the promises of my the vision of myself that i have had since i was a child are unfolding right before my eyes and i just keep aspiring for more of that that keeps me inspired it's like there's more things to

43:00learn there's there's um more techniques musically more music theory more music styles um more art i love um i study fashion curation in um grad school in london okay and a part of that was it was really based around visual arts curation so that i the love for fashion and i worked in fashion i used to write for the collection so all these things like when one thing may feel a little bit stale which music never does ever but i can visit these other artistic practices um or interests and just you know converse

43:39with other artists and explore how they feel about it um even me moving back to chicago was inspired by just having an incredible time i was living between detroit and berlin for a few years and i was really inspired by the work that a lot of the detroit artists were doing particularly visual artists like my friends tiff massey who just had an exhibition of the dia like the first black woman to be featured there um in a solo exhibition or the second but like the show of the scale it was impressive and like we

44:09would converse all the time when i lived there and i was like there's no better place to to do this to to build my career than chicago so many people i i left when i was 18 i didn't come back till i was 30 then i left again and when i came back um in my late 30s okay six years ago and it's like i want to write music in chicago of chicago for chicago and my relation my my newfound relationship with chicago as

44:42an adult um as a person who has uh autonomy and agency over my decisions i'm not reacting to the chicago that i felt like i needed to escape from it 18 or what i'm looking for so that's that in of itself as inspiration having this conversation is inspiring okay do you do you do first of all do you have a day job or do you do djing and producing a hundred percent for your income yes oh 100 that's

45:12awesome um and i live um i live modestly i live within my means and i um i sacrifice over the years to be able to do that you know like because it's not always lucrative but it's worthwhile and uh i haven't had a day job outside of music besides you know covet when i had to i worked at gramophone and i didn't have the pleasure of working at gramophone um okay but i'd worked there before when

45:46i first returned to chicago but i haven't had a day job since 2007. wow and yeah it's a blessing and there are um i'm learning at this point in my life you know there are things that i want to solidify uh i'm never opposed to doing whatever i need to do to get you know what i need to get right but music and art are my main focus do you feel like djs get paid enough for what they do i think there's a

46:20lot of inequity in oh let me reflect on that actually i know i got an issue you're an artist you all are definitely artists you are creating wonderful things and you know i think uh you know that is a fair question like to keep you know keeping people happy and flowing on dance floors i mean this is hard work i mean as someone who tried to learn how to dj and i was like this is hard you know like this is not easy so that's a lot because you got to

46:55curate the music you know it's a lot of back-end work right they see you doing this thing and that's to me the performance is the easier part because yes especially when i'm locked in or i'm in flow but like it's the the hours and years of compiling all this music and like cataloging and yes and cross-referencing and knowing that's history um yes you become you're an archivist in a lot of ways um if you i think once you're at like a higher level of because some people just do it for

47:27fun and i don't think i don't take that as a slight and i think there's best there's different styles of dj and it's not just like a one thing that's why i was like i want to step back and reflect on it because i'm not a wedding dj right okay that is a specific skill set and i admire and appreciate people who do that i'm not interested in taking requests i don't know you just hurt my heart there as you know i'm a big like you requested world hey i know a lot of djs that have gotten like

47:58in trouble for the way they respond to somebody making the request to them i'm never rude but yeah but yeah i trust me i know a lot of people that yeah i'm not a jukebox that's what what most djs will say i'm not a jukebox if you like that song so much go play to your car on the way home amen like so i i have respect for people who are like willing to haul equipment um and like our my four fathers and mothers who had 45 crates of records that they had to like i don't have

48:33to do that i play vinyl sometimes but i don't have not to all the time and so i think there's different tiers of djing and not one is higher than the other but they're different um and i think some people are paid so exorbitantly that it kind of um takes away the spirit of the culture because um you know late-stage capitalism if i'm gonna wax politically or um yeah it's just it it robs

49:04the essence of accessibility and so if a ticket is over a hundred dollars then who can afford to be there or who can you know like for so like and if you're getting paid and i'm not saying that i wouldn't take that money if i was offered fifty thousand or a hundred thousand to play something that's a that's a moral question that i'll wrestle with when i cross that bridge

49:26i think there's something that is lost like you said within that process of like

49:33so do you do you feel like i i don't want you i don't want you to feel like you have to answer this question because it's kind of politically charged a little bit i don't know lauren love lauren would love you to answer this but um do you feel like a dj born and raised in chicago where house music was created um and you contributed to the culture and such and then you know we've got other djs

50:02didn't you know contribute i mean you know now they're contributing but they did and they you know are the top hundred you know on the top hundred list for djs being paid uh for house music in the world do you feel like that's a little bit is that fair is it unfair you know it's it's it's it's a microcosm within the macrocosm of colonialism okay if i'm going to be honest um that black people create and contribute

50:36so much to the world and are very rarely rewarded for it and i think about like i thought about when you asked me about like staying inspired that's interesting because i've thought about the negotiations and compromises i had to make throughout my career because i didn't think that it would be something that would be like usurped i didn't think house music would be like taken from us as an industry and the ways that it has um so as a 15 year old i'm thinking i have all the time in the world to do whatever i want to do not knowing that's maybe when i should have started to have a a better footing in the industry but that's actually not my concern so i realized that wouldn't

51:12have been my my plan anyway or my trajectory okay but just the notion of like when black people make it everyone else gets to take it and profit off of it right um it's bothersome and i'd be remiss to say like it's not i think that would be a lie i think we'd have to be like really doing some cognitive dissonance and saying that like this is ours um and everyone gets to enjoy it and i don't like the rhetoric of like it's just for all people either i've never believed in that i believe

51:46everybody gets to enjoy it i believe everybody gets to participate right but like this there should be irreverence for black creativity right that is not there and um but that's that's you know that's the the product of being stolen and brought here and you know everything that we do that we had you know was you know monetized you know terrorized as well so guys we're we are on the tail end of this conversation we're gonna have to wrap it up it's been an amazing hour almost so far uh and we could

52:21talk to you forever but we do want to make sure that we have some time so you can tell us about so you know what you see for the future of house music future of your career and where we can find you where folks can find you if they want you to spin globally you know where can we find you new music where can we find you awesome awesome oh the the future of house music i i wouldn't i wouldn't be so arrogant to say i know but what i'm excited about is seeing um

52:53a lot of younger poc particularly black people um finding their way back to the sound i was a part of the generation where the sound was i'll speak to like queer spaces specifically where black gay clubs house dominated and then it became hip-hop in the early 2000s and i and i experienced that transition and it was um it was disjointing because um i felt like in the the desire to assimilate in some ways we

53:25lost our magical recipes that made us unique in the world and um i won't say left the door open to be pastor guys because that's not how i feel but i think there was um a generation a few generations that maybe missed the beauty of house music and i'm seeing that turn around what younger people are like interested in it and that makes me really excited because i'm kind of in this bridge era as a 40 something year old you know young 40s and i'm seeing 20 year olds who are like working towards

53:58um making beautiful pure house music or whatever you know electronic music form they're inspired by that's rooted in black history and culture and uh that's exciting that's exciting because i think um i will say i think there needs to be more effort made on the part of older people within the scene to cross connect with younger people because we don't necessarily have access with to them um in the

54:29ways like it's not as easy to gain that connectivity i think especially in chicago i've noticed um and we don't want those again recipes lost that information that you've bestowed upon me today like that needs to be passed down and um archived but like

54:49kept alive that energy is not lost it's just be transformed from one generation to the next because who's going to tell the story right um and as far as me uh playing you can always come check me out on instagram at sean j right s-h-a-u-n j-w-r-i-g-h-t or my soundcloud and i have a link tree there where you can find um contact for my north american agent uh michelle

55:19erfer at the bunker who works out of new york city with some incredible artists there too so you know if i'm i'm not available you can always check those people out too i love to to share the wealth

55:33that's so nice we're trying to focus on sean j right right now

55:41mcqueen resident at smart bar and just a regular resident so i played there at smart bar at least once or twice a month at minimum oh wow yeah so yeah i always feel free to pull up and say hi too i love meeting people who are into it who are in the culture sweet well sean and louie louie number one thank you so much for introducing us to sean and you know mega is on the line what's up mega he is just you know suggesting what thoughtful questions you've had

56:14for our guests today and sean we really appreciate you being open and honest with us and talking about your life and career and where you want to you know what you want to have happen with house music next and you know where we can find you and we're going to support you as much as we can so let us know where you are and we'll share with our friends i truly appreciate that thank you anything else where do we want to leave this louie you got any last words are you good um i guess the last thing

56:46i wanted to talk about is in the dj community we kind of talked about this previously

56:53how do djs retire so i don't know if i want to make it a question or more as a statement and i want all the djs listening and all that kind of thing to kind of think about that because we've got a lot of djs now and producers and stuff that are getting sick they're getting older and then you know everybody's putting up a gofundme page that kind of stuff and um and we're not paid accordingly based on our contributions to house music as african americans and we created this journal right and

57:23if we were retirement would be easy right because we would be making the type of money where we could retire pretty easily but we're not so i think we're going to have to start strategizing and thinking about how we can better monetize what we do as a career and something that we love so that we can retire and we can reap the benefits of our art that's trying to that this i don't want to say it's being stolen from us but it feels like it to me yeah you know i think we have to plan just like we would

57:56have planned if we were doing other things so if we're thinking about that as young people like mr wright is i'm sorry that sean wright is um we would already be thinking what is the future how am i planning for that is that production is that bringing in a team is that you know sharing with others like you know touring the world it sounds like time's been all over the at least the united states and london you know sort of understanding the music right yeah so you're all over the place so it makes us think

58:27about you know sort of the future and how we are planning for it so on that note thank you all so much thanks for joining the vintage house show check us out on all of our channels vintage house show dot com and we will see you next week with kevin mega mcfall 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock wednesdays 89.3 fm and all of our channels have a good night everybody bye everybody thanks for listening to the vintage house show podcast please subscribe and share and check us out live wnur 89.3 fm wednesdays at 10 o'clock

59:18and we will see you next week with we'll see you next week you'll see you next week you if you have any new programs that are running for a long time that's a tough night you'll see me on your own website or some partners will see you next week you'll see us in a next week you'll see you we'll see you next week you you you you you you