..
Basementalism :
AM 1190 4-7 PM Every Saturday Listin in to here the dopest underground hip hop and free ticket giveaways. We showcase Colorado's best underground as well as classics and new music from around the nation.


Denver Post Artricle
Art of DJ evolves into art form By Scott Lieber Denver Post Staff Writer





Francisco Chacon, a.k.a. DJ Cysko Rokwel, in his home studio. Chacon is a finalist in two major turn-tabling events coming up: The Disco Mixing Club Championship and the Guitar Center Spin Off. (Post / Helen H. Richardson) The distance between traditional DJ'ing and competitive turn-tabling spreads wide - far too wide to fit in Francisco Chacon's paltry Denver work space, a 12-by-12 foot room barely big enough to serve as a bathroom.

In fact, Chacon, who has grown into one of the top competitive DJs in the country, practices in this room, which houses his 3,000 vinyl albums, graffiti art, a laptop, DVD player, posters and, most important, $10,000 in DJ'ing equipment.

Chacon, 27, is a finalist for two major turn-tabling events: The Disco Mixing Club championship, whose finals are Saturday, and the Guitar Center Spin Off competition, which culminates Sept. 1. Chacon is one of a handful of DJs remaining in each competition, which, combined, award close to $75,000 in cash and prizes to the winners.

"I've been lucky throughout my battling this year," says Chacon, whose stage name is DJ Cysko Rokwel. "And that's why I think I've been winning. I've been getting great judges. A lot of battles, they have hometown heroes, more or less, instead of people who actually do the art. Here we have people who do the art form."

That art form has grown from vocation to competition. Traditional DJ'ing involves working clubs and parties, mixing more popular music.

Competitors, on the other hand, call themselves turn-

tablists. They scratch, flip beats and generally interject themselves into songs as much as possible to show off their skills.

"We are the brokest guys in hip-hop, but we love doing it, and that's what it's about," Chacon says. "And it's emerged into an art form."

Competitions generally consist of up to three events. The DMC competition uses a head-to-head format, which involves opponents battling back and forth for 90 seconds at a time. Think "8 Mile," except with DJs instead of rappers.

"That's my favorite style," Chacon says. "I like working in the disses."

An ever-growing style: Team competitions can include three, four or five DJs each playing a part, like an instrumentalist.

"It's been perfected to a point of flawlessness," Chacon says of the team DJ'ing. "It's almost like listening to a piece of vinyl playing. We can't even tell it's scratchy."

Spin Off uses showcase battles, which give each participant six minutes to work his entire ensemble. Rather than bounce back and forth, like in the head-to-head competitions, showcase battles offer each participant one opportunity to display an entire routine.

Most battlers come prepared.

"Your best idea is to study up on who's going to battle," said Chacon, who uses some records that contain no music, just insults. "You work out as many disses as you can think of for the whole panel. Like you think, 'How can I diss this guy? Well he can't scratch, so I'll say something about how he can't scratch in my routine.' And then this guy who acts tough on stage. I'll find something that says, 'Oh, quit acting tough.' So you try to map it out.

"And you generally work your routines to a minute, or a minute 10 seconds, so then you have 20 seconds to work your disses. So then you can kind of like map them out. You go against this person, you're lined up, you have a routine ready and you can just fit the disses on the end."

Judges score based on five criteria: originality, skills, style, stage presence and overall performance.

"Originality can be taken a few different ways," says Kevin Rogers, marketing manager with Spin Off. "For instance, what records are you playing? A lot of these guys aren't playing hip-hop records. There are guys who will go into funk and salsa. So the idea is really how are you taking your influences and making them your own. It's really about taking the sound and making it into their taste."

As fixed as the criteria are, results are often imprecise. What judges consider a good routine sometimes depends on region. The East Coast rewards successful beat-flipping, while the West Coast values scratching. Inexperienced judges sometimes favor hometown DJs. At the DMC competition in Chicago, Chacon will use more mainstream songs. The West Coast, where the Spin Off competition is, prefers hearing less popular, underground cuts.

"It's a small community," says Chacon, who is also a part of a DJ group called The Crunk Brothers. "But it's really starting to build. I'm finally knocking on the door, making some noise, hoping to further my music."

Staff writer Scott Lieber can be reached at 303-820-1694 or at slieber@denverpost.com

Puttin You On The Game

DMC 2007 USA Finals