Ron Trent Interview
RON: I left between '96 and '97 and was there for almost a decade. I hooked up with cats like François K, who I already knew, Joe Claussell, Spinna, Ian Friday - those were my knockas! And actually one of my best friends back there, Jonesy Hines, who used to do management for the Giant Step party, which was my residency out there. Jonesy's about 45 years old and has been collecting music forever. He's like a walking encyclopedia. You go down to his basement and it's like a music library!
5: He's one of those guys you can just hum a few bars of a song and they'll tell you when it was made, the label and might have a few of the remakes...Your cousin Lee Collins, Sadar Behar and Jarvis Mason are like that for me. It's a priceless gift, really.
RON: [laughing] Exactly. Those are my buddies. The ones you ask "Do you have that?" and they say "Do you have this?" and it goes on for hours. I really didn't plan on living in New York, though. I knew from traveling back and forth that if I was going to live there, I was going to have to have a lot of money and I had lost a lot building my space here [Prescription Records]. So I went there and it took me over! It was like a whirlwind. I learned a lot there on the international front, everything.
What has happened in Chicago is it's kind of gotten stuck in House - the name "House" and what it's supposed to be, instead of what it started as: an amalgamation of music - everything.
5: By "everything" do you mean the come-as-you-are-and-show-me-who-YOU-are attitude that seems to have left?
RON: Exactly, exactly - not just stuck in the title. I mean, I started off that way [knowing it was everything] and never got off it, but a lot of people coming into the scene and who never were a part of the scene don't know that. And it's not their fault. For me, when I was coming up, we tried to study everything that was around us and we tried to study what it was all about instead of getting what we call the "newscaster version". If you're going to know something, know it. Try to be the best at it because you're carrying a legacy that's rich and it's our responsibility to know that shit. Unfortunately, now a lot of people don't do their homework.
5: Alright, will you help me help people with their homework? Even though this is dance music, most of the credit is given to the DJs and producers and promoters. How important do you think the real dancers, the ones who generate circles and energy are to this scene?
RON: Heh, well you know I was a dancefloor kid! When I first moved to New York, for the first maybe two years, I was a babypowder kid! That's it. I was dancing and interacting with the community on the dance floor so that by the time that I started doing my own thing, they were like "Oh, so that's Ron Trent!" They already knew me.
5: It seems like it would be important to dance if you make dance music, but a lot of newer people lie and say they've got to dance when they've really go to have a drink. You never see them on the floor or they bring the breakbattle/single person showcase to the dance floor. I really feel that's changing the music and the scene.
RON: For sure. That's the first school - the dance. You have to understand the translation, what it feels like, what's going on. In New York, like the early scene, dance is like yoga. Folks change their clothes. That's their gym - listening to something you've never heard before, or nostalgic pieces, and being immersed in that moment, and working it out...It's not about moves or the names of steps, it's about your soul.
5: Then what do you think about someone like Ron Carroll saying "House Music is Dead"?
RON: I can understand why he said that. The core of it is not dead, but the name - I don't really associate with it anymore because so many people have taken it and bastardized it and turned it into something I don't even know anymore. It's not even from me anymore. What a lot of people are making and marketing as House now doesn't fit the criteria of what the core is. It's fixated and one thing, not the amalgamation that it really is. It's mechanical, and that's not real.
Part of that is due to the marketing machine out here. Part of it is due to the people who don't know what it is trying to market it or whatever. But the core of it is still alive and doing very well. It's going through the changes that it's always going through, whether we're talking about jazz, latin, afrobeat - all these things that are the core of what House music, dance music, has always been throughout time. It's not about the genre, it's about the feeling. Same with the dance, it's about what you feel.
Now don't get me wrong. There's a frequency that happens on the dancefloor. For instance, in New York, for about the first year, I might get out for a little while and do my thing, but really I'd sit back watching because there's a vibration there. They're doing some of the wildest shit and you'd think you were watching an Alvin Ailey performance, but they're not even touching. If you ain't got that vibration, you can come in and immediately fuck it up. And I know from being out there and having someone come in that's not on the right frequency and messing up the whole thing and they [the dancers] are fierce about it. They'll knock you right on out, 'cause the thing is, a lot of these people have been dancing since 1975 doin' their shit. For them, this is their sanctuary, their sacred space, and if you ain't ready for the temple [laughs]...you need to cleanse yourself!
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