Our new Originators series explores specific, esoteric scenes through mixes of representative tracks and interviews with prominent artists, as conducted by Zak “SPF666” DesFleurs. The intent is to provide desperately needed historical context for these genres in the age of the Internet, a time when cultural objects are uprooted from their scenes and reworked, repurposed and reappropriated beyond recognition.

Following up on the first installment of the Originators series with the incredible DJ Relentless, we turn our sights South to a genre that has been criminally ignored with the recent revival in club music’s popularity. Bamabounce, born at the turn of the century at the hands of the tireless DJ Se7en (aka DJ Taj), is a wild, energetic blend of club structures with a wide variety of influences.

Personally, Bamabounce served as my introduction to ballroom-club hybrid tracks, not unlike the ones that pepper the sets of seemingly every DJ today. Se7en took some time to talk with me about the development of Bamabounce, his fusions of club and vogue, and our shared, unabashed love of EDM.

I was particularly excited to do this with you because there has been so little written on Bamabounce. With that in mind, how would you describe the sound of Bamabounce?

Due to the huge amount of influences that inspired me to create Bamabounce music, it’s hard to describe. It really would depend on which track you’re listening to at the time, but one major underlying quality of Bamabounce is the basic Baltimore club kick pattern that is used at some point in every track or remix that I create. Sometimes it’s tech, sometimes it’s house, and sometimes it’s that pure Baltimore sound.

My first album Bamabounce (through T&A records) was described as, “though greatly inspired by Baltimore club, Taj’s take on the sound is sometimes at a faster tempo and steeped in a heavier dirty south influence, with clever uses of TV and R&B samples throughout,” but even since then it has definitely progressed to include so much more.

Absolutely. It seems that like all of the different strains of East coast club music, it shares the main genetics of Bmore with some variations, mostly stemming from the place it started in and those that brought it to life. What was your introduction to DJing and music?

The start of my relationship with music can be traced all the way back to elementary school; I was always in the band, learning to play as many instruments as possible. However, I was pretty much known as “the dancer” in the community in which I grew up. I created this “ultimate talent group” with some friends where I was the choreographer.

“The overlooked phrases are my way of pulling and creating something positive out of a track that otherwise is degrading to women.”
DJ Se7en

Eventually, I wanted to figure out a way to make the music match what I was feeling as a dancer, versus me trying to create moves to an already made song. This led me into the world of producing and remixing. Once people started to see our shows, they always wondered who did the mixes. From that point, it opened up doors to opportunities creating and overseeing musical production for people across the city.

That makes a lot of sense in terms of the pure energy of Bamabounce — that its origins are in serving movement first and not the other way around. It’s definitely a kinetic “body music.” So what first drew you to Baltimore club that far South?

I remember going to a party and the DJ from Atlanta played club tracks like ‘U Big Dummy’ and ‘My Neck, My Back’. These tracks were unlike anything that I had ever heard before here in Alabama. As I was dancing I was thinking to myself, “this is exactly what I’ve been trying to do!”

So after the event I went to the DJ, DJ Truz, and inquired about the track. He informed me that it was called Baltimore club. I rushed home — at this time we had Kazaa — and I did a search for Baltimore club and all these tracks came up. Most were from mix CDs but they were there and I was like, “this is what I want to do!” From that night forward, my goal was to make this sound popular here in the city.

Can you describe the next steps in the birth of Bamabounce?

The birth was in 1999, but it was becoming a full-fledged baby around the summer of 2000. It was at this time that I had fallen in love with Baltimore Club and was actively adapting what I was able to pick up from it and meshing it into what I had been musically doing already. At the same time, this new sound was being created which was a mixture of the essences of Miami bass and Baltimore beats that had caught on with a group of dancers that did what is known as ‘J-setting.’ [Note: J-setting is a hip-hop style of dancing that has vogue elements and roots in the queer scene. Beyoncé famously used the style in her ‘Single Ladies’ video; here’s an example of a team dancing with evident ballroom influence]

While I was fusing all my influences and making and selling Bamabounce mix CDs, they were getting copied and passed along throughout the state and neighboring states, especially through J-Setting scenes, unbeknownst to me. Of course, all of the CDs were branded with my contact information and eventually a club promoter by the name of Anthony Toliver reached out. He had me come down and spin at the Legendary Traxx Atlanta. It was December of 2000, the test run went well, and I was asked to come back for one of the biggest weekends for the club, MLK weekend, 2001. That event was attended by almost all of the J-settes at the time, some whom had traveled from as far as Houston.

At this point in time, I had no idea how big my sound had gotten for these groups of dancers. Once I moved past the house section of my set, and “The Beats” as they call it started playing, the floor, the vibe, everything about the room changed. It was then that I knew that my sound had made an impact, and that this crowd that would be my biggest promoters and listeners.

When it comes to the samples, I usually take parts of the song that are on two ends of the spectrum: either the most common part that everybody knows from the original song, or the hidden parts and phrases that people overlook in the original track. The overlooked phrases are my way of pulling and creating something positive out of a track that otherwise is degrading to women, and in my opinion sheds a negative highlight on what’s going on in the inner cities and those who are stranded in a situation that they aren’t able to remove themselves from.

Use your keyboard’s arrow keys or hit the prev / next arrows on your screen to turn pages (page 1/2)