:: INTERVIEW ::

🔥Light Twerkerz: When and how did you meet Light Twerkerz?

📣DJ Abel: I just heard about you. Colleen Cassidy, it was through her that I discovered you. I knew Raquel for years. Crystel, she’s one of the first awesome chicks I met who was first into dancehall. In 2002 I played at Sonar and she was there in the all vinyl years. I remember her doing the dutty wine. I’ve known her for a long time.

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🔥LiT: How would you describe Light Twerkerz to your parents?

📣DJ Abel: It’s just my mom. She wouldn’t be able to relate to it. I’d probably explain it to her in terms she’d relate to. She was really into swing dancing. I’d try bringing up women’s empowerment and enjoying yourself and freeing up and letting loose and being able to not let there be any sort of sexual limitations with expressive dancing.

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🔥LiT: How did you first discover twerking?

📣DJ Abel: My background is half-Italian, half-Trinidadian. My music side is mostly influenced by my Trinidadian background. I went my first time in 2008 to carnival. There’s a lot of similarity to wining your waist in the Trini style of dancing to soca music, similarities between that and twerking. I knew of twerking before I knew it was twerking. Before it was twerking, we were already twerking.

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🔥LiT: Have you ever had a “twerkthrough” (booty movement-related mind-body epiphany) experience?

📣DJ Abel: Again, sort of around the time that I got into dancehall, which would be around early-2000s. I knew of dancehall and reggae in the 90s, but I really wasn’t into it. We didn’t do much dancing as skaters in high school, so I didn’t really try to move with a woman or on my own in any arched back or knees bent kinda way until I got into playing dancehall music around ’01.

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🔥LiT: What is the most butt-tastic dancefloor activity you’ve ever witnessed while DJing?

📣DJ Abel: Ah, there’s been a lot of nights… There’s been times where people have a mattress out and they’re jumping off a table. Or a girl would climb up a fence or up a tree. It’s all about props and people bringing in a whole mess when it comes to crazy dancing. I was in New York recently playing a party called It’s Just Dancing. @itsjustdancingparty They’re a wicked crew in Brooklyn, specifically about explicit daggering, about girls doing head tops, the splits, booty shaking. The MC host is Micro Don Daddy @micro_don_daddy - he’s just a full package of energy, he understands the culture so well. It was a 90’s party. I don’t know if you’ve seen Dancehall Queen, the movie. But this one dancer was wearing the whole outfit, did the exact routine with all the moves from the whole movie, and nailed it. And added some new things, splits, added drops. There were three dancehall queens all there, they’re all friends trying to one up each other, it was crazy. Kimbo Queen @kimboqn and Queen Latesha @queen_promo and this crew GyalTime @itsgyaltime They’re not trying to pick up guys. If you’re a creep, you’re out of there. It’s really serious. They’re dancing. They’re having a blast.

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🔥LiT: Any thoughts about finding and sharing music these days?

📣DJ Abel: On Instagram I follow a lot of dancers. I get shit on for it by my girlfriend, like “why are you following this hot dancer”? They post the hot new dance music though. That means so much to me. There’s lots of great dancers out there who are awesome, and I’ll unfollow them even though they’re super sexy and well-connected, just because they don’t put the song titles on their dance videos. And I’m not mad about it, it’s just not as useful to me as a DJ to watch dance videos without music credits. There’s a stigma, around some of these dancers dancing to music they don’t want you to know what the song is. Same with DJs that don’t want to share their banger tunes. Fine, but if we want to get this music to the world, we’ve got to share. Whatever, you’ll never be able to play it how I play it, I’ll never play it like you. And don’t think you’re playing it for the first time. Every song’s been written a thousand times. Same with dances. They want you to know the name of the dances, it won’t be the same every time.

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🔥LiT: What was your asspiration for this mix?

📣DJ Abel: My asspiration was to not just play a bunch of songs about booty shaking, but to actually embody the shock value that you get when you see somebody dancing from their heart in that way. It’s specifically an epiphany that brings you to that place where you realize you can move in that way, and it’s music like this that shocks you into moving that way. It’s the shock value of hearing something that you’d expect to hear from a male perspective— “ass and titties, fuck them real good,” etc... but then, hearing from the woman that “my pussy’s wet”, or “I want it”. And it’s hard for a women to hear that from a prudish perspective. These lyrics are not just a woman talking to a man, or a man talking to a woman. To be applied accordingly.

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🔥LiT: What does a positive dance floor mean to you as a DJ?

📣DJ Abel: I think that it would refer to the reception to the energy that I give out. There could be 3 people or 300, I’d start bouncing around when I’m DJing cause I’m really into the songs I’m playing. If they’re having a blast and feeling the music and it’s cool and doing their own thing and they’re not there for the scene, they are their own scene. That trumps everything. I hate saying Trump. That over rules everything.

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🔥LiT: What inspires you to move your butt as a dancer?

📣DJ Abel: It’s the combination of drums and bass. Sometimes it’s not bass, it’s like harmony actually, that usually has you moving like a snake. Not just drums alone.

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🔥LiT: Any memorable time as a DJ you had to adapt your selections to a particular audience while playing booty music?

📣DJ Abel: Every single time.

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🔥LiT: Do you have a favourite kind of butt?

📣DJ Abel: Yeah. Big, round and squishy.

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🔥LiT: What kind of a butt do you have?

📣DJ Abel: I have a chill butt.