By: Billy Graves
Last Friday night, I re-discovered why I love live music. 
Because my girlfriend and I are relatively new to the city, we went out Friday night and decided to enter the first bar we saw: an expensive looking bar called Nochee. With the feel of a Block E bar (dim but aggressive neon lighting, austere décor, installation art) and a $10 cover at the door, we were about to turn around, when the woman working the door said something I never would have expected; she said the cover was for the DJ, who would be playing…dancehall.
Now, everyone who has lived in a city knows the kind of clientele a bar like Nochee normally would to cater to: late-twenty to mid-thirty year old yuppies. The men will have on their man-yuppie uniform (well-fitting, boot-cut jeans, the striped white button down shirt, lots of hair gel, lots of cologne, etc.), and the women will have their expensive, low cut dresses, their outrageous high heels, their prominently displayed earrings and necklaces, their perfectly formed hair. This is the kind of crowd that comes to pick up chicks, not to listen to music, much less a kind of music that gets as little Minnesota radio play as dancehall.
But when the Trinidad and Tobago-born DJ Fujun set up shop, Nochee’s dance floor was transformed. Last Friday night, the crowd experienced this music’s creation and reception as though Nochee was First Ave. Sure, people were dressed nicely and dancing – but this was dance music. And the crowd was dancing as a way to experience and enjoy the music, rather than to grind on the nearest made-up chick. Even the six dollar rail G&T’s couldn’t dampen my excitement. This was an authentic, independent scene.
As I had no frame of reference to explain what made DJ Fujun unique, I asked Vanessa, the woman working the door, who was also DJ Fujun’s promoter. She explained to me that DJ Fujun preferred not to play straight dancehall, reggae, or soca music. Instead, he would take music that a general audience would have experience with (popular hip-hop and R&B) and reproduce it with a dancehall, reggaeton, or soca beat. For me, the effect was amazing. Music I never would have expected to get into was suddenly mesmerizing.
Vanessa had said she was turned on by Dancehall from hip-hop because “Dancehall makes you want to move your entire body.” Basically, because the distorted, gritty-sounding, stripped down, rhythmically intricate bass is an incredibly fun medium to dance along with.
DJ Fujun is relatively new to Minneapolis, but according to Vanessa - a regular – there is already a mostly Caribbean-born crowd emerging around him. I would expect that a large number of people who read HowWasTheShow.com are not dancehall enthusiasts; I had only heard the music in passing because my college had a large Caribbean student body. However, I strongly urge any who love the experience of live music to check out DJ Fujun. He plays the Blue Nile (2027 E Franklin Ave.) on Thursdays and Nochee (off 5th and Washington, near the Depot) on Fridays. You can find DJ Fujun’s music at www.myspace.com/soundoffujun.
Location Info:
Nochee
Artist Info: DJ Fujun
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