2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Obituary: DJ Mu, the producer and pulse beat of Fat Freddy's Drop
CHRISTOPHER TA'ALOGA FAIUMU
Musician
Chris Faiumu was not a singer, nor did he play an instrument,
However, the founder and creative force behind Fat Freddy's Drop, one of New Zealand's most successful bands, fundamentally shaped not only the direction of his band, but also the distinctive sound of this country's music.
Once a country of jangling guitars, the man known as DJ Mu was at the forefront of dub reggae and Pacific sounds rising to the top of the country's charts.
It was a sound he then took to the world, Fat Freddy's Drop touring almost annually to the northern hemisphere where the band played to thousands each night and sold tens of thousands of records.
Mu's presence was intrinsic to the band. That's not just because of the imposing figure he cut on stage as he hunched over his MPC sampler, but also because Fat Freddy's songs were built on the musical foundations he put down.
Though the group achieved massive popularity, not just in this country but throughout Australasia, Europe and North America, Fat Freddy's Drop never signed to a major label, instead running the group as an independent collective managed by Mu's partner Nicole Duckworth.
The independent spirit carried over to their music. Never consciously commercial, their music grew out of jam sessions, often based on a rhythmic pattern or bassline Mu had created on his Akai MPC sampler. Yet their performances were like an invitation to be part of a communal experience, and people would flock to see them at concerts and festivals.
Christopher Ta'Aloga Faiumu grew up in Wainuiomata, Wellington, the fifth child of Samoan immigrant parents. An older sister had a collection of
'70s soul records which he would later come to treasure, but his tastes were initially formed by his brothers, who were into rock — Santana, Hendrix, Neil Young.
His parents had made a conscious decision to give their children "an education outside Wainuiomata' and his brothers were sent to Te Aute College in Hawke's Bay, but Chris opted to go to Scots College in Wellington because it was closer to home. "I'm sure I freaked them out,' he recalled. "One, I was Samoan and brown, and two, I was also much larger than everyone else, though a few rugby coaches there embraced that.'
The boys at Scots all called each other by their surnames but as they found his difficult to pronounce they abbreviated it to Mu, and the nickname stuck. At school he began his music collection — cassettes at first, followed by vinyl.
After completing school he spent a year in the army, thinking he might become an officer, but though he "had a ball ... abseiling out of a helicopter and blowing up a tank' it became apparent neither he nor the army had found what they were looking for.
He enrolled in a bachelor of science at Victoria University, but his curiosity was piqued by music blasting out of a room on the top floor of the Student Union Building. This, he discovered, was the studio of the campus station Radio Active. When he summoned the courage to ask the station manager about the possibility of doing some DJing he was asked, "Well, what are you doing right now?". Five minutes later he was on the air.
By the late 1980s he had accumulated a formidable record collection and was being asked to DJ at parties. In the '90s he became part of the Funky Monks, a DJ collective specialising in soul, funk and hip-hop. Around the same time he helped form the Roots Foundation, another group of DJs with a reggae focus. Itwas through dub reggae that he began to develop ideas and skills in the production and manipulation of sound.
DJing in Wellington bars like Bodega and Matterhorn led to late-night jam sessions with musicians, Mu supplying the beats. He progressed from playing beats directly off vinyl to producing his own rhythms on an Akai Music Production Centre (MPC) sampler. Out of these jams grew the sprawling and amorphous Bongmaster, which in turn spawned Fat Freddy's Drop, formed with singer Dallas Tamaira and trumpeter Toby Laing.
Their first album Live at the Matterhorn was simply a live show recorded to minidisc, given a little editing by Mu. It immediately sold 9000 copies.
Their debut studio album Based On a True Story, released in 2005, was a more sophisticated affair, recorded at The Drop, the studio Mu had built in his Lyall Bay home. It went gold immediately, became the longest album by a New Zealand act to stay at number one — 10 weeks — and the group cleaned up at that year's New Zealand Music Awards.
The group toured Europe for the first time in 2003, and began a schedule of making records and touring in Australasia and Europe which would continue for the next 20 years. They developed a distinctive and original style that drew on reggae, funk, jazz and electronica but also reflected the group's Pacific origins.
Mu had friends and fans all over the world, but his home base continued to be on Wellington's south coast where he lived with Nicole and their daughter Mia. Like the music he made, he had a deep sense of roots, and he always came home.
A quiet and gentle giant, Mu was generous with his time and worked with many aspiring and established bands, earning their great respect. His sudden death on July 16 aged 54 devastated the New Zealand music scene and reverberated across the world. — Nick Bollinger/Mike Houlahan
