LOUIE VEGA

Born in the Bronx in 1965, Vega grew up surrounded by Latin music. Vega’s father, Louie Vega Sr, is an accomplished jazz and Latin saxophone player and his uncle Hector LaVoe was a renowned salsa singer who recorded for the Fania label. But Vega’s musical influences didn’t end with Latin music: in the eighties, he was a regular at legendary nightclubs like The Paradise Garage and he attended Afrika Bambaataa’s parties in the Bronx River Projects. In 1985, Vega began his first nightclub residency at Devil’s Nest, in the Bronx, Roseland, Studio 54 and the Palladium. Vega’s style reflected his eclectic upbringing: his DJ sets included everything from Latin music to hip-hop to British new wave. But towards the end of the decade, Vega became disenchanted with the club scene’s increasing musical segregation. “People’s minds were starting to think in terms of categories,” Vega remembers. Luckily, at the very same time Vega saw clubland’s creative lights dimming a bit, his soon-to-be production partner Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez was throwing wildly eclectic mobile parties in his Brooklyn neighborhood and cobbling together productions under the “Masters At Work” moniker. By 1987, the Masters At Work name attracted so much attention that Todd Terry borrowed their name-and their style-for the New York house classic “Alright, Alright.” Terry, in turn, introduced Gonzalez to Vega and the two found an immediate kinship. The pair’s first single under the Masters At Work moniker-“Blood Vibes”-perfectly fused the reggae of Vega’s DJ sets with Gonzalez’s percussive Latin rhythms and hip-hop influenced beats. Vega’s production resume quickly blossomed to include India and Eddie Palmieri’s new generation salsa classic Llego La India Via Eddie Palmieri and even more auspiciously Marc Anthony’s debut Ride on the Rhythm Vol. 1. Masters At Work productions soon began to take off, too: innovative house remixes for the likes of Tito Puente, Saint Etienne and even Debbie Gibson quickly put the duo at the top of the underground dance music heap. And Vega’s influential “Underground Network” party at Sound Factory Bar in New York created the template for many a soulful house party to come including “Body & Soul” and yielded house music anthems like Barbara Tucker’s “Beautiful People” and River Ocean featuring India’s “Love & Happiness”. Yet Vega and Gonzalez were still restless, so they created a new project called Nuyorican Soul. With its jazzy horn blasts, ambient soundscapes and wildly arrhythmic percussion, Nuyorican Soul’s first single “Nervous Track” pushed the boundaries of dance music even further. The Nuyorican Soul album, released in 1997, was even more innovative, bringing together gospel divas like Jocelyn Brown, latin soulstress India, hip -hop DJ Jazzy Jeff and soul legends like Roy Ayers under one roof. Like Daft Punk’s Homework, Blaze’s Ten Years After, or Roni Size’s New Forms, the album permanently altered the course of dance music. Neither Vega or Gonzalez have rested on their considerable laurels since then: the duo continue their frenetic remixing pace, working with and producing the likes of Gloria Estefan, Blaze and Kenny Lattimore; recording the Masters at Work and Nuyorican Soul 2, and solo LPs, as well as appearing in a commercial for Apple Computers; their annual parties at the Winter Music Conference in Miami have earned them praise and attention from mainstream publications like The New York Times and New York Magazine; Vega’s mid-week “Dance Ritual” party at Centro-Fly has become a must for dance music heads and industry alike; and perhaps most stunningly, Masters At Work thrilled thousands of fans with an all-day jam at Central Park’s renowned SummerStage with an all-star roster including Jody Watley, Jocelyn Brown, Roy Ayers and DJ Jazzy Jeff. These masters have just begun to work.  mix tape.

back to music