DC’s DJ Enferno hit the big time as tour DJ for Madonna’s 2008-2009 Sticky & Sweet Tour. Now he’s making news again mixing Ultra Records’ new double-CD, Ultra Dance 11. The result is “a mainstream dance mix” he said, equally suited to “pop in your CD player, car or house party.”
Adding Enferno’s ear for what moves us to club bangers by Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Sean Kingston, P!nk, the Black Eyed Peas, Kelly Clarkson and Britney Spears on the first mix, and lesser known tracks from Madonna, Jordin Sparks, Honorebel ft. Pitbull & Jump Smokers, David Guetta, and Tiesto ft. Tegan & Sara, on the second, does indeed make for perfect party tracks.
Enferno, aka Eric Jao, called On Tap from the road recently as he was en route to Club Silk at Pechanga Resort near San Diego. He was headed there to present a Rane Sixty-Eight mixer demo at the 2010 NAMM Show, a prestigious music-industry-and-invited-guests-only affair. He discussed his musical background, influences and his latest effort.
Raised in Northern Virginia, Jao, whose Filipino parents met in the States, remembers his mom playing the Carpenters and dad listening to Al Jarreau and jazz, but “one thing they had in common that I really liked was a lot of ‘80s R&B, Michael Jackson especially.”
He took piano lessons for eight years starting when he was seven, and later studied jazz piano. In middle school, he made mixtapes of “mainly pop and hip-hop” on his boombox. “I’d take snippets of songs and rearrange them into how I thought they should sound.” He listened to the radio “all the time — WKYS, WPGC, WAVA.”
Jao got his first DJ set-up at 16. “My parents bought the equipment under the condition that I’d pay them back. Playing DJ gigs at high school dances and parties…within two and a half years, everything was paid off.”
A “vinyl guy” until the digital age arrived, the Thomas Jefferson High School student played “a mix of hip-hop and dance, whatever was out on the radio and some up-tempo high NRG.” His first club gig was at Asylum in DC.
When Jao as a University of Virginia freshman, he got booked for a Heaven and Hell-themed party. He went by the moniker Enferno “based on the fact that I was playing the Hell floor and that my first name starts with an ‘e’.” While at UVA, where he earned a B.S. in Commerce, Jao deejayed a Charlottesville party called Divine, drawing a thousand people or so to every show.
In ’98, Jao saw videos of the 1997 DMC World DJ and ITF competitions which “inspired me to look at the turntable more as an instrument. I thought I was pretty good, but I realized I wasn’t as good as others out there so I started really working hard at that.”
In 2002, Jao became the first DC DJ to place in a national competition. In 2003, at Nation in D.C., he won the title of DMC/Technics U.S. Champion, which launched his full-time globetrotting DJ career. Three years later, he walked into the Paris Virgin megastore and saw a musician creating music on keyboards and samplers, then improvising over it, inspiring Jao to rethink his approach to DJing. “Then seeing deejays like Qbert and Z-Trip doing cool turntable performance acts started me thinking I could take it one step further. I know technology, so I had to invent a rig that could do what I heard in my head.” By the end of the year, his Live Remix Project was born.
To a basic DJ set-up of turntables and a mixer, Jao adds a production rig including keyboards, laptop, effects processor, synth and drum pads, and plug-ins, enabling him to make samples, loop them and add them to tracks he’s playing, or create new music live. “It’s performing electronic music and showing it in an entertaining way,” he explains. On Youtube.com one can see Jao create a live remix of Missy Elliot’s Work It. “I incorporate different elements of Daft Punk’s Harder Better Faster Stronger, add keyboards and sample everything live to make a new song” — complete with live scratching.
A new movement? “People track me down and say ‘You’ve really inspired me’ and send me videos of their own live remixing. Pretty cool.”
On his Ultra tour Jao will return to Orlando’s Blue Martini Club, where his Live Remix Project first caught the attention of Kevin Antunes, Madonna’s music director, which led to Enferno deejaying for the pop icon.
“Traveling the world and getting in front of 75,000 people at a time was a dream come true,” Jao said. “But you learn a lot about detail, passion and perfection because that’s how everybody else on the tour works around you, including her.
“The interaction with the crowd,” he added, was “one of the coolest things about being a DJ. The ultimate reward is being able to make a living and support my family doing what I love.”
For Jao’s Ultra Dance 11 Tour dates and to check out his Live Remix Project, go to www.djenferno.com and www.liveremixproject.com
