Could young British people start to embrace Spanish music? An interview with DJ DUBL

I remember being on holiday eight years ago in the UK and listening to the radio. There was no chance that they would play a song in Spanish, but now all of that has changed. It's starting to become popular, especially the Latin music genre.

DJ DUBL, English YouTuber, vlogger, interviewer and podcaster talks about his career and shares his opinion on Latin music and how the UK is now embracing it.

Photo taken by @iamjakesthompson

• How did it all start for you?

I was raised in a small town called Heathfield, and there was a programme set up in a local youth centre to keep me and my group of friends off the streets and out of trouble. The local youth worker called Dave Walker reached out to us and asked if we'd come and give this music course a try instead of causing trouble and hanging around in the streets at night. None of my friends wanted to try the DJing side, they all wanted to make music and I felt a bit bad for the DJ guy stood all by himself with no one to teach, so I chose to do that instead of what everyone else was doing.

At the end of the 8 weeks I made a mixtape (it was crap, I still have it though). After that I wanted to get my own decks. I worked in a local pub for a year to buy my first set of decks.

• Who is your biggest inspiration?

The first name that comes to mind is a Kiss FM DJ called Shortee Blitz. I bought the exact same music from his mix and practised relentlessly and copied everything I could hear he was doing.  After a very long time and much failure I finally nailed it and could scratch!  This was before YouTube so I couldn't have just looked up a tutorial...I had to work it out for myself!

Fast forward to now and Shortee is actually a friend of mine, which is very surreal! 

I'd definitely have to name a few other guys that have inspired what I do though: Scottie B, Tim Westwood, David Rodigan, Quincy (Choice FM DJ), Heartless Crew, DJ EZ, and people that still inspire me to this day & keep me working hard are Charlie Sloth, DJ Stylus, Nathan Dawe & DJ Puffy. 

• What is the one track that never gets old for you no matter how many times you hear it?

• What are the Latin tunes that you used to play?

The stuff I do play is the more mainstream / crossover stuff, like J Balvin , Daddy Yankee, Nicky Jam, Wisin Y Yandel & Don Omar.  Anything deeper than that I don't really know about. 

• Which Latin tune you think people like the most? 

'Mi Gente' gets a lot of love.  Tempo-wise it fits with a lot of popular music right now. The UK stuff that's doing well in the club is a similar tempo, reggae dancehall that is most popular right now is a similar tempo etc, so it's easy for DJs to fit it into club sets. And Beyonce jumping on the record definitely helped it get the global recognition.  Danza Kuduro is another popular one. They made an English version which went well, but I think the original was best. Also, Gasolina seems to be timeless.  I'm not sure how that caught on so well in the UK as Daddy Yankee has never been a household name and the track is in Spanish! 

In this case, the ethical considerations that I encountered were accuracy and copyright. To make sure the story was accurate I had to ensure the quotes were right. Besides, asked the interviewee for its approval of the story. And to avoid a breach of copyright, I asked the interviewee if he could give me a copyright-free picture to go with the story and made sure that I gave credit to the photographer.

• Do you think the young people here in the UK have started to embrace a little bit more Spanish music or them still resistant to anything that is not in English? 

I think people like Major Lazer & DJ Snake have helped facilitate Latin music crossing over.  Pitbull definitely laid a lot of foundations, but where he was speaking English in a lot of his records it almost removed the Latin effect from each record in my opinion.  

In the clubs that I play in the crowd don't seem extremely open to non-English records that they don't know, but records like Mi Gente have proved very successful, as well as Bad Bunny & J Balvin's contribution to Cardi B's music, which has helped get them into the UK club sound.

I think while UK music is doing so well and establishing itself as a self-sufficient scene it will be a long time until there are large blocks of non-English records in the club sets over here, but as online streaming and music on demand become more popular, there are a billion new ways for people to discover new music now so we could be only months, weeks or days away from an entirely Spanish record being the biggest thing in the UK.

• What is your favourite Latin song (if you have one)?

I've always liked a lot of Wisin Y Yandel stuff, 'Paleta' or 'Rakata' were always favourites of mine, as well as 'Oye Mi Canto' by Nore & Nina Sky.

•Which is the music genre you think doesn't get the attention it deserves?

I don't think Dancehall (Bashment) gets enough love.

• If you were in the position to choose a era of music you would forever be stuck in, which one would you pick?

This is a tricky question to answer...there's too many ways to look at it! 

2005 was an incredible year for Hip Hop in the clubs, the stuff that would have been played in the clubs back then would sound great, but 2019 is shaping up to be the best year yet for UK rap. With that said I'm a big fan of 90s Hip Hop so 1995 would be great, driving round hearing all that stuff on radio (although they didn't play it on radio in the UK). 

Click here to watch DJ DUBL's youtube channel!