story and photos by Arlo Brittan
In Omaha, diversity is woven into the fabric of the culture. It’s not unlikely that something unexpected is blooming around the corner, and Nebraska is a wonderful place to witness creativity exponentially becoming more dynamic.
Today was another day in paradise. I dug through records at Homer’s and Antiquarium Records. I stopped at the taco truck on south 24th Street for authentic tacos al pastor. And I hung out at Make Believe with Juan “Dojorok” Chaparro and Keith “Kethro” Rodger, DJs for the local hip-hop group Midtown Marauders and producers with their own projects.
While at Make Believe, the two artists talked about hip-hop as a whole and their influences. They talked about the gear they use and their show, Midtown Marauders Present: The J Dilla Tribute Show with local hip-hop acts Dirty Diamonds, "Dollar" Bill Burton, Scky Rei and That Leeg. The House of Loom will also be screening the movie Timeless: Suite for Ma Dukes, and Pettit’s Pastry will be providing free donuts for everyone attending. All proceeds go to the J Dilla Foundation.
Juan "Dojorok" Chaparro digs through vinyl at Homer's in Omaha.
Hear Nebraska: You’re both apart of the MM crew. How did that all begin?
Kethro: That’s a good question, man.
Dojorok: We all knew each other and would run into each other at shows and around the music scene, and I ran into Keith and we both had our mind on production level, left-field, open-minded electronic music. I knew Alex from high school, and he was an MC, so we linked up, and he told me he would always go to my Myspace page and rap over my weird beats.
HN: Did you start out DJing or have you always been making beats as producers?
Dojorok: I started out DJing.
Kethro: I started playing instruments, like bass when I was 14 or 15 then I bought turntables at 16, and I guess I was a bedroom DJ till about 20.
HN: Outside of MM can you tell me about your other projects?
Dojorok: I’ve been producing as Dojorok before I knew about MM. We all DJ together, you guys MC. MM happened very naturally and organically. It wasn’t like we decided, hey, we need to start a project, but right now I’m working on finishing recording an album that will be released by Make Believe recordings.
Kethro: I go by the alias Kethro, and I’ve always produced and done all my own stuff through that alias, but I also play bass in a band called Lightning Bug. We’ve been a band for years now and we’re finally getting our record together. It’s a moment in our band where everything finally is solidifying. It’s kind of exciting.
We used to be in a metal band then we all kind of reformed into something different, and around the same time I was producing a lot of ambient and beat-based music under the alias Kethro. Using all kinds of things as instruments, like pedals, turntables and synthesizers.
HN: What kind of music did you grow up listening to and what are some of your biggest influences?
Kethro: Oh, dude, everything from Nucleus to Erykah Badu, and my mom was really into Run DMC, and on a flipside she was into Slayer. She was up to date with music, and I got a taste of it, too. Back in the day she was really Prince-era electronic music. I discovered Robert Miles from my mother, and he was a trance producer! That’s kind of where I was, kind of in the current and the underground.
Dojorok: As a kid, I was always listening to obscure music and hungry to hear new music. I used to skate and was into the whole Blink-182 thing, but then a friend of mine introduced me to a lot of Warp Records artists like Aphex Twin, Prefuse 73. Those two had my ears for the better part of my later teenage years. To this day, I don’t get tired of listening to them.
Flying Lotus, you know like weird, left-field music that sort of has a hip-hop base but ventures off into electronic outlets. At the same time, I discovered drum and bass and ragga jungle, like the whole "Amen" break thing, and that was my girlfriend for a long time. I still bump that shit. I can have the shittiest day, but just to hear an "Amen" break edited the fuck out of makes me really happy.
Kethro: Jungle music is what connected Juan and me as far as our friendship and music personalities go. He had a good taste in music, so we’ve been kicking it ever since. I got really into jungle music as a teenager, like Roni Size. I like how it’s really fast and progressive. Yeah, like when I met Juan, it was like our inside joke.
Every little funny thing we would know about jungle we would reference to because not many people were into jungle like us. I think there was a moment that really solidified our friendship. We went to a house party one time, and Tom Emmi was there.
Dojorok: This wasn’t that long ago.
Kethro: This was probably like three months ago. Tom Emmi was spinning. He’s a local turntablist, producer, record label owner and all-around great guy. He was playing records, and we had no idea he was going to be at this party spinning.
Dojorok: Funny story about that night is that we were supposed to DJ and we get there, and there’s already someone DJing. So we were just chillin', and I was like oh wait, I know that dude. I grew up listening to some of his mixes I got from the library on CDs I still owe late fees on.
I was like, "You’re Tom Emmi. I know who you are! Are you going to play any drum and bass or jungle," and I requested "Original Nuttah." Then he was, like, whoa, people are requesting Shy FX and UK Apache so he went off on a whole ragga tangent.
Kethro: It was a lot of fun! I feel like us as Americans really missed out on something special in the '90s. It’s something I wish I could have been at every day. It was the street culture of the time. Jungle was to London what hip-hop was to New York. If you were in London in '94, that shit was just crazy you know?
There would be a club full of not just black people but people of all different races and cultures including tons of African cultures and including Jamaican, South African and South American cultures influencing jungle music. It was really the electronic form of tribal music, and it was on such a large, heavy scale that it brought an energy out of people in dance clubs that I don’t think I’ve seen.
Nowadays, you hear stuff that’s kind of evolved like dubstep as far as bass heavy music goes, so there is definitely music growing from that but I hope one day maybe jungle or that intense tribal music will come back in its own sub-genre.
HN: What shows do you have coming up?
Dojorok: J Dilla tribute this Thursday!
Kethro: James Yancey, man! He’s one of the greatest hip-hop producers of all time. Like we were talking about earlier, my mom got me into Erykah Badu as a child, and the first song I heard from her was produced by J Dilla and that was called "Didn’t Cha Know" – total neo-soul track.
Being young, I didn’t have the Internet, so I had no way of finding out who did what other than reading it on the albums. I started digging and finding out who produced these tracks, and I really got into J Dilla’s production. I remember I went to Minneapolis and spent over a hundred bucks on all the J Dilla records I could find.
He does stuff with the MPC but live instruments, too. He used the Moog and all that shit. He’s an all-around great musician and singer. J Dilla did something that changed hip-hop forever. He really added an element to hip-hop that can make it seem like you can get the hardest rappers on the most interesting syncopated weird beats ever at the time, but it had soul and it had energy and just raw and organic, straight-from-tape kind of shit.
I really take a lot of influence from J Dilla as far as a producer and performer and all that jazz. We’re doing this event basically dedicated to his last album and bring something special to Omaha! Friday, we have Audibly Nutritious at House of Loom, and we have a monthly Midtown Marauders show there.
HN: Are you guys going to be playing more house shows?
Dojorok: House shows are really cool. We have our thing at House of Loom. We hooked up with another hip-hop collective of creative minds putting on a lot of underground shows organized by a really cool kid, Erick Uncool. We just did a show at The Sandbox, and it really opened my eyes. I want to do more shows for eager ears.
Kethro: We really got our first experience from doing house shows.
Dojorok: Yeah, that’s how it all started.
Kethro: We wanted to play in clubs, but we didn’t find any to play at around Omaha, and we started our own house parties with alternative beats and live performances. Through house shows, that’s really where the seed was planted for the groups that are here now. Going from DJing house shows with Conchance and then going on stage was a crazy thing. There’s definitely an energy at house shows you can’t get anywhere else.
HN: Can you tell me a little about the gear you’re using right now?
Kethro: Right now, not all of this equipment is mine. Some of it’s mine, some of it is from other musicians, and some of it belongs to the studio.
HN: There seems to be an eclectic mix theme running through this interview, so it seems appropriate.
Kethro: That’s the great thing about the studio. We kind of put all of our instruments, toys, pedals and gadgets and stick them in a room and try to make something magical. I can start with the Moog right here. This is a Micromoog Synthesizer. It’s all analog, with one oscillator. It has a sound that you can perfect easily, but also it’s very tedious work at times to get the right frequency or right tone from it.
But that’s the beauty of the machine because every time you mess with the tone, you can never change it back to exactly where you had it if you constantly change levels. So once you got it there, you got it there. You have to lay it down. Moog is definitely my favorite synthesizer. There are a lot more keyboards and synthesizers upstairs that we also mess with.
HN: You also have a newer version of the Moog?
Kethro: We have a Micromoog that I use that for a lot of bass sounds and the Moog Little Phatty (stage I), and it is an analog synthesizer, but it’s built on a more digital standard. The components don’t deliver the exact sounds as the lower frequencies of the Micromoog, but it’s still all there.
What I’ve been doing lately is I’ve been running the Moog through some effects pedals. I have three delay pedals I blend together and a stereo reverb. It’s a lot of fun! You can delay stuff, loop stuff and get some really crazy sounds.
Over here, we have the MPC1000. It’s the reduced version of the 2000 with lot of the same features of the older machine. MPCs are widely used for a lot drum programming and mostly sampling. It’s an all-around beat machine: a sequencer, sampler. It’s got everything we need to make beats and really good beats at that.
I saw someone playing it, and I fell in love with it. It can be a little complicated at times, but I set up the MPC so when it loads, it’s loading blank and there isn’t a single sound or preset, nothing. I really start with a blank slate and go from there. Throw on a sample, work on drums. There’s really no formula, and I do things different every time. And I use Logic Pro for post-production.
HN: What gear do you use for live performances?
Kethro: I use two Vestax PDX 2000s, a Vestax PMC-05 mixer, Serato, trigger finger and mics. We will start to use the MPC soon as well.
Dojorok: I use a Technics, and Vestax turntables, a Vestax mixer, Serato and vinyl records, but it usually changes.
Arlo Brittan is a Hear Nebraska contributor. He hails from the western Nebraska town of Alliance and makes music under the name blissed. Reach him at arlob@hearnebraska.org.