Mix des Masters At Work in the UK in 1999
Mix des Masters At Work @ Camden Palace (UK) in July1998
Masters At Work Mix from Kiss FM in June 1998

Interviews

ENGLISH
Hear Kenny and Louie talking about their history.

FRENCH
Masters At Work Interview on Radio FG (Paris)

Masters At Work
Show broadcast on Radio 1 on Thursday 14th September

Who?
Masters At Work are "Little Louie" Vega and Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez. Vega was born in 1965 and grew up in New York's Bronx district. His father was a Puerto Rican jazz and Latin sax player Luis Vega Sr. and his uncle Hector LaVoe, singer with the Fania All Stars salsa ensemble. Gonzalez was born five years later in 1970 in Brooklyn's Sunset Park.


Musical style
Everything from four-to-the-floor house to hip-hop, jazz, salsa, mambo, blues, soul and disco.


Brief History
Growing up in New York, Louie and Kenny were heavily influenced by the New York salsa scene of the '70s. Pre-Masters At Work, Louie was DJing at the Devil's Nest, Heartthrob and Studio 54 clubs in New York, while Kenny was DJing at block parties and forming his own dance label, Dope Wax. The pair met through a mutual friend, Todd Terry, and set about creating the Masters At Work sound that would make them the most respected men in clubland. In 1996, their standing in the dance world was furthered following the Nuyorican Soul album, which featured collaborations with legends such as Roy Ayres, George Benson, Jocelyn Brown and Tito Puente. This album changed the public perception of the DJs-turned-producers, making them the masters of the Latino sound.
Hear Kenny and Louie talking about their history.

What The Experts Say
Gilles Peterson: "They're unbeatable DJs. They're frightening to play alongside because they've got it totally down. They've got Latin, house, dance, disco, hip hop, funk, rare groove, jazz. They've got it all absolutely covered. That's what makes MAW the true Masters."
Jocelyn Brown: "No matter where we are in the world, when we come together we know what we'll do: we'll make music to unify the elders with the young ones."
Frankie Knuckles: "In an era when so much is taken away from the reality of music as I've always known it, it's so refreshing to know the quality of the music I receive from these two gentlemen will always be the best! So many people ask, "Why do you continue to do this?" MAW is one of the reasons."
Todd Terry: "They always had an ear for bringing something different to the table as far as live musicians are concerned, and they're the only house guys that put on shows with a full band, which I think is very creative. They've taken dance to another level."
Quotes courtesy Tim Lawrence / BBE Records. (Tim Lawrence is writing 'Love Saves The Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture')


Key Releases
Click on the links to hear audio clips in Realaudio G2
Nuyorican Soul - 'The Nervous Track'
Nuyorican Soul - 'Mind Fluid'
Masters At Work feat. India - 'I Can't Get No Sleep'
River Ocean feat. India - 'Love and Happiness'
Nuyorican Soul - 'Nuyorican Soul' LP | 'I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun'
Masters At Work feat. India - 'To Be In Love'
Kenny 'Dope' Presents The Bucketheads - 'The Bomb'


Current Activity
Masters at Work have released a number of excellent compilations this year on BBE Records. These include:
Masters at Work Tenth Anniversary Collection Part One, 1990-1995, with Part Two to follow on 23rd October
'Mad Styles and Crazy Visions' compilation, featuring re-defined disco, mixed live by Little Louie Vega
'Stop and Listen' Volume 5 compiled by MAW
'Strange Games and Funky Things III' mixed by Kenny Dope

Kenny Dope has just relaunched his Dope Wax label, with a new single, 'The Illout'

You can catch Kenny and Louie at this year's Southport Weekender on 3-5th November. Check http://www.southportweekender.co.uk/ for more details.


Weblinks
All Music MAW profile, discography and related artists
Biography on ubl.com
MAW remixography
BBE Records - for info on the latest MAW compilations
Unofficial fan site - with interviews, pix, discography and audio clips ;-)



Tracklistings
Kenny Dope's Mix
Intro featuring Merciless R.N.S.
'Bad Boyz' - Shyne (Bad Boy)
'What Means The World To You' - Cam'Ron (Epic)
'The Next Episode' - Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg (Aftermath)
'Got It All' - Eve & Jadakiss (Interscope/Ruffryders)
'My Mind Right' - Memphis Bleek (Roc-A-Fella)
'That's Me' - Cam'Ron (Epic)
'Space' - Galt Macdermott (Kilmarnock)
'You Roam When You Don't Get It At Home' - Estelle, Myrna & Sylvia (Stax)
'Misdemenor' - Foster Sylvers (Pride)
'Sun Goddess' - Ramsey Lewis (Columbia)
'I'm Afraid The Masquerade Is Over' - David Porter (Stax)
'Ill Bomb' - LL Cool J (Def Jam)
'Your Child' - Mary J. Blige (Universal)
'Try Again' - Aaliyah (Blackground)
'Balla' - The Merciless R.N.S. (Merciless)
'Boom' - Royce The 5'9 (Game)
'Best Of Me' - Mya featuring Jay-Z (Roc-A-Fella)
'Hold On' - En Vogue (Atlantic)
'Oooh' - De La Soul featuring Redman (Tommy Boy)
'Puerto Rico' - Eddie Palmieri (Coco)
'Funky President' - James Brown (Polydor)
'Theme Of The Planets' - Dexter Wansel (Phili International)
'Last Night Changed It All' - Esther Williams (Friends & Co.)
'It's Great To Be Here' - The Jackson 5 (Motown)
'T Plays Cool' - Marvin Gaye (Motown)
'SpaceDust' - The Galactic Force Band (Springboard)
'Scorpio' - Dennis Coffey (Sussex)
'It's Just Begun' - Jimmy Caster Bunch (Kinetic)
'Melting Pot' - Booker T & The MG's (Stax)
'Be Black Baby' - Grady Tate (Skye)
'Who Told You' - Roni Size featuring Dynamite Mc (Talkin' Loud)
'Makin' A Living' - Power House 3 (Dope Wax)
'The Illout' - Kenny Dope (Dope Wax)

Intermusic.com

Masters At Work plus a host of famous names from US pop history adds up to a whole lotta soul. Nuyorican Soul, in fact. Steven Worthy meets the men who toil...

There's a knock on the hotel room door and in amble two men. They're a striking pair. One, built like an ox, towers over the other, who is compact and slight. The big man is Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez, the smaller guy his musical partner 'Little' Louie Vega. Collectively and individually they have plenty of noms de guerre ­ DJ/remixers Masters At Work and house producers/musicians Kenlou, while Kenny has his Bucketheads (remember the insanely catchy funk-sampling The Bomb with its hook 'These sounds fall into my mi-e-i-e-ind'?) and Dope Wax projects. But now they are Nuyorican Soul. And with their eponymous album, they have just released, arguably, one of the CDs of the year.
To the dance fraternity, and in particular lovers of house, these two regular New Yorkers are deities. It's the Masters At Work (MAW) name that causes most clubbers to swoon. On the occasion they do play a club in Britain, tickets sell like lottery tickets. Other DJs might think they're the best, but ask punters and MAW are undisputed number ones. But their recording output is restricted to the odd mix album and the MAW remixes ­ so sought after that their list of clients include the biggest names in music. We're talking Michael Jackson and Madonna here.
On the surface, the Nuyorican Soul project looks far removed from their usual four-on-the-floor house workouts. It's house, hip-hop, blues, jazz, soul, disco, salsa, mambo ­ the breadth is amazing. But dig underneath the foundation of house music, burrow into Kenny and Louie's mind, and you get your answer. "MAW," opens Louie in front of a twinkling night-time London vista that pans out behind his hotel room window, "our production team, as most people know, is predominantly house-based. Remixes and stuff like that. So we just wanted to do something live. Give it a new meaning and focus on the live element."

Ah, simple. But no. When you hear the album, read the credits, the roll call of talent who hooked up with Kenny and Louie, such a summary seems inadequate. The duo's commitment to the task was such that in the 18 months it took to complete Nuyorican Soul, they've stopped their MAW remixes and cut down on the live DJ sets. Kenny digs further to explain the Nuyorican rationale.
"The most important thing for us is that it sounded right sonically," expands the garrulous Louie, "and that it would work right in a club and have enough 'bottom'. Because a lot of people have tried to do the live stuff on the club tip, like four-on-the-floor, but they've never gotten that right 'bottom' out of it, that kick, that low end, that rawness, and we wanted to capture that and we did that until we got it."
And it's on this album that Vega and Gonzalez have confirmed their transition from remixers to producers. Yet it's their remixing knowledge that stood them in such good stead for Nuyorican Soul. They've produced work for their own individual projects before, but this has been their biggest task so far. And they've drawn on their studio experience before to create their own singular way of working.
So they created a basic rhythm track ­ Kenny bashing away on the drum sampler and live kit and Louie tinkling on the keyboards ­ to which they added a plethora of top notch musicians and singers. Check the cast list of George Benson, soul and house diva Jocelyn Brown, rare groove pioneer Roy Ayers, DJ Jazzy Jeff and latin legends Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente and Vince Montana Jr, as well as Louie's former wife and latin singer India.

Kenny fingers a limp-looking club sandwich and grins as the subject turns to drums. Louie is as fanatical about drums as his musical partner is. As sons of Puerto Rican New Yorkers, Kenny and Louie heard their parents listening to mambo and salsa tunes in their apartment. On those records, the beat is king. Bongos and congas combine with regular kit to provide that infectious groove-that'll-make-yer-move. So Nuyorican Soul is underpinned by its drums. The duo don't underplay the amount of work needed to get them perfect.
"It's about picking the right sounds," Louie exclaims. "And keeping that feel of liveness... but it's machines mixed with that liveness. The machines kept that 'bottom', kept that rawness under it, and the live players give it that feel. The way we work is that I play keyboards and he plays the drums, does the drum machines and we groove together. We're not trained musicians, but we have an ear for music and melody. We worked really hard at getting those drums right underneath."
"That's one of the main things that I miss on live albums," Kenny takes up. "The drums ­ because a lot of the old records, when you listen to them, the drum sound is incredible. And that's the sound we're into ­ the way the drums were recorded in the 70s. So it's important to us, when we do the live shows, that we are going to trigger drum sounds..." "...coz we are gonna need that 'bottom'," adds Louie with perfect timing.
So this is how Nuyorican work. It's a building programme like no other. And they build and build. As Louie says, the music is big ­ there's 21-piece orchestras in here, and gigantic horn sections ­ so the drums have to match them. They build a base and they can add and take away at will. With the diversity of genres that appear on Nuyorican Soul, comes the responsibility for directing them. Not easy when many are old sweats of the latino music scene; fiery tempers and obstinance might have been the order of the day, but professionalism shone through. Rather than working with finished pieces of music in their remixes, they had learnt how to direct people to do what they wanted to do.

Personality struggle "We had a lot of say," Louie says with some indignation to the suggestion that they might have struggled with all the personalities. "If we wanted the horns where we wanted it, we'd tell him how we want him to play it, then he puts his style into it, because we don't take that away from them either, because they're gonna give too.
You want them to live it. You don't want to pull too much away from them because then you will turn them off. They were asking us 'Do you want it this way, do you want it that way?' and we will say 'Yeah, do it like this'." Kenny explains that on certain occasions, the musicians just got on with it, not quite sure what their young arbiters were getting at. "They were like 'Awww, how's that going to go together with this?'... but they're musicians.
They didn't really understand until they heard the whole thing and the project was finished." But the initial scepticism wasn't universal. Take Tito Puente, for example, an artist who MAW had remixed a 1951 record Mambo Kings for, in the past. The latino music legend might be a veteran, but along with his musical core unit of organ player Hilton Ruiz and his horn section, plus flautist Dave Valentin, their contribution to the funky salsa grooves of MAW Latin Blues was as easy as cutting up pieces for a remix.

Nuyorican Soul, the album, isn't an easy listen for those weaned on the sanitised bubblegum music we hear on the radio. For the house kids who hang on every beat that Kenny and Louie make, it will be even more of a challenge. But their position as style leaders gives them a head start. You see, they want Nuyorican Soul to be an education for listeners. Louie attempts a definition at what to expect. "It's like, world dance, I guess... all forms of dance music. It's a lot of inspirations; people who have inspired us, music that has inspired us. There's new music we came up with, there are eight originals, and there are six covers. A lot of the covers are rare. Sweet Tears was a single that was never big for Roy (Ayers).
Runaway was a single back in the States, but it wasn't a commercial kind of thing and we think India took it to another level when she sang it. But we loved those records in the original form so we tried to give it the same arrangement they had but beefing it up and enhancing what we had to make a nice groove for today. We felt that we combined all those elements together. We wanted to show people where dance music comes from. Disco and the disco flavour and that whole 70s thing is the inspiration for house."
Perfect example
"A lot of people don't know where this stuff comes from," picks up Kenny. "The perfect example, a rap record might sample a George Duke record or a Roy Ayers, and then they hear the Roy Ayers record and they say, 'Hey they stole that from something so-and-so did.'"

"Even though we do dance music," confirms Louie, "we're trying to tell people that all these elements are in dance music. Like the latin flavour that people use in house music, there's a jazz flavour that people use in house music, and that's what we use. We use latin, jazz/funk, soul, hip hop... we use everything in our music, disco flavour, we use all those flavours. We've done remixes for the past seven years and we're trying to tell people that this is like a real educational piece for youngsters about where dance music comes from. You may not hear it exactly like that, but it is... we're trying to bring them out."
Seamless mix
As well as the techniques garnered from seven years of remixing as a team, the MAW is enhanced by the seamless mix of all the tracks into one. Sounds easy if you're doing all the music, but when you're writing, recording and producing so many different artists, the task becomes nigh on impossible. Never let it be said that Kenny and Louie are quitters. As one track finishes, Kenny and Louie have to have in mind that someone else has to pick up the baton and carry on. Being able to work out chord changes, key progressions, was how they leaped over a potential pitfall. MAW ­ the remixers ­ understandably remains a reference point. They even got to remix a track from its original content ­ George Benson's no less.
After a lengthy wait for Benson to call back after Kenny had approached him with the Nuyorican idea, they got him in the studio. Benson's familiar jazzy guitar filled New York's Bass Hit studios with his smooth vocals to add. But when Kenny and Louie played it back, they felt something amiss.

"After he finished it, we went home, called each other on the phone and said that we needed to change the music," recounts Kenny. "It inspired us into this whole different sight we had for this record. So we went back in and just laid down what was on the record, took samples off the vocals from the vocal track. He didn't actually sing that, they're samples."
Kenny redid the beats. At the time the two were listening to a lot of jungle, and it came an inspiration for the fast beat that drags the track You Can Do It (Baby) right up into the realms of genius. It'll fit beautifully into any ecletic house set, but an open-minded DJ will have to be behind the decks. That's no criticism on Kenny and Louie, but on a sector of the industry that is as conservative as any other.
But if anyone is going to break that stranglehold, it's Nuyorican Soul. They've created an album like no other, an aural history book, a musical encyclopaedia of dance. They can now be taken very, very seriously as producers. And while they'll carry on remixing and taking the art of DJing to another level, they vow to do the same with Nuyorican Soul. It vows to be the symphonic version of Arthur Hailey's classic Roots saga.

UBL's, & AMG's ,BIOGRAPHY

Both Vega and Gonzalez were born to parents living in New York (the Bronx and Brooklyn, respectively), though of Puerto Rican heritage. Consequently, both were early influenced by the Big Apple's fertile salsa scene during the '70s. (Vega's uncle is the renowned salsa vocalist Hector Lavoe, and his father played saxophone in Latin groups for over 30 years, while Gonzalez' father Hector Torres is also a salsa expert.) During the early '80s, both were noted DJs around New York, though Vega immersed himself in house and freestyle while Gonzalez entered the rap scene. (The separate interests came in handy later, as dance fan Vega concentrated on songwriting and groove-making while hip-hop head Gonzalez programmed beats and samples.) The pair were also working separately as producers, and Vega had already made a name for himself working on dozens of freestyle tracks and remixes by Nice & Smooth, Information Society and India. Gonzalez, working as a mobile DJ with a team calling themselves the Masters at Work, founded his own Dope Wax Records and worked on production for all of the major New York dance labels: Strictly Rhythm, Nervous, Cutting and Big Beat. In 1987, he loaned out the name Masters at Work to Todd Terry for the 1987 single "Alright Alright" (a huge club hit), then Terry returned the favor one year later by introducing him to Vega.

After comparing notes, the pair decided that combining their wide range of influences could be an interesting experiment. They released their first Masters at Work single, the appropriately titled "Blood Vibes," on Cutting Records. Since Vega still had remixing contracts from his solo days, the pair decided to apply the MAW treatment first to Debbie Gibson's "One Step Ahead." The dance community was reasonably shocked to hear a disposable pop artist given a respectable, even exciting, dance sound.

House production teams rarely released albums of their own productions under their own name, but a Masters at Work LP appeared in 1991, on Cutting Records. The album mixed older singles with newer productions, and featured guest slots for vocalists like Jocelyn Brown and India (the latter of whom is also Vega's wife) plus producers like Todd Terry and Maurice Joshua. The reputation of Vega and Gonzalez grew soon and they received pleas from most of the major labels to contribute remixes, adding to their resume Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Madonna, St. Etienne, George Benson, Brand New Heavies, Lisa Stansfield, Deee-Lite, Everything But the Girl, Chic, Soul II Soul, Neneh Cherry, Ce Ce Peniston and dozens more.

Though Masters at Work were still a relatively underground phenomenon in 1993, but the success of singles like "The Nervous Track" (as the Latin-vibed Nuyorican Soul), "Love and Happiness" (as River Ocean), "I Can't Get No Sleep" and "When You Touch Me" -- each with vocals by Vega's wife, India -- caused their associated label Strictly Rhythm to give them their own MAW Records subsidiary. The discofied Gonzalez side-project known as the Bucketheads reigned the dance charts during 1995-96 with two number one singles, "The Bomb (These Sounds Fall into My Mind)" and "Got Myself Together."

In early 1997, the MAW duo issued the most high-profile release of their career (at least in terms of the music establishment), a self-titled full-length as Nuyorican Soul. Recorded with input from a host of jazz and Latin past-masters (George Benson, Roy Ayers, Tito Puente, Charlie Sepulveda, Dave Valentin), the album spawned several club hits, including "Runaway" and "It's Alright, I Feel It." The following year, Masters at Work compiled some of their best productions for Masterworks: Essential KenLou House Mixes and MAW Records: The Compilation, Vol. 1. Two years later, BBE trumped both with the release of the four-disc box Tenth Anniversary Collection, Pt. 1 (1990-1995). [See Also: The Bucketheads, Nuyorican Soul]
John Bush, All Music Guide

Louie Vega : Ministry of sound Video interview (http://www.ministryofsound.co.uk)

For many, nothing beats the chemical rush of hearing their favourite trance track at peak time, but others seek a sexier, more sophisticated sound, and although it's been bubbling under for some time, the latin groove has now salsa-ed its way into British hearts, influencing our dress sense [gypsy tops, straw stetsons and sandals anyone?] and the places we go. We've got Latino-styled restaurants popping up like Spring daffs all over the place, Bacardi and tequila drinks seemingly on every billboard while Cuba is the holiday destination of the coolest of the cool.

It's house music which has driven this revolucion - and at the helm are the Masters at Work, 'Little' Louie Vega and Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez. These two New Yorkers of Puerto Rico descent have contributed more to the modern latin dance music scene than anyone else. Their Nervous Track and Mind Fluid were the conceptual precursors to the stunning 1996 Nu Yorican Soul album, a ground-breaking project combining jazz, hip hop and latin spice with a deep, moody house flavour, with guests from Roy Ayers to Jocelyn Brown, Jazzy Jeff to the undisputed king of latin jazz, Tito Puente.

Kenny and Lou, aided by the huge success of their Nuyorican Soul project of 1996, now sit atop the summit of the latino house scene. Nuyorican changed their perceived image as purely house DJs into bona fide exponents of the full latino sound, buttering its rhythms not just across the music for which they were first associated but on top of hip hop, r'n'b, jazz and so much more. Louie has watched it all grow to the stage where new clubs crop up in NYC every week, eager to repeat the success of nights at the likes of Copa and Café Con Leche. "We knew it was a new direction in Latin music but didn't realise what an impact it would have," he says of Nuyorican Soul's success. Louie is convinced their triumph - like that of Erykah Badu and D'Angelo in r'n'b - comes from their breadth of vision.

Now legends like legendary latino band leader Tito Puente are proclaiming MAW as the future of latino dance music. And who are we to argue? Check out this ministry of Sound exclusive video interview and get the low-down from the man himself, one half of Masters At Work, Lil' Louie Vega !!!!