Paco Perez, soul music DJ Kenyans loved in the 80s, makes comeback

When I was a baby,” signor Paco Perez says at the start of our interview, “I once peeped outside the window of our house ... and I saw dinosaurs.”

This is how the legendary Spanish deejay, of years of yore, lets us know that he is now in his seventies.

Yet, it was in 1972, as a young man in his 20s, that Paco Perez first set loafed heels in Nairobi, as the guitarist of a Spanish band that was performing a long gig at the Hotel Intercontinental, as part of a worldwide tour.

“When I was 13,” Perez says, “I taught myself to play the guitar; and when I was 14, me and some teenage friends of mine decided to form a band, which got a touring contract at some point.”

He attributes his love of soul music to his falling in love with the Afro-American singer Aretha Franklin’s records in the 1960s – a string of single hits such as ‘Think,’ ‘Respect,’ ‘You make me feel’ ‘The way I love you’  ‘Chain of fools’ and especially ‘I say a little prayer.’

The writer, Prof Mikhail Iossel, described to the Sunday Nation how transformational that particular Aretha Franklin song was to many non-English speakers, living under dictatorial regimes such as Paco as a teenager under General Franco, or himself in his early 20s under ‘Uncle Brezhnev’ in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Lyrics

“I never tired of listening to that particular song, and I played it a few times almost every evening. I could understand many of the lyrics, too, which were cool and made me feel as if I were, in some small part, an American myself.” “The moment I wake up, before I put on my makeup, I say a little prayer for you,” and then, “Forever and ever, you’ll stay in my heart, and I will love you forever, and ever, we never will part, oh, how I love you,” and “Together, that’s how it must be, to live without you would only mean heartbreak for me,” and, finally, “My darling, believe me, for me there is no one but you!’ It was a very beautiful song.”

Prof Iossel remembers drinking acrid, half-dry Bulgarian red and listening to that song, and his heart filling with sadness and happiness, never mind that he was aware no one was saying any little prayers for him anywhere in the giant dark city of Leningrad or any place else in the world.

“But, well, so what? That was fine by me. It was no big deal, as long as when it was over, I could get up, go over to the cabinet, rewind the tape, and play it again ...’” And Prof Iossel, visiting Kenya for a few weeks, will be one of hundreds (if not thousands) who will be going down next weekend to the Sun Palm resort in Watamu for the legendary soul retrospective show of DJ Perez, in an event titled ‘Return of the Boomerang,’ – after the iconic club ‘Boomerang’ that used to be on Museum Hill, and which was the place that Perez first became a household name in the 1980s, among Kenya’s hip dancing classes!

Before that, early in the 1970s, he had changed careers from being a guitarist to learning to be a disc jockey – and doing innovative things like incorporating live drums into his deejay performances.

But first DJ Perez had ‘boomeranged’ quite a few times between clubs in Kenya and Spain.

“In the 1970s, my first gig as a DJ was at the Canary Islands. Then I come to Kimathi Street and played at a club called Pacha for some time. Then I go for two years back to Canary Islands to play the discos! Then I return to Kimathi Street, a very nice club called Tamango (where Tanagiers lounge currently is) ...’’

DJ Perez then returned to the Canary Islands for a year’s contract, but did not like the new music.

“Hard rock was the new thing, and the wild mzungus on the Canaries (sic) all want to mosh to this music.”

Club Hollywood

He returned to Kenya, got a gig at Club Hollywood – now walled off like a poor pharaoh’s tomb – but did not care for the ‘reggae’ music in demand there; and since Perez couldn’t stop the reggae, he looked for a new job that he could enjoy.

The blessing was a British entrepreneur who had just started a new club on Museum Hill called ‘Boomerang,’ and who literally gave Dj Paco Perez a free hand on the decks – and after that, just for the record, the rest of it is history.

The legend of DJ Perez was born!

“Soul has always been in my soul,” he says, “And at Boomerang, it seemed to seep into everyone else. Kenyans were dancing so nicely, all of the time, and as a deejay when you see the people are having so much of the fun, you also enjoy so much.”

For Perez, the 1980s were one long party, and like Oakenfeld sings in the song, “oh my, what a surprise, after we’ve partied all night with this deejay, sunset to sunrise ...” But even with party after party, the party at some point must come to an end.

For DJ Perez, that was after the end of the 80s, after falling in love with a girl who was a lead singer at the Boomerang Club, and with whom they married and stayed in Spain, “and with whom I am still happily married to after 30 years, I’m happy man.”

Yet in Carnivore (Nairobi), this coming Thursday, and then again in Watamu, at the Sun Palm resort, over the weekend, the septuagenarian disc jockey will roll back time on the decks, and alongside DJ Kareez and the veteran DJ Adaams, unleash a soul train on Kenyans over the Easter weekend.

Dj Perez, these days, is also a good Christian who is happy to play Easter and says he’ll go to heaven.

For soul lovers, though, the heaven will be here on earth, and for those who will be lucky enough to get their requests played, it will be as if a little prayer has been answered, and a Spanish Easter Bunny brought the music home.

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