DIANA ROSS / “I Will Survive”

I have never been a fan of Diana Ross. I liked her in Lady Sings The Blues, but that was acting, not singing. I believe I only own one Ross cd, a live recording, to which I seldom listen. So for me to select this cut, well that’s special. I came across this track during one of my many hours of trolling the internet, checking out blogs, following-up on a mention, one thing leading to another and then voila: you find something special.

This Opolopo remix of "I Will Survive" is special, very special. Whenever I played it on my radio show, invariably I would get at least one telephone call: who is that? I never heard her sing like that? Man, that’s hot, where can I get it?

You can get it online by going to http://www.opolopo.com

Opolopo is Peter Major, a Hungarian born Swede who is both a musician and a producer. Last year I emailed Opolopo and he shared music with me through an ftp account—basically a website setup to transfer large files. I saw a Jevetta Steele remix of “Calling You,” a song included on the Baghdad Café soundtrack album and also on Ms. Steele's eponymous debut album.

“Calling You” is one of my all-time favorite R&B ballads. Opolopo had a jumpy broken beat version that shocked me initially, but as I listened to it for a second time, I could feel what was happening. And then I found out there was a third version, a second remix. At that point I began thinking: you need to find out what this cat is up to.

He has remixes of Michael Jackson, Beyonce, a bad, bad Erykah Badu remix and a smoking remix of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” There was obviously more here than meets the ear. So I fired off a series of questions, and he responded promptly.

I’ll end with our mini interview—but first let me say: I don’t have to say more about the Diana Ross, because you’ve got ears and undoubtedly you hear how bad it is. Additionally, as a New Orleans native in September of '05, this track takes on a significance far, far beyond anything Ross or Opolopo had in mind.

What did you have in mind when you did the Diana Ross remix?

Well, I thought it would be an interesting challenge to take a stigmatised track that has been played to death and is probably every DJs nightmare request, to a totally different place. The original may be cheesy to many people but there's nothing wrong with Diana's vocals. I wanted to put them in a new and modern context. Even though the remix is what people may call broken beat or bruk, it's heavily influenced by soul and jazzfunk from the late seventies and early eighties. I wanted to fuse the modern beats of bruk with the arrangements, sound and production of artists like George Duke and Earth, Wind and Fire with lots of percussion and rhythm guitars. For some people it made the the trick. A lot of people who claim to hate the original are seriously feeling the remix. Others can't be bothered to even give it a listen due to their feelings about the original. It turned out to be a bit more controversial than I thought...

What about the Javetta Steele?

The original (all resung by Javetta) was rerecorded as a ballad for an album in 1999 by Christian Falk. It was originally meant to be featured as a d'n'b track on the album but the label didn't buy it and wanted that for a remix instead. So it was a commissioned remix and they wanted me to do a d'n'b version. This was in 1999 when d'n'b started to cross over here and there into mainstream music although it never really took off. There were a few other d'n'b tracks on that album but I guess the label wanted to play it safe with Calling You and left the clubbier version for the remix. I did two versions just for the heck of it. The second one, the -83 mix, was playing with the thought of how d'n'b would sound if the concept had been invented in the early eighties instead of the nineties. So it's d'n'b with it's double tempo beats but with the sound of the Linn drum machine and jazzy electro.

What do you like about doing remixes?
 
I love doing remixes because it gives you a creative challenge within certain boundaries. Of course It depends on how you approach remixes. Usually you get an accapella around which you are to build a new track. Some will just use a word or a phrase and stick it into whatever track and do something that is very far from the original. I like to keep the integrity of the original vocals as much as possible and build new harmonies and contexts around them. It's very inspirational and instantly gratifying to have a great vocal track and start laying down chords and grooves around them. You also bypass the stage of endless vocal takes and editing. What you have is what you get. You can just focus on the arrangements and production which for me is the most rewarding part.

What does “opolopo” mean and why did you choose it as a name?

Well, the word opolopo is yoruban and means plenty, much or many.I have been using a few different aliases over the years for different kind of projects but when I was looking for a name under which I could do the type of music that is closest to my heart I wanted a name that reflected the music as well as it's origins. Since most rhythm and beat based music is of African descent and especially since the roots of soul and jazz go back to the slaves that were brought to America, I started to look at the language they brought with them. I found the word opolopo that I felt was perfect on many levels. It's meaning can reflect the diversity and richness of the music. Being a graphical designer I wanted it to look good in a graphical context, those four o's catches your eye no matter how you write it or what font you use. And it's got a beautiful simplicity to it, you can write it by only using vertical lines and circles. It also happens to be a palindrome, it reads the same backwards as forwards.