"I remember… how influential the music was; the way hundreds of people would react to certain songs and how they shared the same vibe and the connection. It made you feel like you weren’t alone as far as understanding and liking records.”   --- Mr. V on his early impressions of House music.

As a DJ, Producer and record label owner, Victor Font (aka Mr. V) is not so much mindful of his own personal success as he is committed to the future success and vitality of House music. Born and raised in Manhattan ’s Lower East Side , Font has been surrounded by music throughout his life, from his club-bouncer Aunt, and a childhood friendship with Lord G, to his invaluable working relationship and friendship with Louie Vega and the Masters at Work team. Now, through years of impassioned work, Mr. V continues to storm the scene as a strong advocate of House music, striving to turn new ears onto the sound that has meant so much in his own life.

Victor’s coming of age straddled the end of the Disco era and the dawn of the Video age, an epitome of the New York City melting pot. “I was an MTV kid, cable had first arrived,” recalls Font. “I listened to a lot of rock and early Hip Hop -- a mixture of stuff like Twisted Sister, Culture Club, Wham, Afrika Bambataa, Curtis blow. The first record I bought with my own money was Biz Markie’s “Make the Music With Your Mouth Biz.

“When my mom first bought a record player, it was a record and cassette player, and I used to mix cassettes and records. I would literally take stuff apart and try to put it back together. So from that early time, my family could see that I wanted to be some sort of a DJ. Lord G lived in the same neighborhood. He had equipment and I would go to his house and watch him play. I really didn’t take it in at that time, as far as becoming a DJ. I used to go to clubs and I remember when I saw him playing in a nightclub and how influential the music was, the way hundreds of people would react to certain songs and how they shared the same vibe and the connection. It made you feel like you weren’t alone as far as understanding and liking records.”

In 1995, Mr. V was spending Thursday nights behind the light board at Lord G’s Factoria 21 party at Sound Factory Bar, learning all there was to know about running lights and successfully sequencing them with the music. He also spent Wednesday nights at Sound Factory Bar hanging out at Louie Vega’s Underground Network party. “I was in search of myself at that time in terms of what I wanted for my sound and what I liked to listen to,” Font remembers. “Lord G’s music was hard tribal house and it was great, but I needed something else. It wasn’t all there for me until I went on Wednesdays and I heard what Louie was playing. I tried to incorporate both worlds; embracing the soulful sound with the harder tribal side. It’s still something I’m trying to achieve to this day. When I went to Underground Network, that’s when I knew that this was what I wanted to do as far as Djing and Producing. This is the music I wanted to do and play and listen to.”

One fateful Wednesday proved to be the right place at the right time for Mr. V, as he explains how he and Louie Vega first began working together. “One week, the light man got really sick and asked me to cover for him. So I stepped in, and Louie was playing and I was doing lights and I was sequencing perfectly with whatever he was playing. If he took the music out, the lights went out. When there was a break in the song, the lights went out and I put in some other lights. Louie was amazed. He said to me, ‘We gotta do parties together.’ We’ve been friends ever since.”

That friendship has proven to be a true guiding force in Font’s life, both personally and professionally, in that it placed Font on the inside of the game – on the road with Louie Vega and as an intern in the Masters At Work studios where Font observed all the dos and don’ts of the House music world. Font hesitates, however, to classify it as a teacher-student relationship.

“He [Vega] never really taught me anything,” explains. “He took me under the wing, but there was no teaching. I can’t really say that it wasn’t teaching, but what he really made me do was just watch. He didn’t say a word. If I had any questions, he told me to ask. Being around Louie’s circle, you get to see things that a lot of people don’t normally see. He never sat me down and told me how to read the crowd or how to play. All he said was “Stand back and watch.”

In recounting his experiences with Vega, Font draws a parallel to the Cameron Crowe movie Almost Famous. “It’s almost the same thing I went through except I didn’t have a notebook and a tape recorder. I was on the bus with them, carrying their records, looking at the crowd reacting and seeing the world and the dance music world in a whole new light. I didn’t travel until I met Louie. He opened me up to the world and the scene beyond New York City . When I saw London and Italy , countries where people spoke languages that I didn’t understand and heard them sing the records back, I knew that it was ten times bigger than New York and the United States . It really motivated me to do something about the music and the scene in New York .”

“It’s a shame that in the US , where this music is born and bred, it’s not big,” Font muses, with a bit of sadness and longing in his voice. “You have to travel thousands of miles to get what you’re looking for.”

House music in America can often appear to be a great contradiction. In one instance, dance music is continually being subdivided into different genres too numerous to keep track of, yet at the same time it can also seem as if it is being broken down to the lowest common denominator in an effort to appeal to a wider buying public. Font simply sees this as the natural and necessary progression of House music.

“It’s really no longer a whole. The fore founders who made it House have all gone their separate ways. It’s like if you have four Shaolin masters that teach a group of kids. The masters might stay together, but after awhile they separate to teach different schools. That’s what happened with House music. All these people got together and built this one genre of House and have brought it in so many different directions. You look at Marshall Jefferson’s sound compared to Mr. Fingers. Mr Fingers was in a whole different direction, he used a lot of techy stuff. Marshall was more of a party style. People heard it and they have followed different people and it broke off and became different things.

“People now have gone progressive and took it more techno and faster, and others still want it slower. I think it’s all great. Without it being separate, I think there would be a lot of fighting to understand what House is. It has to separate because you can’t call something House when it really isn’t. House is the traditional sound that started it all.

“In terms of the progression, I can’t really say it’s good or bad. Everyone progresses. You look at Frankie Knuckles; he doesn’t sound the same as he did years ago, he’s become a different person. Louie Vega is another perfect example. He doesn’t really play the same way he did back in the day. He’s become Louie Vega, there’s no more “Little” anymore. He’s progressed into an older person. His production is way higher than where he was ten or fifteen years ago. Progression is good, bottom line. I think House music right now it at its best, in terms of progression. I’ve never lost the roots of it and I’m continuing to do the roots here in 2004 into 2005.”

While many people look at music through a very narrow lens and limit their listening to very specific styles and genres, Mr. V takes a very open-minded approach – he actually listens with his ears open. “I love listening to different types of music. Louie turned me onto drum n’ bass, the old Loft classics, stuff that I was too young for. He is the only person who taught me to be musically open minded. He made me listen to everything and become my own judge, he made me use my ears to understand music and not just to see a bunch of kids with glow sticks.”

Font’s productions and DJ sets reflect the melting pot of musical influences that he has grown up with and continues to embrace. Often laced with a touch of jazz and sometimes veering off into syncopated, broken beat territory, Font likes to test the waters and take chances with his music. Along those same lines, he finds the most creative satisfaction out of bringing the past and the present together in his music. Here, he once again looks to the path that Louie Vega and Kenny Dope blazed early in their careers.

“I like to be very simple and very effective. I think those are the two things you need as a producer,” he explains. “That is what I understood from watching Louie. If you look at how he and Kenny became who they became, looking at their early catalog, it’s nothing but back to back hits – priceless records. “Ha Dance,” Sume Sigh Sey” “the Bounce”-- they put out power records before they really got into their minds. They showed how they could manipulate music and give it the funk and use the same traditions, but none of it back then was as musical as their work today. Their stuff was simple and effective. That’s how I go about my productions.”

In the DJ booth, Mr. V does not allow himself to become trapped by any notions of how or what he should play. “I like to go everywhere in my sets. I like to go deep; I like to go into the African sound, then get real pumped up and hard and go a little tribal. I like to start nice and smooth in the beginning, and then we party in the middle. We take it higher, we go back and we go forward. It’s like a roller coaster ride. I just like to show people phases of what I went through in my life as far as music.”

 Font joined forces with Alix Alvarez to bring the world Sole Channel, first as a weekly party and now as a record label making noise worldwide. They first met in 1998 at MAW studios. The connection was immediate. “ We spoke about a lot of things and shared our vision in the business and we had a lot in common. He was down to earth and overall a great guy,” Font remembers.

The early days of the Sole Channel party were lacking a certain something that both Font and Alvarez needed – they were frustrated at having to play across the board when all they wanted was to play House music all night long. “We finally decided that we going to go full force and just play House all night long. If people didn’t like it, we would go down with the ship.” The decision was obviously right on, as the Sole Channel party lasted nearly 3 years, ending when Alvarez and Font decided to focus on producing music. They have once again been rewarded, as their original productions such as “The Revolution”, “Jus’ Dance,” Alvarez’s “Nu Breed” and “Critical Point” EPs, and Font’s forthcoming “Something Wit Jazz” have been garnering hot crowd reactions on dance floors worldwide. “We couldn’t just rely on the party,” Font explains. “We knew that if we could get our music out there, people would follow.”

Mr. V feels strongly about the importance giving back to the House community, and has high expectations of his peers, largely based upon his experiences as an up-and-comer with Louie Vega. “My goal is to target the next generation of this music,” he explains. “Unfortunately, there are only a handful of DJs right now who are doing their job as far as educating the young. There’s not a lot of DJs who are taking kids and training them, taking them under the wing, building a nest, so to speak, looking at the new generation and seeing who they feel will take it to the next level. I learned from Louie and continue to walk with him and hopefully I can pass on what I learned from him. Tony Humphries does the same thing. He has a crew of DJs who you’re probably hearing about now like Master Kev, Dave Tobon. These kids were raised by Tony Humphries to carry on with the music when he’s gone. It’s all about the next generation and how we’re going to get the computer kids to understand this music. I think it’s possible; they can listen to their Britney and have a share of Earth Wind and Fire.”

 How can the traditional and organic sound of House music continue to survive in the modern world of Britney and music for the masses? Font once again calls on his peers to rise to the occasion. “ We need someone to become vocal in this business; someone who’s going to hustle harder than anyone, someone who’s going to speak about it proudly and not be shy about it expressing it. We’ve got to take it to the next level to say to the world “This is HOT.” To be honest it is really tough. You don’t want to make this business POP, because when that happens it becomes purely a business and we lose sense of the music. That’s what has happened to Hip Hop. In its purest form, Hip Hop was the greatest thing in the world. When you look at it right now, it’s garbage. You have too many rappers talking about guns, yet they’re sponsored by Motorola. It’s just not fun any more. Look at Rock. Where is Rock? It’s underground, it’s pure again. House was at a point where it was Pop and it’s not like that anymore. To me it’s at its purest form where it is right now.”

A challenging task indeed—finding the perfect balance of House music success without watering it down. However, if anyone can successfully become House Music Ambassador to the world, it is Mr.V with his unrelenting passion. “ I’m so inspired by the Disco Sucks campaign,” he says. “House music today is a direct descendant of Disco, no question. When I watch those videos of what they did in Chicago at that ballpark and seeing how naïve and ignorant Americans were towards that music, it only pushes me to work harder. Anyone who bulldozes or crushes anyone’s music, that’s a crime to me.”

It’s reassuring to know that Mr. V is out there, fighting the good fight, so that House music can continue to flourish, touching lives and moving bodies for years to come.

Words by Alex R. Mayer for JJazProject