arts & life

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Mixmaster

A local DJ joins

the lineup at the

Movement Festival —

an annual celebration

city of its birth.

Reisa Shanaman
Special to the Jewish News

C

huck Daniels, born
Charles Daniel Bletstein,
is extremely proud of his
heritage — even if he did choose a
less Semitic-sounding alias when
playing and producing dance
music.
“We have to market ourselves in
a certain way, and I figured Daniels
would be a little bit more market-
able than Bletstein,” he explains.
“Now if I was a baseball player,
I might have kept the Bletstein,”
he laughs. The name serves as an
ongoing joke with his father, Jack,
who quips that it would make him
Jack Daniels were he ever to follow
his son into the music industry.
Growing up in Southfield,
Bletstein’s family was active in their
congregation, B’nai Israel, first in
its Pontiac location, then following
it to West Bloomfield, where his
grandfather served as mashgiach.
He credits the synagogue as playing
a major role in his lifelong love of

DJ Chuck Daniels

music; it was even the unintention-
al catalyst for his first-ever concert
experience.
“My temple had a booth at
the Pontiac Silverdome to sell
concessions and raise money for
the temple,” Bletstein recalls. “A
friend and I decided to volunteer
to help out. When we got there,
the Silverdome’s people came over
and said that we were too young to
work because we were selling beer.
We weren’t allowed to even be in
the area of the concessions.
“Instead of getting picked up,
we snuck off and ran out into the
crowd. We didn’t know anything of
what we were listening to. We saw
the lasers and all the crazy stuff
going on.”
It was November of 1987 and
Bletstein, who was just shy of his
bar mitzvah, had just attended Pink
Floyd’s local A Momentary Lapse of

PHOTO BY DAVID SHANAMAN

of techno music in the

PHOTO BY JEREMY DEPUTAT

PHOTO BY JOE GALL

mu s i c

Daniels in the studio

Reason tour stop.
Bletstein’s bar mitzvah was no
ordinary affair, either. “Not only
did I have a bar mitzvah, I trained
for three years to lead the entire
service,” he says. “I did everything
from the Musaf and Shacharit to
reading the Torah portion, the
whole kit and caboodle.”
He also was in the choir for a
while, and had stints at Yeshivah
and the Lubavitch Center. “I dis-
tinctly remember the music from
Fiddler on the Roof and things like
that. And the music that we sang
at temple and at Hebrew school,”
Bletstein says. “I think music in
general was a big part of Judaism
[for me]. It helped relate to what I
do now. I always loved music and
have always been around it.”
In addition to the religious-
leaning melodies he was exposed
to as a child, he fondly recalls being

introduced to the likes of Captain
and Tennille, Stevie Wonder and
Earth, Wind and Fire through
his mother. Add his father’s hi-fi
stereo system, turntables and vinyl
albums to the mix and you’ve got
the perfect recipe for an audiophile
and avid record collector.
At the age of 14, Bletstein
befriended a classmate named
Ross, who had Technics 1200
turntables and a Numark mixer
at home. After spending many
afternoons in Ross’ basement prac-
ticing mixing and beat-matching
records together, the two formed
their own DJ company. The young
entrepreneurs offered their services
at weddings, school dances and the
occasional topless bar.
Now a respected DJ and pro-
ducer with 25 years’ experience —
he founded label Sampled Detroit
in 2002 — and gigs all over the

Movement Music Festival will be
held in Downtown Detroit’s Hart
Plaza noon-midnight May 28-May
30. Chuck Daniels will perform
Sunday, May 29; he will also play
a kick-off party at Populux on
Friday, May 27, as well as his own
party, Cosmic Disco, at Marble
Bar on Saturday, May 28. Among
the more than 100 acts per-
forming, notables include Kevin
Saunderson, one of techno’s fore-
fathers, who will curate the Origins
showcase on Monday; Carl Craig, a
“second wave” Detroit DJ/produc-
er, who is producing the Detroit
Love showcase on Saturday; Israeli
DJ Guy Gerber, who performs
on Monday; and Kraftwerk, the
German electronic-pop pioneers
whose sound is a direct predeces-
sor to Detroit techno. They will be
making their Movement debut
with their 3D show to close out
Saturday on the Main Stage. For a
full lineup and festival tickets ($75-
$300), visit movement.us.

globe, Bletstein is preparing for an
especially momentous Memorial
Day weekend ahead. Getting ready
to make his fourth appearance
at Movement — Detroit’s annual
electronic-music festival held in
Hart Plaza — he says, “People rec-
ognize Detroit as the birthplace of
techno. [Movement] is very impor-
tant to us and it’s very important to
everybody to have an event of this
stature in ‘the Motherland’ of this
music. If you can think of Detroit
as our synagogue of techno music,
we are holding one of the biggest
services of the year.”
The analogy is not an overstate-
ment to the fans who see the dance
floor as a spiritual place; it’s com-
mon for religious rhetoric to be
used when discussing exceptional
DJ sets and the experiences they
facilitate. “Music can be very spiri-
tual,” Bletstein says. “I think it takes
you places [in a similar way] as
religion does. It makes you connect
with your inner self, and I think
dancing in general is a direct repre-
sentation of who you are, because
when you dance you don’t really
think about how to dance, you just
do it. It comes naturally.”
Given dance music’s local legacy,
Detroit’s DJ pedigree is one of the
richest and revered the world over.
“I imagine it’s got to be very dif-
ficult [for the festival’s organizers]
to choose local artists to represent
our city because we have so much
incredible talent here,” Bletstein
says. “For me, it’s an absolute honor
to be asked to play.”

*

May 26 • 2016

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