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Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez Interview
by Tim Lawrence
Born in Broklyn's Sunset Park in 1970, Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez grew up with the meshed sounds of Puerto Rico and New York chiming in his ears. The seventies were the peak years of Fania, and Gonzalez's parents didn't think twice about gazing at their record collection and nodding at their  good fortune to be able to call the likes of Eddie Palmieri, Blades and the Fania All Stars "family".
Gonzalez absorbed this Nuyorican music like a sponge absorbs water; even though he didn't like Salsa, he had to soak it up. But when he was sent to pick up some groceries, he tuned into the sounds of the street. Lined up along the neighbourhood's raised brownstone entrances whenever the weather allowed, a cacophonous chorus of home stereos blared out a mixture of disco, funk and R&B, while chilled-out drivers, their windows rolled down, transmitted the latest from WKTU and WBLS. On his way back, Gonzalez made sure he passed by the corner of Forty-fifth and Sixth Avenue, where a local street crew worked breaks and beats, and hung around a little, or a lot. The air thick with syncopated beats, emotionally charged songs and hard-working DJs, these were good times to be sent on an errand.
When he was thirteen, Gonzalez got his first turntable and started to practice. He touched wax and it warmed to him. When a friend from junior high school invited Gonzalez into his basement to try out his turntables, he started to imitate his street corner heroes with a sense of purpose. A short while later, he got a part-time job working behind the counter at WNR Music Centre. "There was rock, dance music, freestyle, soul and hip hop," says Gonzalez. "I ended up becoming a buyer, so I was bringing in music for all of these different types of people." Early house records from Trax and DJ International were among the hottest sellers, although the owner stuck to his rock guns and continued to push the likes of Led Zeppelin. That was how Gonzalez - ears open, surprised eyebrows raised, head gently tilted and nodding - learnt about rock breaks.
Along with Mike Delgado and Franklin Martinez,  Gonzalez set up the brazenly titled Masters at Work sound system and started to put on parties in two local halls. The staple sound was hip hop but, like just about every neighbourhood party of the era, they also mixed in dance grooves from the likes of Pleasure and Liquid Liquid. "Disco and funk were still in the air, even at these parties," says Gonzalez. "For sure."
Todd Terry, a friend of Delgado's, came to some of the gigs and ended up borrowing the Masters at Work name for his first two records, "Alright, Alright" and "Dum Dum Cry". "I was like, 'Go ahead, use it,'" remembers Gonzalez. It was a favour in the bank, and it would come in handy.
Appropriately for friends born into such rich musical traditions, the Gonzalez (Puerto Rican American) and Terry (African American) didn't so much see eye to eye as hear ear to ear. Gonzalez started to slip out of school so that he could go around to Terry's house, watch him make records and learn the tricks of the nascent bedroom-production trade. There was no better bedroom in which to learn. Terry's Masters at Work tracks came out on Fourth Floor in 1987, as did a couple of other releases, and then, later in the same year, the fledgling producer laid down his first house record, "Party People", one of the original monuments of decentred, sample-driven dance. Terry's output and fame spiralled out of control in 1988; journalists and dancers alike were doing more than spin out a rhyme when they declared, routinely, "Todd is God". With the Terry hype gaining momentum month-by-month, Gonzalez did well to contain himself for as long as he did. "I borrowed drum machines from Todd and started experimenting," he says. "In 1989 I really started making beats."
Gonzalez's first four releases appeared under the Powerhouse alias on Frank Mendez's street-savvy label Nu Groove and "Salsa House", the last of the series, was picked up by DJ "Little" Louie Vega, who was spinning at Roseland and liked the idea of doing a remix. Vega got hold of Gonzalez's number through Terry and Terry told Gonzalez to expect the call. When it failed to materialise, Gonzalez picked up the receiver and arranged to meet Vega in his Bronx neck of the woods. Forgetting about "Salsa House", the Roseland spinner, already an established Freestyle producer, asked Gonzalez to help him out on a Marc Anthony album he was recording for Joey Carvello at Atlantic. Gonzalez agreed but became intimated by Atlantic's heavy-duty studio setup as well as the radiant auras of Anthony's guest-appearance Latin luminaries, Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puento. Vega got his young, towering friend to relax. "Just make some beats," he told him. Gonzalez started to press buttons and probably had a little smile on his face when, on the tenth track of the album, Palmieri and Puente, egged on by Anthony, jammed over his rhythm track. The recording was titled "Masters at Work Featuring Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri", with Puente and Palmieri the undisputed "masters".
Clinging to Gonzalez and Vega like a dog to a fresh bone, Carvello asked the duo to remix Debbie Gibson's "One Step Ahead" and, stuck for a new name, they decided to make the most of their rightful ownership of a very good old one - Masters at Work. Gonzalez laid down the beats, Vega knocked out the keyboards, and, thanks in part to a B-side dub that would become a trademark sound, the little-and-large team embarked on one of the most influential, long-running and prolific relationships in dance music history.
Since their debut, MAW have thrilled the underground with "The Ha Dance" (Masters at Work), "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" (St Etienne), "When You Touch Me" (Masters at Work featuring India), "It's Alright" (Nuyorican Soul) and boxes upon boxes of other vinyl gems. In addition, they've remixed and produced major artists such as Roy Ayers, George Benson, the Brand New Heavies, Jocelyn Brown, Daft Punk, Incognito, India, Janet Jackson, R. Kelly, Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Barbara Tucker, Luther Vandross and BeBe Winans. Throughout their decade-and-a-half collaboration, they've drawn on a global pool of sounds - house, soul, disco, funk, garage, hip hop, broken beat, dub, Latin, African - that shines through their hometown  haunts of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Harlem and downtown New York like light shines through crystal. Nothing less than the rainbow spectrum of the world can be found in these records.
Along the way, Gonzalez has developed a specialist reputation for picking out percussive ingredients that, when heard alone, sound thin, but when mixed together take on a compelling new flavour that other beat maestros can't help but imitate.
Gonzalez pioneered the swinging syncopated house beat, which became ubiquitous in the 1990s, by deploying several kick drums, each one pitched at a different frequency, on "Only Love Can Break Your Heart". He stacked up the layers of tribal percussion alongside Puente's flying timbales on the spiritual rollercoaster, "Love & Happiness". He instigated the house scene's engagement with driving jazz rhythms when he assembled the beats of "The Nervous Track". He played a pre-emptive role in developing broken beat - don’t fix it if it's broke - with his jumpy drum patterns on Urban Species "Listen (Just Listen)". He's shown he can slam his beats like the nastiest of them with his work on the Brand New Heavies "Close to You". And his collaborations with live players such as Vidal Davis demonstrate he knows how to pitch live drums to the contemporary dance floor.
Kenny Dope interview continued ...
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