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On “Trak” for Gold Sarah HarperPhotos by Alexander Harper Canadian born and Jewishly bred, DJ A-Trak is a stylish young gent, a musical connoisseur and to put it quite simply: the DJ king of mixing house and hip hop. Before he was to hit the stage at Ultra Music Festival 2010 in Miami, I sat down to discuss real life with this Jewish icon of a DJ. Through our conversation, I quickly came to the conclusion that inspirational, unstoppable and (obviously) extremely talented are just a few words to describe A-Trak. His career all started when he began fooling around “scratching” his father’s records as a pre-teen. From there his love for music flourished, and he used his bar mitzvah money to purchase a second-hand single turntable at a little record shop in Montreal. Since then, he’s won world championships, become Kanye West’s official tour DJ, and has co-founded the record label Fool’s Gold. Throughout all his spinning, touring and celeb-mingling, A-Trak has managed to keep a strong Jewish identity. Of half Ashkanazic descent, A-Trak relates himself much more with the Jewish culture than the religion. He’s a huge fan of Jewish geography, good home-cooked meals and everything about the quintessential Jewish actors Larry David and Woody Allen. He loves the idea that being Jewish is about being unique and being a minority and that has helped him incorporate complete originality into his music sets and online persona. For example, during his Ultra set he interwove samples of Jewish actress Barbra Streisand’s name throughout the beats, and if you check out his Fool’ s Gold website you’ll even find a video on how to make latkes. In amazement of his success, I ask him how he’s completed all this at a mere 28 years old, and he credits it entirely to hard work and dedication. “To succeed” he tells me, “Just find what you love, work real hard at it, and then just do it.” So c’mon, just take A-Trak’s advice and relate it to real life. It has clearly worked for him. Sarah Harper is a sophomore at the Univ. of Central Florida in Orlando. She enjoys writing, acting and performing either on stage or in front of the camera and is a member of the JTab. This article was reprinted with permission from JVibe, the website for Jewish teens. |
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