Back in 1997, at the young age of 15, a young Canadian DJ proudly took home the DMC World DJ Championship becoming the first Canadian and youngest Disc Jockey to claim the prize. As his career developed out of Montreal, Québec, the young DJ with Jewish roots continued to refine his ability to perform from behind the turntables. Soon after, Alain Macklovitch(A-Trak) became the first DJ to win all three major DJ titles (DMC, ITF, and Vestax) and five World Championships.
Emerging out of the ‘90s, the turntable prodigy set off around the globe alongside Q-Bert’s Invisibl Skratch Piklz, and later with Craze and the Allies. In 2004, Kanye West selected him as his tour DJ – a gig that he continually holds. Recently, the Canadian DJ has been headlining multiple tours alongside Diplo, The Rub, DJ Mehdi and Kavinsky, and his older brother’s group Chromeo. Aside from touring, his work can be seen in the production for Chicago’s Kid Sister, and through his collaborations with Nike and strong influence on Mr. West’s Graduation album. Such an impressive resume can only be accompanied by a fascinating story. 1867’s Andrew Panday caught up with Canadian DJ icon, A-Trak to discuss his rise in the music industry and his roots in Judaism.
Interview By Andrew Panday
Andrew: On a scale from ‘One to Moses,’ how Jewish are you?
A-Trak: You can’t do ‘One to Moses,’ because if I pick any number you’re not going to have any reference to what the highest point is!
Andrew: You’re getting really technical on me, A-Trak. How about ‘One to Ten’?
A-Trak: A three — not very Jewish. I grew up in an artsy Montreal neighbourhood called Outremont where there’s a small concentration of Hasidic Jews. I went to a public elementary school and I remember the first time I told my friends I was Jewish, they were like, “well why don’t you dress in black and wear the hat and have the curls?
Andrew: Wait, why didn’t you? You ARE Jewish, aren’t you?
A-Trak: Yea, but my parents just weren’t very religious, they were really progressive. We celebrated the bigger holidays but mostly for the sake of seeing our family. When my grandfather was alive he would come every Friday for dinner and he would say the Sabbath prayer, but that was just a pretext to see our grandfather every week. It’s not like my parents made us observe the Sabbath.
Although I did have two bar mitzvahs. That’s pretty Jewish!
Andrew: I know that you took your bar mitzvah money and bought turntables, which kind of worked out for you. But some Jewish kids get six-figure trust funds. Looking back on it, do you feel like you got… uh… jewed?
A-Trak: In North America a lot of kids get a car, or they get $20 000, or something crazy like that. That’s not my family at all! I didn’t get a ton of money for my bar mitzvah and I didn’t have Ja Rule performing there either. It wasn’t some outlandish bar mitzvah that kids have at the country club in the Hamptons. But I was 13 and had never worked a job — I had my bar mitzvah and suddenly there was some money in my bank account, so I got a second-hand turntable for like $400 bucks.
Andrew: That was a pretty solid investment, in retrospect. Now you do mixtapes for Nike and live in New York City, the most Jewish place in the world outside of Israel.
A-Trak: I think it’s even more Jewish than Israel. But it’s more about Jewish culture than Jewish religion, like it was at home in Montreal but on a way bigger scale. For one of my bar mitzvahs we took a trip to Israel to visit family that I’ve never met, and I read Hebrew in front of the Wailing Wall and became a man — that’s Jewish religion.
But New York Jews are a different breed. They’re the kind who sometimes eat gefilte fish that their grandma makes, the kind who watch Curb Your Enthusiasm because Larry David reminds them of their dad. The city is full of those Woody Allen sort of Jews, the hilarious underdog that you’ve got to root for. New York Jews are really the epitome of what we grow up associating with being Jewish.