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Interview with DJ Miguelito
17 September 2006. Following this month's Latin music theme, Okey-Dokey interviews DJ Miguelito, the Brazilian with a big smile who can bring any party to life with his unique feel-good mix of Latin, hip-hop, dance and other international styles. What makes a great party? Matching the music to the crowd, he says.
Okey-Dokey: The previous article on the website talked about how Latin music is popular not only with students from Latin cultures, but with students from all over the world. Would you agree with that?
DJ Miguelito: Yes. Since I started doing Latin nights here, it's very interesting for me sometimes to see not only Latin students here - you have Middle Eastern people, African people, Asian people like Chinese and Japanese... The style that I have is not only Latin. Since I saw some Arab students, I started to play a few Arabic tunes, and when I saw African people I started to play African music as well. You can take all the different cultures...
Okey-Dokey: So do you think a more 'world music' approach is going to get bigger?
DJ Miguelito: The key for every DJ is to read the crowd. If you don't read the crowd, you'll lose your job. Even if something I played last week was great, if I have the same approach this week it doesn't work. On Tuesdays I do Latin nights in a local pub. The majority of the audience is English. I play more Latin, house, funk, Brazilian electronic... If I try to do the same thing in another place with an international audience, people don't understand. They want a Latin night with salsa, samba, merengue, raggatone...
Okey-Dokey: Is it easy to read the crowd? 
DJ Miguelito: You need to think about the majority of people. If there are a lot of English people, I play more English music, or sometimes R&B like 50 Cent or Black Eyed Peas. I play one English song and the ladies go, '"Wow!" [he does an impression]. Do you understand?
Okey-Dokey: So when people walk into the club, can you tell which nationality is which?
DJ Miguelito: Yeah, you can see. It's the way they wear their clothes, body language... [he thinks for a moment] English are more close to the bar, drinking beer [laughter]. No, it's true! International people maybe drink one beer, enjoy the music and dance, but English stay more at the bar. Maybe after one, two, three, four, they'll say, "Come on, let's dance!"
Okey-Dokey: That's interesting! Speaking of English people, what made you choose to come to Britain?
DJ Miguelito: It's funny, first when I came to Europe, I lived in Portugal, but Portugal I found boring because it was the same language - a different country but the same language. I met some mates who wanted to go Holland, so we said, "let's go." I could hardly speak any English. I lived in Holland for five or six months and mostly just spoke my own language. When I spoke English I had to use my hands a lot!
My mate said, "Miguel, if you want to learn English, let's go to England." I said, "Ah, not England, no!" The picture I had when I was in Brazil was of London, dark, crowded, rainy, cold and miserable.
Anyway, in 2002 when I moved to the UK, I went to Southampton without any plans, just to see what was happening. Then I started to meet people, all types of people and I thought, "Oh, it's not too bad."
What's special about Southampton is that it's very multicultural. This makes a difference, because in Holland, I was living in a Portuguese community and mostly everyone else I saw was Dutch. Holland is mixed, especially in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, but in smaller places it's Dutch, Dutch, Dutch! Here [in Britain], there are so many different nationalities. You have universities, colleges, language schools. You can meet so many different people.
DJ Miguelito DJs in venues across the south of England and is available for private hire. Check out his website (with some pretty cool music) for more information.
Get that Latin feeling for your party!
