Antonio Ocasio (Tribal Winds)
"To me, and I might be alone in this, house music is anything you play at a house party. If you play the Rolling Stones’ 'Sympathy for the Devil'...that’s a house jam, that's not a rock jam."
While working on my book in 2020, I watched Josell Ramos’s 2003 documentary Maestro, about the Paradise Garage and its brilliant but troubled deejay Larry Levan. Knowing that many of the principles in the Garage saga are sadly deceased, I was keeping an eye out for people who might still be around to talk to, and it was in that context that first encountered Antonio Ocasio. Six and a half minutes into the film, he recalls Levan playing Aleem’s “Release Yourself” with such spirit that I instantly thought, holy shit, I have got to talk to this guy. What a storyteller!
From there, I did my due diligence and discovered an extraordinary backlog of music, much of it released under the handle Tribal Winds, of which I’d been shamefully unaware. Ocasio’s storytelling abilities extend to his largely instrumental musical output. House music, even at its most soulful, is typically oriented around communal energy, feeling, and vibe; the creator’s inner life often winds up at least partially obscured. Ocasio’s records, however, are tangible expressions of his experiences and heritage - a life lived in the culturally-rich Bronx; childhood exposure to salsa, funk, and classic rock; traditional Puerto Rican music and culture; his presence at Grandmaster Flash’s earliest experiments with hip hop; his young adulthood spent learning at the feet of the city’s dance music masters: Levan at the Garage, David Mancuso at the Loft, and John “Jellybean” Benitez at the Fun House; the discipline he gained from three years in the Marine Corp; and the empathy he brings to his career as a social worker.
We spoke over the phone in March 2021, but I was recently reminded of it thanks to his recent interview with Paul Raffaele and Barbie Bertisch’s in their must-read zine Love Injection (in an issue for which I was coincidentally also interviewed). If you’ve already read the Love Injection piece, there’s inevitably some overlap. But Ocasio has no shortage of tales to tell.
You grew up in the Bronx, right?
Yeah, in the South Bronx. When my mother came to the United States from Puerto Rico, she moved into El Barrio in Harlem; a lot of Puerto Ricans went there. When I was around four or five, we moved to the Bronx, and that's where we've been ever since.
What was your first exposure to dance music?
It was early on. The first record I bought was an Earth Wind & Fire album, the one that has the song “Power.” It came out in 1972, [when] I was a 12 year old kid. I didn't have any money; I had to beg my mother for money. Then I went to the neighborhood record store and bought it, but I didn't have a record player. I begged my mother to buy me one. We grew up poor, so she had to put on layaway. I finally got my record player and started collecting records.
In my home, we were listening to Puerto Rican folk music. And my mother, she was in the United States when that whole salsa revolution took off. I was listening to all that stuff in the house, and Latin jazz also. My brother Freddy was 12 years older than me, so he was already going out to a lot of clubs in the Bronx which I never got to go to. He used to go to a club called the 310 1/2, and when he’d come home from the club, he told me stories about it. He used to buy some of the music that he was listening to at 310 1/2, like music from Mandrill, Santana, Osibisa, a lot of Stevie Wonder, Temptations. My brother brought in that whole influence of rock, because he was into rock and roll - Traffic, Rare Earth, all of those cats.
But as far as dance music, that happened outside the house. In the South Bronx, that's what was being played - remember, in the ‘70s, the commercial music was disco! In the Bronx, the way we got our medicine of music was, in our neighborhood there was a DJ called Raul; his [deejay] name was DJ Rookie. He was older than me, so when I was 14 or 15, he was already deejaying in the neighborhood parks. He was one of the first ones to ever do that in the Bronx that I know of.
[Grandmaster] Flash was coming up, and Flash was from my neighborhood. He lived in New York City Housing, but it was a new type of project that was these small brownstones. We used to go to his backyard to hear him play.
But whatever clubs were in the Bronx, it was after [my time], because in ‘81, I joined the Marine Corps.
How long were you in the Marines?
Three years. I remember being in the Marine Corps and trying to explain to my friends about the Loft and the Garage. They couldn't even imagine what I was talking about. I remember feeling Loft Sick ! I had a boom box and would listen to jams I heard at the Loft and it would kinda make me sad. The one that really did it to me was “Double Journey” by Powerline. Not a single lyric, but when I heard it, it made me really miss the Loft.
How old were you when you started going to the Loft or the Garage? And which one did you go to first?
The Loft. I was around 17 years old. Before that, I was going out - a lot of guys and girls from the neighborhood were going to clubs, but it was more like disco clubs. So we would go to Starship Enterprise, Inferno, there was this club called Latin Times - they’d play disco music, and everybody's doing the Latin Hustle. I went to so many clubs that honestly I don't remember the names of all of them. There's only a few clubs that I didn't go to in all those years. I went at least once to most of them. I was into that until I went to the Loft. Once I went to the Loft, that just changed my whole outlook on music and going out.
The way I can explain it is like, my favorite food is called pasteles. It's a food that’s made in Puerto Rico out of certain vegetables, and then you wrap it in banana leaves. And as far as I’m concerned, my mother's are the best pasteles I've ever had, so I measure the pasteles that I eat today by the ones my mother made. It was the same thing: once I went to the Loft, I measured everywhere else I went to [against] the Loft, and it never really compared.
Do you remember the first time you went to the Loft?
Until I'm old and gray, I'll never forget the first time I went to the Loft. I went with my two female friends; I don’t remember if one of them was a member or if somebody just got us in, but it was no problem getting in.
I was blown away by the music. That was the thing about the Loft and the Garage: One minute, you could be hearing a disco song, the next minute a rock and roll song, and the next minute a punk song! It was just a wealth of all kinds of music. You could be hearing the Rolling Stones one minute, and the next song could be Yaz. David Mancuso, to me, was like a master teacher. The sound, the music, the flow of the room - he could teach all of that, because that's how he designed his space.
The first time I went to the Loft, there was this couple, a white guy and a Black girl. They were dancing, and I was watching them. They danced for a long time, to a lot of music, and they were drenched in sweat. The next thing you know, they were having sex on the dance floor. I was like, “This is it! This is it!” Because the Loft was never a sex club, it’s just that it felt so free. Nobody made a big deal out of it. I don't even know if other people noticed it.
I went to the bottom floor after a while, and I was sitting right in front of that door where you’d come down. I remember that guy that was dancing, the white guy, he came down, and as soon as he came outside the door, he leaned on the wall, and he was exhausted. That image will never leave my mind. The whole experience blew me away. And then from that day forward, I never stopped going. I went every week for years and years.
It wasn't just about the music, it was the fact that it was one of the first places that was really a melting pot of people. Everybody was welcome: white, Black, Asian, Latino, gay, straight, handicapped. If you had kids, you could bring kids there if you came there early in the morning, and it was no problem. It was like a family.
When I went to the Garage, for me personally, I'm not saying that other people didn’t feel that feeling of family, but for me it was just too big. I went there for the music, and the sound was amazing. I had a lot of fun at the Garage, but for me, the Loft had a different excellence of sound. It wasn't loud; it was clear. You could still have a conversation on the dance floor - [the volume] wasn't low, but it wasn't so high that you couldn't even hear the person talking.
I would go to the Loft and hear things in a record that I [owned] that I had never heard before because of how clear his system was. I remember one time David played the song “Situation” by Yaz, and I was telling my friends “Oh, this is a different mix.” I went over to David, he showed it to me, and it was the same one I had. It just sounded different because of his system.
A few years after that, when I was around 19, my neighbors [started going] to a club called the Fun House, so I ended up going there. It was going from one extreme to the other, a completely different vibe. It was mostly Italians in there; we were like the only Puerto Ricans, and then my friend who was Puerto Rican and Black, he was one of the only Black dudes. I used to go to the Fun House till about 6:00 in the morning, and then I’d go to the Loft or the Garage. I very rarely went back home.
I've thought about it, and I tell you, I wouldn't change anything. I wouldn't even want to go back in time. Just the experience I have with music and clubs and all that fun, it makes it all worthwhile being the age that I am now because that will never happen again. I can talk to you about it, we could write books about it, but to live it? You can listen to all that music now, but it was different when you heard it in a club when it came out and it was like, What the hell is that? It was amazing.
You said you compare every other club to the Loft. So how did the Fun House compare?
It didn't compare. It was a completely different vibe, different music, different people. But I liked it, and my friends from the block were there, and I got to meet other people. I remember I'd be on one of the stages dancing and Madonna was right there next to me dancing. She wasn't a star yet, but I remember her. She used to have short black hair and always wore a leotard.
I liked the Fun House because my friends were there and I got to meet other people. There was this girl - she was like a really, really big girl, her name was Jill, and she could dance, man! We became friends, and we’d dance all the time. I used to look for her, she looked for me. I always wonder what happened to her.
The other thing about the Fun House was that every week, they always had new artists or bands coming [to perform]. We saw the Strikers, Kurtis Blow, New Edition…you name it, they went there to perform. It was just a fun place. There were two separate occasions when I didn't even want to leave, so I was helping to clean up at the end. I was helping them sweep, and then I just bounced and went to the Loft and stayed there until 3:00 in the afternoon.
When did you start going to the Garage?
It was shortly after [I started going to] the Loft. I went there, not as much as the Loft, but I went a lot because the sound was amazing. This is the difference a sound system makes: I remember one experience where it was me and my cousin were listening to Larry play, and then his record came on - “You Should Be Dancing” by the Bee Gees. We started laughing at him like, look at this stupid shit he’s playing. We started laughing out loud. Not even a minute into the song, we were screaming and yelling - we were all into it and we were like, “Oh shit!” It blew me away. That was the first and last time I ever made fun of him.
How did the Garage compare to the other clubs that you were going to?
It was almost like going to the Loft, just bigger. The music was just as good as the Loft, and it had a similar vibe. What I appreciate about David Mancuso and Larry Levan is that they were always reaching. You wouldn't expect them to play certain things, [but] you’d hear [Talking Heads’] “I Zimbra” or [War’s] “City Country City.” They were both amazing in their taste in music, but they presented it very differently: Larry used to mix, David really didn't mix.
Anybody could tell you that Larry’s mixes weren't great. Sometimes he was on, but a lot of the time the mix was off, but the music was so good it didn't even matter. That’s one of the things I learned by going to the Loft and the Garage, that nothing is more important than the music. The mix is not important. The sound of course is number one, you need great sound. But I learned by going there that you can mess up a mix, everybody messes up a mix. If the music is great, you could be forgiven.
When did you start deejaying?
I started deejaying way before I went to the Loft and the Garage. I started when I was a young boy. From the first time I started buying music, I started trying to learn how to deejay. When I was 13 or 14 years old, I used to play house parties. I remember being so young and so shy about deejaying that at one house party in my cousin's house, everyone was like “Where’s the deejay?!” I’d emptied out a closet and set up in there so nobody could see me! I didn't know what was going on out there but I just played good music. Funny!
Everybody was young when they started deejaying back then! Now it’s a phenomenon when you get a young deejay and people make a big deal out of it. We were all young, and in the Bronx, everybody was real poor. So there were mixers in early ‘70s, but only in clubs. We didn't know about them, so we had to be innovative. For example, we would get four speakers and hook them up to different channels [in the preamp], so you could use the balance [to switch between songs], and it worked.
And then the first mixer we had was this little gold mixer that they used to sell at Radio Shack. It was for mics, but we would just hook them up to the turntables and use that to mix. One time, we went to Flash’s backyard when he was playing, and he had the same mic mixer. I noticed he had a little switch on it and he had headphones, and I'm like, what the hell is he doing? Something's going on. He was cueing before any of us had cueing on the mic mixer. But DJ Rookie was the first one to have a legit mixer in our neighborhood. He would teach me how to mix on it. I never asked Flash, but I suppose he [installed the switch] himself. It was genius!
When you were going to the Fun House, the Loft, and the Garage every weekend, were you still actively deejaying during that time?
I was mostly going out, but I would deejay here and there, mostly house parties. Deejaying at Zanzibar’s or whatever is not part of my story, because everybody has their own journey, and mine was survival. I was trying to survive in the South Bronx, I wasn't thinking about deejaying at no club.
In the South Bronx, there was a time where people that live in tenements, they'd get burnt out a lot, because [the landlords] would burn the building for the insurance. I lived through that. So for me, I always had the passion, but there was always something preventing me from putting my heart and soul and time into it the way I wanted to.
Even to this day, as far as music, I've never been able to do it with 100% of my time here. After I got out of the Marine Corps, I started a family and I had to support my family. I saw what was going on in music, so I didn't want to depend on music to raise my daughters, because I’ve got five daughters. So I went and earned a Bachelor's and a Master's in Social Work in five years.
Throughout all this journey, I was always going out, deejaying whenever I got the opportunity, and always deejaying in the house. In the ‘90s, I was able to really come out of my shell. I was able to stabilize my life to the point where I could dedicate more time to starting to produce music, and that got my name out there a little bit. That helped me get gigs in different parts of the world.
Did you keep going to the Loft after it moved to Alphabet City?
I went to the Loft everywhere he moved. I never stopped going.
Did the experience change once he stopped having a permanent space?
It was still the Loft, David was there, but there was a change. One of the reasons I would go to Loft was to get turned on to new music, and there came a time for me when David stopped being the teacher. I don’t know how else to say it. I wasn’t getting turned on to amazing music as often. Maybe it's because I was getting better with it? I was already old enough to do my own research and expand my horizons with music. And maybe I expected more, because David was always on a different level with music. David would always drop some dope shit, but it just wasn't the same.
Sometimes when he was in Alphabet City, it might be 10 of us in there the whole night. That was sad, man! To go from what it was at Prince and Mercer, to this little spot. You loved David, loved music, loved the energy, the vibe, everything…and there's only 10 or 15 people in there? People were getting older, that was part of it. But David kept it going as best as he could to the very end.
Do you still go to the Loft?
I go maybe once a year. Lots of times when they do those parties, I'm also out deejaying, or I have family stuff. My life has changed, it ain't only about the music like it was when I was young. I had no worries, it was about music and dancing and girls. I was collecting comic books - I wish I had those comic books today, because I had an amazing collection when I was a kid - and every Thursday or Friday, I would sell some of them to get money to go to the Loft and the Garage and all that, because I was too young to have a job.
Were there clubs or parties in the city in the ‘90s or even in the early 2000s that felt like they carried that torch from the Garage or the Loft?
Body and Soul somewhat carried the torch, especially in the beginning because they were playing some amazing music. After a few years, musically they fell off and I can't explain why. It just wasn't about the music anymore, so after a while I just stopped going. Shelter was doing their thing; I've never really been into the Shelter, but I did go a few times and it was ok.
Whenever I get invited to deejay, I always try to bring that vibe, but I do it my way. I'm that deejay that's gonna play the stuff you don't expect. I'm not just playing four-on-the-floor all night - I refuse to! There’s too much good music out there. I love soulful house music, but I don't want to hear it all night long, because it all starts to sound the same. I’ll even say, I love classics, but I don't even want to hear classics for four hours. You need to be able to mix classics with everything else. I'm not trying to come off snobby, but [because of] my experience of the Loft and the Garage, and the quality of music I was listening to, the bar is high for me.
That's why my definition of house music is different. Like okay, the technical term of house music as the genre is Chicago house, right? But to me, and I might be alone in this, house music is anything you play at a house party. If you play the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” - I’ve played that at house parties. To me, that’s a house jam, that's not a rock jam.
You know, I've never thought of it as a house record before, but it kinda is!
The funny part is, I did a little edit where I extended the conga [intro], so people don't know what it is, they [think it’s] just Latin conga. And then boom, it comes in, it’s like oh shit! People go nuts.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, brevity, and context.
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