“That’s American”: An interview with Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir
Brendan Arnott speaks with Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir, one of Detroit’s most humble elder statesmen, about his role in the Motor City’s techno heritage and finishing a new album that’s been in the pipeline for twenty years.
As I reach Anthony Shakir, he’s just finishing his morning cup of coffee and turning on his computer, starting his Saturday around noon, as the first signs of spring cascade through the windows of his modest Detroit home. A week before, I watched him play to a humid warehouse of a thousand ravers for Toronto’s Foundry music festival, slamming out classic house numbers from Detroit colleagues to a crowd of rapt dancers. Many of them were young enough to be his children. Maybe it’s his preference for staying behind the scenes, or maybe it’s his withdrawn status from social media – but it’s easy to forget that Anthony Shakir has been producing dance music for over three decades.
I ask him if he ever thinks about that statistic. “Thirty years? Yeah… I… I hadn’t thought about it that way” he replies, pausing. Instinctively, I apologise, afraid that I’ve made him feel old. He brushes me off, “Nah, nah, don’t worry; it’s just that thirty years sounds like a long time. It is and it isn’t at the same time.” A lot has happened in those thirty years. Producing and engineering alongside Carl Craig on legendary Metroplex records, one of Detroit’s vanguard techno labels, Shakir transitioned to releasing his own material under a variety of aliases, while creating and curating the highly respected Frictional label, and Puzzlebox Records alongside Keith Tucker.
Anyone listening to dance music in 2014 has been affected in one way or another by Anthony Shakir, but Detroit techno legends are in an odd position in 2014. On one hand, they are held up as the foundational building blocks of the dance music, Godlike figures whose names are spoken with reverence. On the other hand, they’re not getting rich off it. The opening monologue from Shakir’s “Detroit State of Mind” comes to mind:
“Black Power. Of course, a lot of us even in Detroit got so hung up on “black” that “power” shot clean on past us.”
Becoming well known amongst Discogs fanatics hasn’t guaranteed Shakir a comfortable life by a long shot. His days off are spent watching TV, checking email and playing computer games (but not the ‘new ones with instruction manuals like Encyclopaedias’, he clarifies). “That’s pretty much it,” he tells me. “I’m not a high-lifer like that – I do basic stuff.” Kyle Hall (who remastered the tracks on Shakir’s Westside Sessions EP as Da Sampla on Wild Oats) recently made a statement about the hypocrisy that outsiders glamorise Detroit’s poverty by displaying a trash-strewn Detroit beach on the cover of his recent LP The Boat Party.
Shakir’s thoughts about outsiders exoticizing Detroit are similar. “I think it’s easy to do, because you don’t have to do nothing but copy – you don’t have to bring anything to it. It’s like, I can go buy a shirt… you don’t have to know how to sew clothes do you?” I stammer a no, and he responds – “No, but you know how to buy a shirt that fits you. It’s the same with people jumping on Detroit. I used to have an attitude about what I’d call the outsiders or interlopers. There were some people who did very much feel like interlopers who were just jumping in on it. Like, I’m going to call out a name here – Richie Hawtin, people used to talk junk about him, they’d say stuff like ‘oh, he wanted to be a star, and he took a star turn like some of those guys, a lot of those European guys.’ When I say star turn, I mean, they wanna roll around like they’re movie stars.” Shakir laughs to himself. “Man, you shit and piss like everybody else, you ain’t got nothing else but the drum machine.”
As he’s aged, his feelings on the subject have mellowed somewhat. “That was just me being prejudiced though and over-reading stuff” he explains. “At the end of the day, Richie Hawtin made great music, and his family had his back, and that’s so cool. He’s not a bad guy, but a lot people hate on him. In America, because he’s white, it’s gonna work a certain way, that’s just how America works. The whole history of music. I could point to similar situations all the way from ragtime to this Skrillex shit, it’s all the same shit. Ain’t nothing new under the sun. He’s doing a job, and he was able to build a big support base. As some of the OG’s say nowadays “don’t hate the player, hate the game” that’s American. That’s fuckin’ American. That’s how America works. Deal with it.”
Dealing with it is easier for some than others. This is especially true considering that in recent years, Shakir’s mobility has been complicated by his diagnosis with multiple sclerosis – an unpredictable disease that affects the central nervous system by interfering with messages travelling down from the brain to the body in sporadic, frustrating ways. It gives a sobering double meaning to the ‘Shake’ nickname that he’s produced under; referring to his ability to make dancers bodies move recklessly, while acknowledging that MS makes his body do the same.
But Shakir takes his diagnosis in stride while we talk about how clubs are historically inaccessible spaces for some people. Even though Shakir wryly jokes that he’s not far away from entering the “depends generation,” he maintains unflinchingly positive about his condition. “Since I’ve had my situation, there are certain things that you adapt to in order to live. I look at my thing like, if I’ve got it bad, someone else got it worse. So every day I’m up, God gave me another day to get it right – I got nothin’ to complain about.” Despite the way that MS complicates the tiny, precise movements needed to DJ with vinyl, Shakir is set on persevering with the medium. “As long as I can do it, I will” he tells me. “I’ve had records all my life.”
While speaking to Shakir, it quickly becomes apparent how important the past is to him. While he’s kept busy in recent times production-wise with remixes for Portable and the Shangaan Electro project, all it takes is a small cue for him to launch into stories from decades back. “I’ve always been playing records all my life, and I’ve always had access to records all my life” he muses, nostalgia clear in his voice. “My father always listened to the radio a lot, and when hip hop came about. My father had two turntables in the house a hi-fi audiophile kinda system, hi-fi maybe. Then when I was in high school, a couple of my buddies started to learn how to mix, because the radio started playing mixes in Detroit – some people started throwing parties. I didn’t go to them back then, but I guess the scene was growing. Because disco got killed off in 1980, the scene, just went back home… back to – I hate the phrase “underground parties” or “backyard parties” or whatever, but it went back to what it had always been.”
To outsiders, glancing at Detroit can make it look like techno producers bump into each other at the grocery store on a regular basis. In Shakir’s case, this stereotype seems to be pretty truthful. Shakir’s Wild Oats release naturally took shape after he ran into Kyle Hall at a house party, and he also attended the same high school as Robert Hood, Mike Huckaby, and Kelli Hand, sharing a drumming class with Hood, who he used to trade records with regularly. Similarly, Shakir met Detroit staples Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins by coincidence – attending a local party that the three were throwing for high schoolers in the area. “When I met Juan, I already knew about him from his records” he admits. “I walked two miles to buy that record when it came out – there was a record store in the neighbourhood that I’d walk to after school everyday and ask ‘y’all got the record?’ The response would always be ‘we don’t have it yet, we don’t have it yet’- then eventually they got it, and I finally got my hands on it.”
It was during that era that Shakir’s enduring sense of curiosity about producing records came through, and his overwhelming desire to “be a part of it” caused him and high school friends to start jamming together. “I didn’t like hip hop at that time, but I wanted to learn how to make it and how they made it. I didn’t have any equipment at the time, but I wanted to figure out how that stuff was done, and I wanted to make a record. I’d known about them all my life and I wanted to be a part of it.”
I ask whether Detroit’s record stores served as a hub for growing talent back then, and Shakir agrees. “Then, very much so, places like Buy Right on 7th Mile, on the West side. DJing culture was really taking shape back then, so people who got into the genre had to go to record stores to get them. It was a community thing, because they were the people who were in the community. But by 1980, when radio and white rock musicians killed off disco and tried to reinvent rock and roll, I guess for themselves – all that happened with those dance records or disco records at that time – they just went back to where the came from, into private hands & private parties. The community kept listening to that music, but the mainstream pop market didn’t – they were too busy trying to reinvent the Beatles. And they’re always trying to reinvent the Beatles, and you can’t do it.”
The death of disco always fascinated me for the way that it came across as a re-establishment of very white, male, middle class values, something disco shook up with themes of gender fluidity, hedonism, and sexual liberation. Shakir’s memory of that time is still vivid.
“I remember when that whole event went down, matter of fact. Now, when I listen to certain records, I can easily place them in their period – the era before or after the disco shutdown. I remember a record that was prominent after that disco cut-off happened was Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, and I liked it to a point, but it was like an abrupt shift in what got played on the radio. Disco was never called disco in my community, it was just dance. It was soul. And it was cool, everyone liked it – but the rock guys and record companies wanted to bring back a whitewashed rehashed version of rock ‘n’ roll. So dance music went back underground. We kept listening to dance music, we didn’t stop.”
Quite the opposite of stopping, Shakir began DJing more formally in Midwestern Michigan during his college days, beginning at frat parties. “Everyone knew about me and records. I was kinda shy back then, or scared, scared fit me better, I didn’t have confidence. But a couple guys I grew up with pushed me into the parties.” Struck by Shakir’s self-deprecation and modesty, I ask him if he still feels any of that shyness now, especially with the respect he has from his contemporaries. “That makes me chuckle” he replies, effectively dodging the question. “I don’t over-read my part in history, but I’m happy to be a part of it. I met the right guys at the right time. But now, I always call myself the ‘old man at the party’ and sometimes I watch some of these young guys and I’m like ‘I remember when y’all didn’t even want this shit (Detroit techno), and now you’re all wanna act like you’re standing on something, when you weren’t even here when it started.’ But of course they weren’t even here when it started.”
“But as far as confidence goes, back then I just didn’t know I could do it – that was my whole career, I didn’t know I could do none of this, I had no idea. I was just playing records, sometimes trying to play the hot stuff or the sweet stuff just because I liked it. Switching pieces of equipment with friends, learning to program the drum machine – that’s all it started as.” Prioritizing a business model wasn’t the first thing on his mind. “I was playing records because that’s what I would’ve done anyway. I never tried to throw parties or promote myself. Maybe some of the uncertainty back then came from me being scared of myself and my potential.”
“When I listen to certain records, I can easily place them in their period – the era before or after the disco shutdown.”
Watching Shakir spin records during Foundry, there was no doubt to his confidence; dropping the erratic Carl Craig edit of Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” with a sporadic, almost punk-rock energy that prioritised selection and energy over perfectionism. “My approach DJing was always playing what I liked – I remember Derrick May told me once that I played the same records all the time, which surprised me at first, but then I just didn’t care. I play the records I like to hear, and I play certain records are better for tricks – Rob Hood’s “The Pace,” for example, that’s a great trick record, it’s all timing. I look at it like this: When people complain, those people are always the ones who stand around turntables, those ‘deck sharks’. I know when I have bad sets, because sometimes I get the mix on, and sometimes I don’t, but I don’t care when I mess up, because the only ones complaining are the ones that are mad because they’re not DJing.”
When he’s not touring (Before Toronto, Shakir had done several European dates at the end of 2013) he’s labouring over tracks, some of which have been under construction for quite a while. “I’m always on the computer working on stuff, I’ve been recording lots of tracks on an SP-12 that Kevin Saunderson gave me, but last year I mostly did mixes and remixes. I’m looking to get my album out, but I’ve been talking about it for twenty years now. I look at it like this – nobody needs a record that’s not ready. You’re only as good as your last record.”
I ask whether there’s a certain style that characterizes his productions, especially when confronted with challenging source material, such as his rework of “Ngunyuta Dance” by BBC – a daunting, frenetic, 170 BPM production – for the Shangaan Electro remix project. “My thing is I tried to turn the track into something that I could drop it into your set. I use house and techno interchangeably, and tried to make the kind of record that a house music DJ could play, to try and keep what they’ve got, and put me in it in a way.” When it gets to higher tempos, Shakir veers away from engaging with anything above 135 beats per minute. “Skrillex’s tempo, that to me is mimicking drum and bass, and ten years ago drum and bass already did that shit. Skrillex…” Shakir sighs. “I can’t knock it, but I can’t play it. It’s not funky enough for me. It isn’t funk-based or soul-based.”
While the man I’m talking to is responsible for the very stitching in the fabric of Detroit’s techno tapestry, I‘m struck by the way Shakir acknowledges his role but doesn’t expect anything from it. He’s so modest, laidback and understated that I have to ask him once again if he realises just how much of an impact he’s had on the genre of techno he was so instrumental in shaping. “I don’t like to brag about it, because I used to believe anyone could do this stuff” he replies, and pauses. “I know now that they can’t. I’m part of… all this… but I’m not one of those guys who shouts for the world to notice me. That meant that a lot of people didn’t notice me, and that was my fault, because I wasn’t a self-seller trying to hype my name. But I allow myself to take credit for being a part of it – I’d like to believe I’ve contributed to it in some way.”
He continues, words resonating long after he’s hung up the phone: “Derek, Juan and Kevin had a sound, and I always said to myself when I was younger, ‘I’ve gotta figure out a way that you hear me.’ I’d like to believe I’ve done that. But you’d have to tell me.”
Interview by Brendan Arnott
Photos by Andrew Williamson