DJ Qbert

• 1. Introduction

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  DJ Qbert, born Richard Quitevis, was handed a Fisher-Price turntable while still a toddler. Decades later he was a composer and a turntablist, a DJ who plays records as a musical instrument rather than simply queuing songs. Fellow DJs and historians point to him as a heavy influence on the history of DJing. How does a child with a toy record player end up shaping an entire art form? What happened when he stopped working alone and started playing in crews? And why did a scratch artist spend so much time on instruments, schools, and animated film?

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• 2. Excelsior District Roots

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  On the 7th of October 1969, Richard Quitevis was born to parents who came from the Philippines. He grew up on Moscow Street in San Francisco's Excelsior District. He attended Luther Burbank Middle School and graduated from Balboa High School in 1987. He began playing with records at the age of 15, and the mid-1980s hip hop scene around him supplied the spark. Street performers and graffiti artists in his local community were his influences. At Balboa, the school cafeteria became the setting for a DJ battle against a classmate named Mix Master Mike. The two became close friends, and the friendship lasted. In 1990 they would team up with a third DJ named Apollo.

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• 3. Crews and Championships

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  In 1990, Qbert, Mix Master Mike, and DJ Apollo formed a group called FM20. During a show in New York City, the trio caught the eye of Crazy Legs, who invited them into the Rock Steady Crew. They accepted. Performing as the Rock Steady DJs, they won the world title at the 1992 Disco Mix Club World DJ Championships, known as the DMC. Qbert had already taken the DMC USA solo title in 1991. The next year brought the world title with the Rock Steady DJs. In 1993 he won the world title again, this time as part of a duo called Dreamteam, made up of just Qbert and Mix Master Mike.

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• 4. The Band Idea

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  Invisibl Skratch Piklz was a crew that Qbert helped found, and it changed how turntable groups could sound. Other turntablist crews existed before it. The Piklz were the first to treat the group as a band. Drums, basslines, and scratch solos were layered on top of one another, each handled on turntables. Qbert and other members of the crew also made a video series called Turntable TV. It mixed demonstrations, showcases, skits, and other DJ-related material. The first 5 episodes were released on VHS. The series is now out of print.

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• 5. Albums and Wave Twisters

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  Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Musik arrived in 1994 as Qbert's first solo effort. His second, Wave Twisters, followed in 1998 and took a different route. He built it mostly with samplers and beat machines rather than with the turntable. In 1999, he played the first Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. That made him the first natural-born Filipino to perform there, and arguably the first Filipino act on its stage. Wave Twisters later became an animated feature of the same name, released in 2001. The usual order was reversed. Animators and digital artists had to invent images and movement to fit music that already existed. Disney's Fantasia was made the same way.

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• 6. Instruments and Teaching

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  Qbert worked with the company Vestax to develop the QFO, an all-in-one scratching instrument. It joins a turntable with the crossfader found on a DJ mixer. In 2006, he introduced a turntable cartridge carrying his name, a model produced by Ortofon. Then in May 2009, he opened the Qbert Skratch University through the ArtistWorks website. It is an interactive online school and community for DJs, so lessons that began on San Francisco street corners could reach students anywhere. A year later, in 2010, he was named America's Best DJ.

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• 7. Honors and Screens

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  The DMC DJ Hall of Fame counts Qbert among its members, alongside his friend Mix Master Mike. At the 2016 DMC World DJ Championships, he received a DMC Legend jacket. In 2018, he returned to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. His face and music have also turned up on screens. The video game Tony Hawk's Underground featured his music, and he appeared as himself on its Slam City Jam level. He also played himself in DJ Hero 2. He appears in the documentaries Modulations and Scratch, both shown at the Sundance Festival in Utah. Hang the DJ, by Marco and Mauro La Villa, screened at the Cannes Film Festival in France. Away from the decks, he told the website WeBeVegan.org in a 2011 interview that he is a vegan.

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