DJ Qbert: Musician of the world

MANILA, Philippines – His name is Richard Quitevis. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, the 44-year-old whose mother and father hail from Bacolod and Ilocos Sur, respectively, looks and sounds like your typical Filipino-American.

Wearing a slightly askew baseball hat, an oversized baseball shirt, slightly baggy pants, and a pair of sneakers, the guy his family and friends know as Rich is a meek and rather reserved individual. But to millions of people around the world – his fans and loyal followers – Rich is better known as DJ Qbert, one of the world’s greatest turntablists and multiple champion of the DMC World DJ Championships. 

There are DJs who flip a switch or place a vinyl record on a turntable and let the music take its course. But for turntablists, they use turntables and mixers to create original tracks of their own. It’s better seen and heard than read. And for DJ Qbert, it’s his specialty.

The Chinese guy

It was in the 1980s when DJ Qbert began his musical career in an industry dominated by African-Americans and white Americans. “But I was lucky because in San Francisco, everybody was mixed. You had Indians, Hispanics, Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, and Irish. Every kind of nationality is in my neighborhood,” he says.

“And all of those guys were playing music, scratching, and break dancing. I thought it was normal that everybody was different,” he adds.

But when he began competing in national DJ competitions, the Fil-Am realized that the world was bigger than he had ever imagined. “When I got to the world stage, wow, everybody was like one nationality and there were no Asians. I didn’t know that.”

But when he got up to perform, everybody stopped and listened. “People were like, ‘Who? What? Asian guy? What the hell?’ And when I did my own stuff their reaction was, ‘Okay. That’s new. Good job.’ I was always trying to do new stuff. It wasn’t about race. If you did something new, they’d say ‘I give it up to that Chinese guy over there.’ They thought I was Chinese because they didn’t know what a Filipino was. But now everybody knows what a Filipino is.”

Going home

Save for Antarctica, the California native has played in some of the most popular clubs around the world. But 3 months of the year, every year, DJ Qbert would find his way back to the Philippines.

“I’d go to Bacolod to my brother’s place, and then we’d go to my father’s place in Ilocos Sur.” According to him, “my parents didn’t really tell me about my Filipino heritage; they showed me.”

Before he was born, his mother, an English teacher and pharmacist, went to the United States to escape from some personal problems. His father meanwhile, a Filipino who settled in Hawaii, was, in DJ Qbert’s words, “sort of a gangster. He transferred to Hawaii when he was 15 and did a lot of illegal stuff just like in a gangster life.” Then he moved to the States to pursue a career in engineering.

It was his mother who drove him to succeed. “I was hypnotized at a young age,” he admits. His mother was a successful recruiter and saleswoman for the popular direct-selling cosmetic company, Mary Kay.

“And every day she would play the instructional tapes that would just say, ‘You are the best. You can do anything. You are number one.’ And all these psychology tricks were going in my head while I was getting ready to go to school – then cut school. That helped me in my music career.”

It was in high school when he was given the moniker Qbert. “There was a videogame called “Pacman, Big Dug, and QBert. And since my last started with a Q, they called me Qbert.”

Not Filipino, but human

For many successful Filipinos abroad, many view as duty identifying themselves as Filipino. “But when I started out,” recalls DJ Qbert, “I identified myself as nothing: human. Just like one of the homies from the neighborhood. Never was I Filipino or whatever. I was just one of the homies.”  

He explains: “The problem with Filipinos is they’re just working for the Filipinos. In the law of karma, whatever you put out there comes back to you, if you’re just working for the Filipino, then you’re just going to get that little amount of karma. But if you work for the whole world, boy, you’re gonna get a lot of karma back. I’m proud of my Filipino heritage. But I learned at a young age to work for humanity. I’m here for everybody.”

So how does he want to be introduced before taking the stage? “’This guy is gonna mess around on the turntables. Let’s see what he’s got.’ That’s what I want them to say.”

Watch DJ Qbert in action here: 

– Rappler.com

Peter Imbong is a fulltime freelance writer, sometimes a stylist; and on some strange nights, a host. After starting his career in a business magazine, he now writes about lifestyle, entertainment, fashion, and profiles