At the heart of elite-level DJing is a mastery of music selection, reading the room, and beats. Always beats.
Anthony Pappa, the celebrated Australian DJ and producer, got an early advantage on those wheels of steel. “My father wanted me to become a professional drummer, and that was the kind of path that I was on,” Pappa tells Billboard. When the rest of his schoolmates were riding bikes or riding waves, Pappa attended one of Melbourne’s leading drum schools, Drumtek, and learned from one of the best to hit the skins, Virgil Donati, who, like Pappa, is an Australian musician of Italian descent. “Yeah, drumming was full-on for me, and so to make that step from drumming to DJ, it was just so easy.”
Those lessons paid off. Pappa made the transition to vinyl, and, at age 15, won Australia’s DMC DJ championship. The wizkid was the youngest to raise the trophy.
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Since then, he’s gone on to fly the flag as one of Australia’s most in-demand, and versatile, DJs — a veteran who can effortlessly work vinyl on three decks, scratch, play trance, house, progressive house. Pappa appeared on DJ Mag‘s Top 100 DJs each year between 1997 and 2003, and was the magazine’s cover star in 2000. He has sold more than 500,000 records, including beat-mixed recordings for some of the most potent electronic music brands of the past 30-plus years, from Platipus Records, to Renaissance Recordings, Global Underground, NuBreed and more.
Billboard caught up with Pappa just days after he returned home from performing at Tokyo’s Womb, an “absolutely amazing” experience in one of the world’s most iconic clubs. “I’m still carrying that flag,” he explains. “I’ve come up to 40 years of DJing. I’m very happy, very grateful. It’s not an easy business to make a name in, but then it’s even harder once you’ve done that to try and stay there. So, to still be around doing what I do, what I love, I’m blessed. I’m very grateful.”
Backspin to a 13-year-old Pappa, who built his brand as a mobile DJ doing birthday parties for friends, mates. With his DMC win, Pappa never looked back. Then opportunities opened up for playing clubs in the early 1990s, when Pappa, now 18, was as experienced as the many of headliners. He would become a regular at Melbourne’s now-defunct Metro, one of the biggest clubs in Australia with a capacity of over 2,000; the historic Chevron; and Chasers.
Pappa hasn’t forgotten his roots. He’s known to incorporate drumming into his sets, which have included residencies with Renaissance (Nottingham U.K.), Twilo (New York) and Japan’s Womb, and spots on the bill for the best-known festivals on both sides of the Atlantic, including Glastonbury (U.K.), Creamfields (U.K.), ID&T (Holland), Extrema (Belgium), BPM (Mexico), Tomorrowland Belgium, SAMC Argentina, Ultra Miami (U.S.) and Exit (Serbia).
Is there any unfinished business for Anthony Pappa? An artist album, perhaps? “It’s not something I’ve got planned, but I wouldn’t say it’s off the cards. At the moment there’s that much material coming up. I’m doing collaborations with a lot of different people and they’re for all different labels,” he admits. At some point, who knows? “It would be a nice milestone to have that achievement for my career,” Pappa continues. “I’ve mixed a lot of compilations, DJ albums — I’ve probably done over about 20 of those. I’ve kind of done them all. So just my own album, of my own music. That would be a huge thing to do.”
In recent years, Pappa has dropped several tasty progressive house tunes, including “We Emerge,” a sneaking beast of a track created with Jamie Stevens, and the See Me EP, housing “Waterfall,” a teamup with Fauxplay and Leo Wood that just begs for a massive sound system.
For now, Pappa has his hands full. He heads overseas in August for another world tour, taking in Europe, North America, South America, South Africa. Before that, he’ll play the Godskitchen The Resurrection Tour event at Melbourne Pavilion Melbourne on July 4, joining a bill that features Aly & Fila, Binary Finary, Gabriel & Dresden and Solarstone.
“I’m just constantly on the road, pushing music, doing what I love, and very happy at grateful to still be a DJ at my age, entertaining people,” he enthuses. “It’s something that I love to do as a living.”
Follow Pappa’s tour dates on Resident Advisor and godskitchenau.com.
