Pal_co presenta Daniele Baldelli (cosmic disco set), DJ Gostoso

Daniele Baldelli began as a DJ in 1969 at the Tana Club in Cattolica (RN), on the Italian Adriatic coast, and the following year he joined the Tabù Club.

At that time there were no mixers, no headphones, no screens. The disc jockey’s job was simply to raise and lower the volume of the two available turntables, without worrying too much about the gaps of silence between one record and the next.

The first records Baldelli played were, as might be expected, 45 rpm singles: Ann Peebles, Arthur Conley, Rufus Thomas, Desmond Dekker, Wilson Pickett, Johnnie Taylor, James Brown, Booker T., Edwin Starr and Etta James, but also groups like The Stooges, Jericho Jones, Steppenwolf, Atomic Rooster, Steely Dan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Status Quo, Slade and Gary Glitter.

With no model to imitate —he is considered a veteran DJ in Italy— Baldelli invented his own style in the booth. He was, literally, a self-made DJ. Guided only by his passion for music, he began experimenting with new technologies and, from very early on, used drum machines, keyboards, synthesizers and even one of the first samplers, which barely had four seconds of memory.

He feels fortunate to have been a DJ from 1969 to the present. That has allowed him to experience firsthand the history of music and club culture from their beginnings to today. It has also enabled him to assemble a collection of more than 70,000 vinyl records.

Always alternative and with a futuristic vision, he has worked in hundreds of booths.

In 1979 he opened the Cosmic in Italy, the club where Daniele Baldelli shaped a musical current that would profoundly mark the Italian underground scene. Between 1979 and 1984, that sound developed and would come to be called “Afro.” A term that, in reality, was not entirely precise, because what was heard at the Cosmic was a mixture of electronic music, reggae, Brazilian music, jazz, ethnic sounds, funk, new wave and afrobeat.

Baldelli reinterpreted musical Africanism in his own way: superimposing Ravel’s Bolero on a track by Africa Djolè, mixing an experimental piece by Steve Reich with a Malinké chant from New Guinea, combining T-Connection with Moebius & Roedelius, discovering on the album Izitso a hypnotic, tribal cut by Cat Stevens, extracting the African essence from Depeche Mode by playing them at 33 rpm, or turning a reggae vocal played at 45 rpm into something entirely new.

He could mix a dozen African tracks over an electronic drum base, make a Brazilian batucada coexist with Kraftwerk, apply synthesizer effects to songs by Miriam Makeba, Jorge Ben or Fela Kuti, or cross Oriental melodies by Ofra Haza or Sheila Chandra with the electronic sound of the German label Sky Records.

Today, Daniele Baldelli works in two directions: on one hand, funk in all its facets (soul, 1970s funky, future funk, funk & jazz), even featuring live musicians such as saxophonists, trombonists, bassists and keyboardists; and on the other, the so-called “cosmic sound”: electronic music, ethnic and afro-tribal sounds, jazz, reggae and fusion.