Event: GDY GDY Gurps pres: Inner City Life, HAUS Store, Brixton, 7/12/24

GDY GDY Gurps launches their first live event ‘Inner City Life’ at HAUS Store, Brixton 7/12/24. Expect a night of great DJs and a diverse music policy. You can grab your tickets here: https://ra.co/events/2042084

A bit about GDY GDY Gurps:

Gurpreet, also known as GDY GDY (pronounced Goody Goody) Gurps, is a DJ hailing from London. Now living in North, Gurpreet originates from the suburbs of West London, where as the youngest in her family, she grew up hearing the sounds of UK’s underground, like jungle and garage, from her elder siblings and cousins. In constructing her own niche as a DJ, Gurpreet loves to blend the various sounds of the global diaspora, with jungle in the forefront, but with the notes of Punjabi garage, roots and dub and even across the pond to the sounds of footwork and baile funk. Most often found at the 160-170bpm range, she also loves to slow it down to share the sounds of roots and dub, Punjabi folk and the occasional bossa nova or boogaloo. Fascinated and inspired by sound system culture originating from the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, Gurpreet similarly hopes to pay homage to the musicians, be that vocalists, DJs, producers, that came before her, bring people together, and ultimately get either (but hopefully both) their bodies and their minds moving. You’re guaranteed a good time with GDY GDY.

We asked GDY GDY Gurps a few questions about music, DJ life and the upcoming event:

Jungle is a core part of your sets. What does this genre mean to you personally and as a DJ? 

Jungle is the sound of the underground for me. It’s the sounds that I’d hear vibrating in my cousin’s garage which I was ‘too young’ to enter. I was probably 5/6 year’s old when I already knew to shout ‘BOOYAKA BOOYAKA’ when Incredible came on. It’s the sounds that were thumping in cars going by and it’s a sound that’s amplified when there’s a packed room. So although it’s a jumpy, eclectic sound, it feels warm to me, it feels comforting and it feels like community. When I play jungle I feel like I’m a kid again looking at my cousins who were in their teens and twenties at the time skanking to a jungle tune.

For Inner City Life, the lineup showcases a mix of jungle, footwork, baile funk, and jersey club. How do you plan to approach your set for this event?

The thing is, I’m there for one thing only: to show people the music I want them to hear. I’ve already been racking my brain about what kind of tracks I want to play, but I just need to rely on what gets me excited, what I want people to go home thinking about and what’s gonna get people moving. So that’s a long-winded way to say, if you hear my jumping from jungle in one tune to baile funk in the next, don’t watch that!!!

How do you ensure a balance between experimentation and keeping the dancefloor engaged? 

I know this might sound conceited, but I really didn’t become a DJ to people please. I remember this being a fear of mine when I first did a public DJ set, I was so scared of people are disengaged, having a chat, go to the bar etc. I’ve come to accept that not every track is going to get an audience who represent a huge range of identities, likes and dislikes, going. I think the beauty of DJing is that people are there for your experimentation. Nobody can tell me what song to mix in next, that’s up to me, and the people who are going to be in front of the decks are there for a reason! For me those few people going nuts at the front or the back are more important that keeping the whole dance floor engaged.

Do you see storytelling in your DJ sets, and if so, what stories are you trying to tell?

The pinnacle of my inspiration is the sounds of the global diaspora. As a child of Punjabi immigrants growing up in a multicultural England, I have been exposed to so many different kinds of music, that have been birthed from periods of both joy and pain. I want all of my sets to feature artists and producers from around the world but that showcase the genres that were created and inspired by Black people, Indian people, Latino people and so on and so forth. I want those stories to be showcased – the producers refining Punjabi folk, Ghanaian funkadelic or Colombian champeta you know, how has this music come about, who’s making it, why we should all be listening to it!!! We’d be nothing without immigrants, children of immigrants, there’d simply be no culture.

If you could create a dream lineup for an event, who would you include, and what would the theme be?

At the point I’m at, the dream is just to work with DJs who have the same vision as me and DJ for the same reason. But all I can say is, one room would be pure dub with someone’s sound system whether that’s Vedic Roots, Roots Youth, Ital Power, Aba Shant-I, and the other would be jungle with a live drummer, footwork, bass, with some mad grime MCs spitting bars over top.

GDY GDY Gurps presents: Inner City Life takes place at HAUS Store, Brixton, 7/12/24. For more announcements, see their Instagram page

Tix: https://ra.co/events/2042084