The Tribune

By LESH

Tribune Features Reporter

acadet@tribunemedia.net

HE IS humbled that there are young deejays looking up to him, but Dion ‘Da Butcha’ Knowles said his era is not over just yet. He said he has so much more to offer to the entertainment world.

“It makes me humble because it means that you actually did something that impacted someone’s life in some sort of way. But then I still feel like I have so much to offer, so I don’t want it to be like I’ve been put in a box of the has beens’. A legend to me just means old and played out and I don’t want to be that,” said Dion Da Butcha.

Sharing his story on his early deejaying days, Dion Da Butcha said: “I was into music from I was a kid. The first time I ever got spanked in my life was for breaking a 45 of Michael Jackson’s

“Ben” that belonged to my father. I grew to like music but I never got involved in it until a lot later in life. I was an engineer at Compass Point Studios back in the day; it’s now a restaurant.”

He said: “They had turn tables out there and in between sessions we would goof off.

One day Mr Al Collie, who was the owner of ‘The Palace’ at the time, now Club Luna, was passing through and he heard me playing and asked me to come give it a shot and I did. They ended up paying me more money, and it just grew from there.”

Dion Da Butcha said his well known name came about due to a combination of two reasons. One being his father’s nickname, Butch. The other, he said: “ Mr Archer, who had a group called sound control, he was sort of teaching me the ropes. One day he had a cassette to do for someone and did not have time to do it, so I offered to do it.”

“It was a slow song tape he had to do, which was easy. When I asked him to help, he said “ I wouldn’t let you do anything for me, you are an old Butcher.” And that hurt my soul, but when I remembered later on, when I got better, I said to myself I probably was that bad. But that is where the name came from,” said Dion Da Butcha.

Over the years, Dion Da Butcha said he has been blessed to be apart of many huge events. He remembers a concert back in the day that featured international old school artists, Kid n Play and Salt n Pepper at the Sports Centre.

“Even down to the recent R Kelly concert, I was apart of it. I’ve been so blessed. Anything that I haven’t been apart of honestly is because I didn’t want to do it, that is how fortunate I have been. I hope I could do this on some level until I get bored or die, but not as my primary source of income,” said Dion Da Butcha.

He said he has been involved in the music business long enough to see it turn around full circle. During the time he started in 1991, Dion Da Butcha said the entertainment scene had a lot of bands, which was the thing.

“Deejays wasn’t nothing when I started playing. Every club and hotel had a band. The bands were the stars and the deejays were like the water boys. And now, it is like the deejays are the superstars and the bands are struggling. I think that it is going to come back around, because I believe that bands are where new music comes from, and they should be the stars,” said Dion Da Butcha.

The veteran deejay said nowadays, anyone can call themselves a deejay, and he would like to see that change. “You can deejay from your phone in the rawest form. So there is a lot of mediocrity in the business and I would like to see a credible way for people to separate the good from the bad,” he said.

“I would like there to be some way that we can differentiate between the person that is doing it for the fun, and who is doing it professionally. Is it ever going to happen? Probably never in my lifetime. A group of us, namely myself, The Mighty Pencil and Terrible T, set out on a mission to make it so that deejays would be respected the same way that doctors and lawyers are. I think we achieved it to some degree, but certainly the professionalism aspect hasn’t come about yet.”