Among the lively and energetic sounds of the Mission District’s Latin American Independence celebration, a small stage at the center of 24th Street, adorned with flags from various countries and a banner bearing the words “DJ Project,” played a fusion of Hip-hop and Latino-inspired beats.
Young artists performed atop a small stage in the center of Calle 24’s Fiesta de La Americas annual celebration, showcasing their newest songs and DJ mixing skills.
But behind each performer’s set, standing in the background, either as a DJ or a fan, was long-time turntable scratch artist Carlos Aguilar, also known as DJ Quest.
Aguilar is a mentor for the DJ Project, a program in the Mission District dedicated to teaching young artists business entrepreneurship, audio production and other job-related skills influenced by Hip-hop and DJing.
“I’m not a master of all of those things but I’ve done them all,” Aguilar said. “I think what’s important is showing them how you can apply all these things you are learning, not just the techniques.”
Behind his mentorship, the 50-year-old Salvadoran immigrant and longtime Mission District resident has over three decades of experience. His work has helped cement his status as an accomplished artist and someone who has played an important role in the art of DJing and music production in the Bay Area.
“More than anything he was one of the people in the Bay Area spreading all the knowledge outside of San Francisco before a lot of people,” said Mauricio Vazquez, a long-time friend and fellow DJ who goes by the name DJ 2Fresh. “Him being involved in all those things is what people [have] look[ed] up to till now.”
As a teen, Aguilar immersed himself in rap and Hip-hop while learning the method of scratching. Because he didn’t have anyone to teach him, he developed a new way of scratching. Something he calls Hamster Style.
The Invention of Hamster Style
In order to mix records, the DJ typically has two turntables with a mixer in between. Both turntables play a record and are connected to the mixer which controls the volume, equalization of the sound frequencies, and for the purpose of scratching, the crossfader.
The crossfader does as the name suggests — it crossfades between two songs. If the crossfader is set in the middle, it plays both songs. If it is pulled all the way to the left or right, it will play the song of the connected turntable.
Normally when creating a scratching noise, the crossfader is pulled toward the turntable that holds the record the DJ is scratching. However, for 13-year-old Aguilar who bought the equipment along with his cousin, this information wasn’t readily available to either of them.
When Aguilar and his cousin Edwin Recinos first bought their equipment, the pair had accidentally plugged the turntables on the wrong side of the mixer — they had connected the right turntable to the left side of the mixer and vice versa.
“There were no YouTube videos and then the instructions, I don’t even remember if there were any instructions in them,” Aguilar said. “It was plugged in backward.”
Since Aguilar connected the turntables in reverse, he had to push the crossfader away from the turntable, which allowed him to find his own style of DJing.
In 1992, Aguilar teamed up with two other Bay Area DJs named Eddie Def and DJ Cue and recorded the first ever ‘battle record’ which was a record specifically made for scratching. They named the record Hamster Breaks Vol. 1 after their newly formed DJ crew called the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters. This later led to Aguilar naming his technique after the DJ crew.
“Coming up at the time I came up, and knowing other DJs, hooking up the turntables backward allowed for me to create something that was unique to me,” Aguilar said. “Although I wasn’t the only DJ to ever scratch like that, I was responsible for coining that Hamster Style term only because I was at the right place at the right time.”
Finding his love for Hip-hop
Aguilar’s family moved to San Francisco when he was nine years old. They fled El Salvador in the early 1980s to escape an ongoing civil war that would last until 1992.
Upon arriving in the Bay Area, Aguilar felt like he quickly acclimated to his new environment.
“The culture for me was new but I kind of plugged into American culture right away,” Aguilar said. “I was always a city kid. I was always into whatever was in. Even when we lived in El Salvador I remember watching music videos that would air over there.”
Aguilar explained that he would listen to local stations on the radio constantly, especially to a station named KSOL where they would play Hip-hop. He would even record the songs off the radio and save them so he could listen to them whenever he wanted. This fascination with Hip-hop led him to want to be a rapper despite still learning English at that time. But he began to notice the beats and DJs creating the music behind the rappers’ verses. Once he had his turntables, he would use his recordings to help teach him how to scratch records like the professionals on the radio.
“A lot of the music I liked, I would just record it off of the radio,” Aguilar said. “One of the first DJs that I tried to emulate once I got my turntables was this guy named DJ Cheese from a group called Word of Mouth. They had a song called “Coast to Coast.” I have that song on cassette. What I would do is I would play the scratch part, listen to it and rewind it, and then try to do what he was doing.”
He explained that in his teenage years, he would practice scratching after school by listening to the recordings late into the night. Even to the point where his mother felt like she had to hide his turntables because she believed it was impacting his education.
But to Aguilar, music was what gave him the motivation to improve himself and ensure that he didn’t fall down the wrong path.
“If it wasn’t for music, statistically I should have been either deported, in jail or dead,” Aguilar said. “I feel like because of the nature of Hip-hop, which is just to be the best that you can be at whatever it is you’re doing, that forces you to tighten up your game.”
Aguilar would go on to compete in DJ battles, an event where DJs create scratch performances and compete against one another, from 1991 to 1996. It was a world he was thrust into by a friend but quickly fell in love with.
“The very first battle I entered, I didn’t actually enter it. My friend actually signed me up for it,” Aguilar said. “I was nervous but I entered and won.”
He would continue to battle for five years, winning multiple top-three finishes in local and regional battle events.
At that same time, Aguilar would create music with the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters, DJ for Hip-hop artists around the Bay Area and even travel to Europe to perform with an experimental fusion of Jazz and Hip-hop group named Live Human.
Aguilar spent his last two decades working with the DJ Project. He has worked with young artists who are looking to become well-rounded in the music space and motivated his students to follow their dreams.
“I really see him as one of my idols,” said Andrés Zamora, a 15-year-old DJ in the program, who goes by the stage name DJ San Andres. “He’s gone so far with this and I really want to do that too.”