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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