AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The Chicago house music scene is mourning the loss of an iconic figure. Charles Chambers, known as DJ Funk, died of cancer this week. He was 54. Jonas Adams, who's a producer at ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, is also a DJ from Chicago. He grew up in the '90s and says, back then, DJ Funk's music was the soundtrack to pretty much every party.
JONAS ADAMS, BYLINE: There was nobody who could really afford a DJ like that where I was from. So what you had was mixtapes and mix CDs, and the main mix CD or mixtape that you would hear at everybody's house parties was DJ Funk.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: Five, six, seven. Kick it.
MARTHA WASH: (Singing) Everybody dance now.
ADAMS: It's dark in there. It's probably in somebody's basement. It's so hot you could barely breathe. The walls are sweating, and everybody is just dancing nonstop to these up-tempo, high-energy ghetto house mixes.
ROB NICHOLS: Ghetto house is basically, like, underground basement grunge, synth-heavy.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
That's Rob Nichols, known as DJ Scrap Dirty. He says DJ Funk pioneered ghetto house music and that it's a style of house that is unique to Chicago. The music's faster. The lyrics are edgier. It's liberating. He says when you hear it, you can't help but move your body.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOLD UP")
JAMMIN THE HOUSE GERALD: (Singing) Hold up, wait a minute. Hold up, wait a minute.
NICHOLS: Ghetto house was the child that no one thought that was going come from up under the underground. It's basically an underground sound of all the neighborhoods in Chicago.
SUMMERS: The Chicago rave scene and house music was still in its early days when DJ Scrap Dirty first met DJ Funk.
NICHOLS: Y'all know him as DJ Funk. We knew him as Chuck Funk.
CHANG: DJ Scrap Dirty was about 14 then, just starting his career in music. He says ghetto house was ahead of his time, and he never thought it would get so popular.
NICHOLS: When I first heard that Daft Punk tune called "Teachers," the first thing I said was, Chuck is out of here. And lo and behold, you start seeing a whole bunch of international flyers. He was traveling the world, and I think that really helped him go to the next level.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TEACHERS")
DAFT PUNK: (Singing) Paul Johnson. DJ Funk. DJ Sneak.
CHANG: In their debut album, the French duo Daft Punk have a song called "Teachers" that lists all the DJs who inspired their sound. Many of them are DJs from Chicago, with DJ Funk being the first one mentioned. DJ Scrap Dirty said this is the legacy of ghetto house and what DJ Funk did, alongside others in the scene.
NICHOLS: His music will live on. His music will live through all of us, day to day, city by city, country by country. And Chicago house music been going on this long. And like they used to say on the radio, Chicago is the house music capital of the world. It will always be that, and it will always live on. DJ Chuck Funk, aka DJ Funk, will always be with us to the test of time.
SUMMERS: In 2015, when DJ Funk was interviewed by The Guardian, he said that he didn't want a funeral. He said, instead, he wanted a party so people could dance and an afterparty with his music playing and a lot of booty shaking.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAFT PUNK SONG, "TEACHERS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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