Tropical 80’s and 90’s hip hop wedding, Conservatory of Flowers. Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA. Photo: Jess Rankin
“We hired James to DJ our wedding and he absolutely crushed it. We went in thinking he'd just do our dance music at the reception, but he ended up doing a fantastic job with our ceremony and dinner music as well. He spent a bunch of time with both of us going over our musical backgrounds and sneaking hidden gems from our conversations into his set list. He was hyper-aware to play music that both us and our guests, including family, would enjoy. He transitioned smoothly from more recognizable songs to surprising and fun deeper cuts. James convinced me playing some low-key music during dinner would help set the tone and it was a great call. He played a cool, nonintrusive set during dinner and then blew it away with a bunch of fun dance jams at night. People were getting weird on the dance floor by the end, which is really all we wanted. Don't let Ceremony's rock / indie vibe throw you off either, he was knowledgable in all the genres we talked about, and was very careful to tailor the set to what we wanted most. We mostly went for rap for our dancing and he knocked it out of the park with his set.” - Devin Riley
”So happy with our decision to work with James! He was super attentive to what we wanted and gave great suggestions as well. The most important thing - we danced the night away :)” - Grace Yau
A Sunny, Tropical Indie and R&B Wedding in Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park has no shortage of amazing places to get married in. There are multiple museums, gardens, hideaways and glades from the De Young Museum to the Botanical Garden to the Japanese Tea Garden. But none of them has the 60’s rock cache of the Conservatory of Flowers. Featured on multiple album covers, the Conservatory of Flowers is both an iconic landmark and a cool, countercultural relic of the park’s victorian past.
To this day you can hear drum circles jamming out nearly 24/7 at the foot of its steps and avant garde street performers practicing violin in the tunnel opposite the main garden. And that’s not even talking about the amazing architecture, the tropical greenhouse full of rare plants and butterflies, and the gigantic death flower that only blooms once every couple of years or so.
So you can take things multiple directions here. You can play it victorian, you can play up the 60’s summer of love thing, or you can go modern and riff on the plants, the greenhouse and the tropical vibe. For Devin and Grace, we decided to really stick with the greenhouse idea and do everything we could to accentuate the floral arrangements, the mostly indoor setting and the fun genres they picked which had a lot of intersections with those kinds of ideas.
A Vocal Jazz Ceremony
Grace had a soft spot for all the classic vocal jazz stuff like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and so on, but we didn’t want the classic elements to dominate the event, and I do my best to not come off like your regular old DJ, so we kept those elements to ceremony with a 45 minute jazz vocal set before they walked to really set up their processional songs which were in that vein.
I’m not an expert in jazz, but my partner and fiance Rocky is! So we mined all her notes and catalogues from years of vocal jazz singing classes for a set that came out pretty good, if I do say so myself. We frequently do custom projects for folks, and for this one, building the core of what is now our vocal jazz catalog was the main research project. The only difference here being that unlike your average wedding DJ, we choose all the songs live, and honestly, mixed them like a dance set with all the tempos, keys and changes aligned, so it really came off like a live performance from the musicians themselves.
An Afrobeat Cocktail Hour
Devin is a big fan of afrobeat and honestly knew a lot more about the whole thing than I did before this project, but part of what we do is get people to really talk in the meetings about things they like and know and then cross reference the heck out of it for related artists and deep cuts. So after talking to Devin for a bit about his favorite artists, we actually had a lot to go on to build a similarly banging afrobeat set for the cocktail.
A Balearic Dinner Party
For the dinner, we wanted to keep things moving, but also chill. So we split the difference with an all Ibiza inspired, slow motion balearic set. Balearic is a style of DJ’ing from the 80’s that incorporates elements of yacht rock, italo disco, early house and indie. It’s the primary inspiration for the Hacienda club in Manchester, England, home to Factory Records and bands like The Stone Roses, The Happy Mondays and New Order. But those guys got the idea from teenage vacations to the island of Ibiza off the coast of Spain in the early to mid 80’s.
If you’ve never heard of Balearic, don’t beat yourself up too much. I’ve been DJ’ing for almost 20 years, and I didn’t even know what it was for a while there. Defining what constitutes a balearic set is a subject of intense debate in the DJ community, and honestly, a party game we all play on holidays here at our house. It’s basically any song, from any genre, that sounds like you could hear it on an island at sunset.
A European Take on Hip Hop
I always thought Balearic was some kind of high-falutin’ house music and those guys certainly love the stuff and a lot of it is! But I think it’s more rightly understood as a european reaction to hip hop. Pulling beats and sounds and samples from a range of sources with the intention of creating a whole other kind of groove and atmosphere.
If you can imagine DJ’ing on an island at sunset in the 80’s, there would’ve been all types of people there. You’ve got your Italians who love disco. You’ve got your Spanish folks that want a little bit of that latin flavor. You’ve got your pasty white British tourists who love a familiar Stone Roses tune or Beatles sing-a-long. You’ve got your American’s who wouldn’t argue with a little “Hotel California.” And the lot of them are drunk tourists on holiday, so there are going to be some chat topping pop hits.
But again, this is all taking place on an island at sunset, so whatever you pull has to also fulfill that criteria, while still being incredibly diverse. And this is the 80’s, so no one has computers or thumb drives or even CDs. This is all records. All vinyl, for what was often a twelve hour set. The most famous clubs in Ibiza would have the DJs start around sunset and play all night until sunrise. If you imagine you need about one crate per hour, that’s like 12 crates of records to play a 12 hour set. And the longer you go, the closer you get to the bottom of the barrel so to speak.
A DJ Parlor Game
So Balearic definitely has its share of obscure house tunes, but it’s also got loads of hilarious dollar yacht rock records and international pop hits. Madonna “La Isla Bonita”? Balearic. The theme from Miami Vice? Balearic. Billy Idol “Eyes Without a Face”? Balearic. In case there are any DJ’s out there ready to accuse me of being basic, there are also tons of obscure things I could say to score points with the true heads here like Chris Rea “Josephine”, but that’s besides the point. Balearic is whatever you say it is, which is kind of the whole point.
It’s also the primary inspiration for chillwave artists like Washed Out, who basically chopped and screwed classic italo disco records for their first album hits. Ever heard the theme to Portlandia? Balearic. And not only that, mainstream artists like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris have been all relentless mining this vein for the last ten years worth of Top 40 chart hits. Ever heard The Weeknd? My god, balearic.
A Modern Twist
Which brings me back to Devin and Grace. They weren’t doing a first dance or parent dances and wanted to put a lot of emphasis on the grand entrance and speeches towards the beginning of the event, so the music could just flow the entire night from there, but people still needed to eat dinner and not have it be too overwhelming. They also mentioned that they liked some chill 2000’s indie type artists like Washed Out, Toro y Moi and Neon Indian (Balearic) and wanted to do their grand entrance to the Talking Heads classic, “This Must Be The Place”. My god, soooo balearic.
So this is the plan we came up with! We had actually done this idea once before for a family that had spent all their time together sailing and wanted a major yacht rock element to their wedding, but those guys never submitted their review, so you get to hear about it over here. We actually took it one step further with Devin and Grace by incorporating a lot of newer stuff in with the classic stuff, so it came off a little more like a modern chill set than a classic balearic set, but I like to think of it as a contemporary twist on a classic idea. DJ’s, commence arguing.
A Classic Hip Hop Dance Party
For the dancing these guys wanted classic 90’s hip hop and R&B. But we put a special twist on it by rinsing the collection for only songs with either chill or tropical samples. We really leaned into the latin feel of even the uptempo ones. In short, we kept it Balaeric.
Big Ups & Shout Outs
Special shout out to The Conservatory of Flowers for being great hosts. That room is huge! But our speakers are equally huge.
Special shout out to planner Dan Baldwin. Dan is a wedding planner, and a dude! Very inspiring for me as a dude with aspirations of wedding planning. Dan did a great job running trains and keeping everything flowing smoothly.
Special shout out to Nopalito catering. Easily the best Mexican I’ve had at a wedding.
Special shout out out to Dream Catcher Artistry! We work with these guys more than any other hair and make up ladies and the bridal party looked amazing as always.
Special shout out to Agave Rose Design! We took one of the arrangements home and it made our living room look great for quite some time.
Ceremony Songs
Prelude:
Dinah Washington “This Bitter Earth”
Processional:
Teresa Teng “The Moon Represents My Heart”
Recessional:
Fred Fisher Atalobhor & His Ogiza Dance Band “Beautiful Dancer”
Grand Entrance:
Talking Heads “This Must Be the Place”
Jamie’s Afrobeat Cocktail Set:
Commy Bassey “In Solitude”
King Sunny Ade “Ja Funmi”
Abaraka 77 “The Onye Amachi”
William Onyeabor “Fantastic Man”
Soul Makossa “Manu Dibango”
Jide Obi “Too Young”
Manu Dibango “The Panther”
Tony Allen “Secret Agent”
Cymande “Bra”
Jide Obi “Tonight”
Fela Kuti “Expensive Shit”
Venue: Conservatory of Flowers / Planner: Dan Baldwin / Photographer: Jess Rankin / Catering: Nopalito / Photobooth: Glass Coat Photobooth / Cocktail music: Le Jazz Hot / DJ: Ceremony DJs / Lights: Got Light / Rentals: One True Love Vintage / Florist: Agave Rose Design / Hair & Make Up: Dreamcatcher Artistry
