DJ Manuel Bundy
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He’s one of New Zealand’s most respected DJs with 38 years experience but Manuel Bundy (real name Manuel Matisi) says he doesn’t feel like a performer.
“It’s just me up there playing tunes. People dig it and they dance.”
While Matisi prefers not to play anything “cheesy”, he told Music 101 that enthusiastic song requests can be hard to dodge when people don’t know who he is.
“People just show up and see a DJ and they’re like ‘Can you play Dolly Parton?'”
Matisi fell in love with hip-hop as a kid growing up in South Auckland and played his first DJ set at his mum’s church in 1987.
“I ended up playing the whole night and I was like ‘I actually really like DJing’. It came to me quite easily. I just got the bug from there.”
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Around that time underage socials at Mangere’s Mormon chapel were the place to hear the latest American hip-hop not being played on the radio, Matisi said.
“We’d go there on Friday night and just listen to this music and like, bug out. It was also the early days of hip-hop so there were breakdancers there and it was just really cool.”
Although the teenage Matisi once thought he was too much of a “wallflower” to become a professional DJ, in 1990 he became the first New Zealand DJ to have a residency, spinning hip-hop four nights a week at Auckland’s Shortland Bar.
By then he was already stuck with the moniker “Bundy” – after American serial killer Ted Bundy – which he’d originally chosen to use for a themed dance party.
Manuel Bundy in 2006
Photo: Courtesy of Simon Grigg
“I wanted to be like ‘Mix Master Jam’ or something but it’s too late now. Quirky people are like ‘That’s a great name’. I’m like ‘Okay’.”
With the option now to work off a laptop, DJing is a much more straightforward job these days than it was in the 90s, Matisi said.
You’ll never see him turning up to play a set with just a USB drive though – “it looks too easy”.
DJ Manuel Bundy in the 1990s
Photo: Via Audioculture
In the second half of the 1990s Manisi helped to shape the birth of New Zealand hip-hop, working on the debut albums of, among others, Che Fu, Breaks Cop and Dam Native.
The studio session for Dam Native’s 1997 hit ‘Behold My Kool Style’ was something special to be part of, he said.
“I heard the beat that [Zane Lowe] produced and I was like ‘Man, this beat is dope’ and then Danny [Haimona] rocks in, he’s just full of fire and he did his verse in one take. I managed to just follow on from that energy and then, yeah, it was in the can.”
Haimona is one of the best live hip-hop performers in New Zealand, Matisi reckons.
“He’s just got that energy and that natural charisma on stage and he just commands it.”
In the 2000s, as well as starting up the hip-hop radio station Base FM, Matisi put on a monthly dance party called The Turnaround with fellow DJs Cian and The Submariner.
On Saturday 5 April, the three will reunite at a ‘day and night’ party at Leigh Saw Mill.
Ahead of that, though, you can catch DJ Manuel Bundy in Auckland on 22 March at a dance party to celebrate 30 years of the dance company Black Grace.
Manuel Bundy played:
‘A Little Spice’ by Loose Ends
This 1984 record from the English R&B band Loose Ends was the first Bundy bought with “his own dosh”.
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‘Benita Applebaum’ by A Tribe Called Quest
“A Tribe Called Quest are one of my favourite rap groups and this song is a classic.”
Bundy was doing his first-ever DJ residency at Auckland’s Shortland Bar when this track came out in 1990.
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‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
This pioneering 1982 album was a favourite at The Turnaround, he said.
“This is one of those tracks that just never leaves the record bag.”
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‘Drip’ by Christophe El Truento, featuring Ladi6
Bundy met music producer and DJ Christophe El Truento when he hosted a music show on Base FM.
Because he’d wag school to do the show, Bundy nicknamed him ‘DJ Truant’ and it stuck.
“I’ve always been a big fan of that dude, his production and he’s just got great DJ styles and skills, you know. He’s the man and Ladi6, I mean, what can you say?”
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‘Mambo’ by Wally Badarou
“He’s of French West African descent and he’s just one of my favourites – a great keyboard player and session musician. He was also an unofficial member of (jazz-funk band) Level 42.
“It’s just his style of playing. I just love it… heavy on the synth. It’s the colours he adds to the music. I just love this track. It was sampled by Massive Attack on their track ‘Daydreaming’ and as people know that’s a classic.”
‘Let Love Flow On’ by Sonia Spence
On a flight to Europe with his partner last year, Bundy watched the film American Fiction and during a wedding scene, this 1981 song came on.
“I was like ‘Oh, this is a good song… I love this song” and for the rest of the holiday couldn’t get it out of my head.
“That song just reminds me of that trip, really. You know how certain songs remind you of certain things? This reminds me of that trip that we went away on.”
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