Louie Vega Bio


	Small Wonders Entertainment ARTIST BIO:

Masters At Work

Louie Vega is the Miles Davis of dance music. Like the impossible to categorize Davis, Vega is constantly reinventing himself; and revolutionizing the musical landscape in the process. During his nearly two-decade long career, Vega has crafted some of the most ground-breaking singles in dance music history (“The Nervous Track”, “It’s Alright, I Feel It” and “You Can Do It”), kick started genres like soulful house (“Beautiful People,” “I Get Lifted”), and revitalized the careers of legends like Roy Ayers, George Benson and Tito Puente.

Born in the Bronx in 1965, Vega grew up in an environment rich with Latin music. His father, Louie Vega Sr, is an accomplished jazz and Latin saxophonist and his uncle was renowned salsa singer Hector Lavoe (of Fania All Stars fame). Vega’s musical influences didn’t end with Latin music though: in the eighties, he was a regular at legendary nightclubs like The Paradise Garage and attended Afrika Bambaataa’s famous Bronx River Projects block parties.

In the mid-eighties, Vega began to make a name for himself as an up-and-coming DJ, playing at Bronx and Manhattan hotspots like Devil’s Nest, Roseland, Studio 54 and the Palladium. He played with a raw energy and enthusiasm that reflected his passion for the music, and his sets were refreshingly diverse, encompassing everything from Latin-Jazz and hip-hop to British new wave. Towards the end of the decade though, Vega became disenchanted with the club scene’s increasing musical segregation. He felt that “People’s minds were starting to think in terms of categories.”

However, just as clubland’s creative lights appeared to be dimming, Vega’s soon-to-be production partner Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez began throwing wildly eclectic mobile parties in his native Brooklyn, whilst piecing together productions under the “Masters At Work” moniker. By 1987, the Masters At Work name had attracted so much attention that Todd Terry borrowed it for his New York house classic “Alright, Alright.”

Terry, in turn, introduced Gonzalez to Vega and the two found an immediate kinship. Masters At Work productions soon took off, and innovative house remixes for the likes of Tito Puente, Saint Etienne and even Debbie Gibson sent the duo straight to the top of the dance music pile. Meanwhile, Vega’s seminal “Underground Network” party, at New York’s Sound Factory Bar, created the template for many a soulful house party to come, yielding house music anthems like Barbara Tucker’s “Beautiful People” and River Ocean featuring India’s “Love & Happiness”.

With the Masters At Work sound firmly in place, the mid-nineties saw Vega and Gonzalez pursue new musical paths, under a different guise: Nuyorican Soul. They introduced this alter-ego on “The Nervous Track”; a fiercely percussive groove that was not only dance floor-friendly, but musically sophisticated and engaging as well. A subsequent track, the club hit “You Can Do It (Baby)!” featuring George Benson, helped the project gain critical mass with fans, and after being signed by influential music maestro Gilles Peterson, Vega and Gonzalez recorded the Nuyorican Soul album. Released in 1997, the self-titled album brought together an all-star cast of musicians - including Roy Ayers, Jocelyn Brown, Eddie Palmieri, India and DJ Jazzy Jeff – to create an innovative, genre-defying piece of music that has proved to be both timeless and unflinchingly influential on the dance music of today.

number of friends and influences to add to the sessions. Roy Ayers, Patti Austin, Blaze and Ja Far from resting on his laurels, Vega has continued to push his creative impulses, seeking out an array of fresh and exciting projects to work on. 2002 saw the release of the Masters At Work album “Our Time Is Coming”; a collection of songs co-written, produced, arranged and mixed by Vega and Gonzalez, who recruited ames Ingram were among those who featured on the album, which again found MAW at their finest; whether it be on the Latin-Jazz of “Pienso En Ti”, or the inescapable Soca beats of cross-over phenomenon “Work”. “Our Time Is Coming” also gave Vega and Gonzalez the opportunity to collaborate once again with the supreme Latin songstress India. The result was the club mega-hit “Backfired”; a heart-felt, introspective song, penned by Vega and India, and produced by Masters At Work.