Interview with Arti Buko

29/03/24

Hi Arti Buko! Who are you as DJs? And who are you as people in everyday life?

We are Arti Buko; there are three of us, two of whom are brothers. We've been pretty good friends since the first year of secondary school. Two of us study in Diepenbeek, the other studies in Brussels.

The three of us went to Dour together, and since then, we started hanging out more and appreciating the same kind of music.

Before we became Arti Buko, we mostly played at the typical scout & youth movement parties. Back then, we consisted of two different duos, which is actually kind of funny to look back on.

After a while, our musical tastes just really started to match. And then we kind of flipped the switch, like... all right. Maybe we should just start as a trio. If one of us can't make it to a booking, we’ll still play under the same name. You know, it doesn’t really matter.

Where does your name come from? Is there a specific origin?

Artie Bucco is a character from the series The Sopranos. He’s kind of a special personality.

We came together, and we all wrote down names, came up with a bunch. In the end, we thought this one was the coolest.

What convinced you to start DJing? How did you get into it?

The first time was at our local youth center. They asked if we wanted to play.

They knew we were into music and knew our stuff, but we had never actually DJ’d before. We were super excited and really wanted to do it.

We prepared everything from start to finish, literally every tune, because we didn’t really know what we were doing yet. But it went pretty well.

We just kept practicing with our own music. Two of us were on the lineup as a duo, and the other one solo. That was also quite funny.

All right, nice! What role does music play in your lives? I assume you’re busy with it daily, but does it have any special meaning for you?

Yeah, for the brothers, it really started through our parents.

For me, it really took off thanks to Kaan, in my first year of uni. I had already listened to a lot of music before, but Kaan introduced me to different styles and taught me to appreciate more.

Is there a specific venue you’d love to play at? A dream or a goal?

Horst Club, definitely. That’s a must-play venue.

Anything coming up for Arti Buko?

Yeah, there are some things in the works, but nothing huge for now.

We’re still regularly playing at Café Apero, it’s is a known bar in Leuven, where we play monthly.

How did you get in touch with ‘gemak!’?

That was actually through Stel’été, just this past summer.

We were kind of on a summer streak; every week, we were at Stelplaats on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

All three of us were doing holiday work in Leuven, and it became a habit: like, okay, let’s just go there. That’s when we started following you guys.

What can we expect from your set?

A lot of variety. It's definitely danceable. We’ll lean toward Latin and Funk, but it could really go in any direction. We’ve prepared a bit, but not in too much detail.

If you had to advise people just starting with DJing, or are thinking about starting, what’s a lesson you've learned?

Do your own thing. Play your own music.

You can adapt to the crowd a bit, but stay within your own sound.

It’s really nice to carve out your own path instead of just playing what people expect.

Especially at parties we used to play... we still tried to do our thing, but with more commercial styles. It was still stuff we liked, but also music that we knew would work.

Since we became Arti Buko—that's been since last summer—we eventually decided we really wanted to do our own thing. The parties we like going to are way more fun than the mainstream ones, so we wanted to reflect that kind of fun in our own identity.