DJ Alfredo at Amnesia - ATT Balearic special
For An Taobh Tuathail’s 24th anniversary show on 1st May 2023, the focus was on a selection of records that otherwise might have been considered unlikely bedfellows were it not for the fact that DJ Alfredo weaved them together at a particular time and place, namely on the dancefloor at Amnesia in Ibiza through the summers of 1984-1989.
Legendary DJ Alfredo Fiorito.
For this radio show special, I asked listeners to send me suggestions based on their own personal interpretation of what they considered ‘Balearic’ might be. I also had been filing tunes in a folder for years under the term ‘Balearic’, without every giving the term any serious thought. I just had a nebulous notion of a particular vibe that I could feel through these chosen tunes - something vaguely Ibizan, possibly sun-kissed, a tad psychedelic, an all-round enigmatic ambience that resonated with me in a certain way.
After a little bit more investigating, I ditched the idea of playing anything from my Balearic folder and instead went straight to the source - DJ Alfredo’s record bag at Amensia during the 80s’.
What prompted this change of course?
Firstly, the seemingly never ending online discussions of what might be considered Balearic are as fascinating as they are hilarious (one memorable quip being writer Frank Tope’s definition of Balearic being “pop records that sound good on pills”). Is Balearic a genre? Or a feeling? It's impossible to get any kind of genuine consensus.
I decided to get in touch with someone who might be better qualified to give a more authentic appraisal of what might qualify as ‘Balearic’. A resident of Ibiza for many years, with plenty of experience of DJing around the island, this writer / DJ who goes by the nom-de-plume The Secret DJ coined the brilliant term ‘Balearic Silverback’ to describe a particular breed of over-earnest, bearded middle-aged men, who dig for obscure disco vinyl and who consider themselves as sacred gate-keepers of the genre. I asked him to suggest a Balearic (I keep captialising the word. Should I?) record for the ATT special. He messaged: “the only answer to ‘is it Balearic?’ is ask Alfredo or Leo Mas, everyone else is a chancer”. This got me thinking - am I going about this the right way?
My old friend, Galway-based DJ Padraic ‘Disconaut’ O Connor sent me a brilliant list of old tunes, some of which I had not personally considered Balearic. But once I started reading up on them, I learned that all were played by legendary DJ Alfredo Fiorito at his residency at Amnesia in Ibiza between 1984-89. As listener suggestions kept pouring in I observed that some could be filed under ‘personal interpretation of Balearic’, others under ‘played by Alfredo at Amnesia’.
So, that prompted me to go back to ‘The Source’: Alfredo at Amnesia.
Alfredo, a DJ in exile from Argentina, began DJing in Amnesia on the island in 1984. It was a completely different club back then to the super-club of today. There was no roof over it for a start. It was al fresco, under the stars and relatively unknown, as it was located on a rural part of the island on the road between San Antonio and Ibiza town. For most of the summer of 84, the club was practically empty, until one morning Alfredo continued to play later than the usual 3am curfew as one of the bar staff was having a party and asked if he might keep playing and soundtrack the celebrations. Soon, others passing by, en route home from others clubs, heard the music and joined the party and fell under Alfredo's spell. Word spread quickly. More people came along the following night and even more the night after and Amnesia made the decision to open from 3am to midday for the rest of the summer. His long sessions became the stuff of legend, where hippies would rub shoulders with the jet-set, as well as locals, soon joined by young holiday-makers from all over Europe.
This was of course in an era before house music arrived in Ibiza, so to fill those long hours Alfredo had to dig deep in his record collection. Jazz, Argentinian tango, soul, post-punk, disco, synth-pop, classical, TV themes and EBM rubbed shoulders with some of the more well-known pop records of the era. If you heard Alfredo play U2’s “I Still Haven't Found What I’m Looking For” at sunrise at Amnesia, it was a Balearic record. If you hear it in almost any other context, it’s just one of U2’s biggest selling singles.
In 1987 Trevor Fung, Paul Oakenfold, Nick Holloway and Danny Rampling (who would later describe Alfredo as "the Larry Levan of Europe") fell under the spell of the Argentinian magician and spirits buoyed by the fuzzy warmth of a certain chemical returned to the UK with a missionary zeal. And so the acid house story goes.
For this special, I drew on some listener suggestions, but also drew heaving from the excellent list that Padraic Disconaut kindly sent me. I cross-checked the tunes with online sources to get an idea if Alfredo actually played them. Because I couldn’t sincerely give you a true definition of what should be considered Balearic, my yardstick for this special was - if Alfredo played it at Amnesia in the 80s, that's all I need to hear.
Mo cheol thú Alfredo (1953 - 2024), ní bheidh do leithíd arís ann