There are a lot of reasons James De Valera may look familiar. You might have seen him tearing up the dancefloor in a sweaty Dubai nightclub, or furiously scratching records at an international street dance competition. Or perhaps spotted him behind the decks at a five-star hotel’s rooftop lounge, or providing eclectic soundtracks to artsy cultural events across the emirates. You might have even caught De Valera on tour in Europe backing vintage US hip-hop group The Beatnuts.
One place you won’t have seen him, or any DJ, before is the Louvre Abu Dhabi – but on Wednesday, the artist better known as Lobito Brigante will become the first turntablist to appear as part of the museum’s live cultural programme, performing over two nights alongside audio-visual cine-pop hybridists Love and Revenge, who pay tribute to the golden age of Arab cinema with a mix of projections and live music.
For his own closing set De Valera is digging deep into his crates – which pack more than 20,000 vinyl records – taking cues from the global sweep of the museum’s stockpiles and exhibition plans, promising to drop Arabic funk, Japanese jazz, Afrobeat and other cross-cultural curios.
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“For me, the true art of DJing is to have enough musical versatility to walk into a space, be inspired and channel something,” says the artist formally known as Break DJ Lobito. “On the technical side, you can get as granular as you want – it’s really all about selection.”
A lynchpin of the UAE music scene for the past decade, De Valera has previously played to five-figure crowds warming up for Snoop Dogg and Sean Paul in Abu Dhabi. But such commercial engagements are not the goal for a nimble-fingered traditionalist who sees DJing as a sacred, if malleable, art-form.
Closer to his heart, the Spaniard was the creative force behind outdoor cultural happening Street Nights Art – which showered Dubai’s JBR and Al Quoz with beats, b-boys, graffiti artists and food trucks – and is the founder of the Deep Crates Cartel, hosts of an influential weekly night at Casa Latina which propelled the underground clubbing movement between 2011 to 2014. “I stole it,” he admits of the Deep Crates moniker, name-checking a pair of obscure hip-hop documentaries.
If you do recognise his face from somewhere, but didn’t recall the Lobito brand, it’s probably not your fault. De Valera prefers to let the music do the talking, and describes social media as a “repository of the subconscious mind” he’d rather live without – like his heroes, crate diggers and scratch DJs from hip-hop’s golden years.
His pedigree in the genre runs deep. While still an Arabic student at SOAS, University of London, De Valera warmed up for visiting A-listers including De La Soul, Slick Rick, Pharoahe Monch, and spoken word pioneers The Last Poets – and found time to play turntables in a band with Cypress Hill’s Eric Bobo, named Cultura Londres.
Arriving into the embryonic UAE scene of 2007, De Valera took a distinctly DIY approach, organising a string of pioneering b-boy battles – including 2011’s Battle of The Year Middle East at The Dubai Mall – believed to be the first of their kind in the region, and was later recognised as a “regional cultural leader” by the British Council. As a promoter, De Valera has brought hip-hop heroes such as Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Public Enemy’s DJ Lord over to spin in the emirates, as well as global groove icon Quantic and reggae legend Horace Andy, and co-organised 2012’s The Do-Over headlined by Aloe Blacc.
“I was forced into it,” says De Valera of his promotional achievements. “When I first came over here and presented myself to people as a DJ, I got zero response. Over the last ten years, I’ve spent time building the kind of events I wanted to play.”
No stranger to gallery crowds, De Valera co-organised Art After Dark at The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai – where he served for a spell as the hotel’s music director – a spin-off of the official DIFC Art Nights after-party, which catered to a certain species of culture vulture. It seems not the least bit jarring that the evening after the second Louvre show, on May 4, he will play an annual tribute to legendary hip-hop producer J Dilla, a PopUpclassics gig at restaurant Tom&Serg.
“I’ve DJ’d to big crowds, in luxury hotels, dive bars and art galleries,” adds De Valera. “It’s all just music, and music is universal. We create these structures and genres, and I guess the ultimate goal is to try and expand people’s perception and taste. If I really boil it down to what moves me at the deepest level, it’s that I have experienced this journey in music, and I want other people experience and discover things as a result of it, too.”
Lobito Brigante performs after Love and Revenge at Louvre Abu Dhabi’s Auditorium Plaza on May 2 and 3, 8pm, tickets Dh150 from www.louvreabudhabi.ae
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Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
The specs: 2019 BMW X4
Price, base / as tested: Dh276,675 / Dh346,800
Engine: 3.0-litre turbocharged in-line six-cylinder
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 354hp @ 5,500rpm
Torque: 500Nm @ 1,550rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 9.0L / 100km
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The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
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Favourite book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Holiday choice: Anything Disney-related
Proudest achievement: Receiving a presidential award for foreign services.
Family: Wife and three children.
Like motto: You always get what you ask for, the universe listens.
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Funding to date: Self-funded
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Distance covered: 160km
Temperature: -40°C
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Altitude (metres above sea level): 0
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Distance covered: 130km
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Company: Rent Your Wardrobe
Date started: May 2021
Founder: Mamta Arora
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Sector: Clothes rental subscription
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Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
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Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
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Investment raised: $4 million
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Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
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Key Points
- Protests against President Omar Al Bashir enter their sixth day
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Our legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
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4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
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5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Bangladesh tour of Pakistan
January 24 – First T20, Lahore
January 25 – Second T20, Lahore
January 27 – Third T20, Lahore
February 7-11 – First Test, Rawalpindi
April 3 – One-off ODI, Karachi
April 5-9 – Second Test, Karachi
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Power: 712hp at 6,100rpm
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On sale: now
