‘I play for everybody’ - Steelie Bashment says consistency keeps him relevant

For veteran disc jockey Steelie Bashment, consistency is what has kept him relevant in an ever-changing music scene.

The New York-based selector says the key to his longevity is knowing how to read the room and adjust to the crowd in front of him.

"I play for everybody- Jamaicans, Trinis, Guyanese, etc.- but people believe that I am an oldies playing kind of guy. So they will see a flyer with my name and say 'Oh, we're gonna get some good oldies now', but when they go, it's a younger generation," the deejay told THE WEEKEND STAR. " I'm not going to set myself up to play only Dennis Brown and Bob Marley when the majority of the crowd is young people who want to hear Alkaline. I will always do my due diligence and adapt."

Now in the game for more than three decades, Steelie Bashment, whose given name is Dwayne McKay, attributed his popularity to how he started out.

"Definitely the soul mixtapes I did some 30 years ago. I can acknowledge that I was not a great souls man then, but at that time, the pace of the music was for dancing. Bogle, Elephant Man, [and so on] were doing their thing, and everyone was on that fast pace kick, so I just decided to slow it down. So you know, anything that was the first of its kind, becomes original and popular, so I was [of] the first to put all the popular songs on one CD," he said.

"You can do something and not be consistent about it, and end up nowhere. We have to adapt to what is going on today and not dwell on what happened yesterday. So, I'm still relevant because of my consistency."

His story in music is also tied up in how he got his name. He noted that there was a sound system known as Silver Hawk, of which he was a big fan.

"The owner was Steelie (from Steelie and Clevie), so I mimicked my name off that. The 'Bashment' part came from another sound in New York called Afrique, and a group of us called ourselves the Bashment Squad, and the name stuck. Even [Tony] Matterhorn was a part of that squad too," he said.

The business of selecting, he explained, is ever evolving, and one of the biggest shifts he recognised is the amount of talking disc jockeys now do when booked for a gig.

"So now people don't appreciate the music as much because the DJ speaks for 15 minutes and plays the song for two seconds. That means I now have to think and adjust accordingly. Jamaicans are spoiled with the talking because this is the narrative that the DJs push every night. Now I'm not a talker; I let the music talk for me. I have a lot of selections that people haven't heard for a long time, and I'm just hoping people appreciate it."

As for what's next, the selector will be fine-tuning his own shows which are set for later in the year.

"I have a very popular event that happens in New York called Memories that I do every year. Last year in October, around National Heroes weekend, I launched it in Jamaica, and it did very well. It was in Ochi, and I had about 2,000 people, so those are my 2026 projects that will be getting my energy."

- Nicola Cunningham