Frequent Players has always been a way of bringing the sneaker community closer to those within the world of music. For our latest guest mix, we link up with London based OS Community. Whats been built from the ground up by a group of friends and creatives, each one of them brings the enthusiasm and passion to the table for music whereby everyone can be a part of.
We sit down with ‘Baron’ aka Luis Sabogal Ceballos, Colombian born, London raised who co-founded this fresh community.
Take a read below and make sure to check out Baron’s mix now live below!
Footpatrol: OS Community, welcome! We have been looking forward to this one, how are you?
OSC: All good! Always grateful to be alive and healthy! We’ve also been looking forward to this 🙂
FP: For our community members that may not have had the honor of meeting you, could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Luis: My name is Luis Sabogal Ceballos. I was born in Colombia and raised in S.E London, around the Walworth Road/Peckham area. I’m a co-founder of the collective The OS Community. I DJ under the name Baron, and I love Arsenal 🙂
FP: So what exactly is OS Community?
LC: The OS Community is a London-based collective that showcases underground electronic music and artists, curates music-focused content, and prides itself on creating a sustainable honeybee-like network and community of friends and family within the scene.
FP: What was it that spurred you on to want to do this?
LC: It all started with a group of friends who all had a mutual love for electronic dance music and a good party. We’d typically go to the park with a speaker during the summer, and it would eventually turn into a party. With this happening, we just thought we could do this ourselves, so we started finding different cool locations and putting on free raves. These places included an abandoned kid’s nursery, a skate bowl, and underneath a bridge. We built our community this way, eventually moved more into clubs, and officially organized these events. A place I will always big up, that played a big part in our growth is Venue MOT in Bermondsey, a proper grassroots music venue. They allowed us to hold parties in a good club, which allowed us to book artists we thought were cool, and our own DJs, myself and Joseph, also co-founder of OS. So we owe a lot to them 🙂
FP: One thing I like about you guys is your name; the fact you have a community in there already says to me that there is a larger scope with what you guys set out to achieve other than DJing at events. Could you tell us a bit about the community element to what you do?
LC: So that was mainly spurred by my perspective on electronic dance music, mainly house & Techno, and after seeing how it had impacted my own life. When I was young, I grew up around Walworth Road/Peckham, and I used to get into a lot of trouble to the point I was incarcerated for a year. When I came out, I was introduced to this music and scene and I had found something that let me be myself. So with that outlook on it, we felt we should try and use it as a tool to help young people because if it impacts someone from a young age, it could help them avoid making inevitable mistakes.
FP: Do you guys always work as a collective or do you do these sessions individually as well?
LC: Initially, it was with a youth program called Alchemy that operates in Goldsmiths University on Saturdays. They allow young people from the local borough to create music using the university’s music facilities. When we started, Joseph, a friend Tomas and I organized it. But this was just before the pandemic, so we couldn’t carry on with the sessions. Luckily, I ended up enrolling at the university to do a course called Applied Social Science, Community Development & Youth Work. I ended up working on the Alchemy programme, and while it was virtual, it was mainly mentoring, but since we’ve been back, I usually take my decks in and teach them how to DJ, which has been unreal seeing how quickly they learn. So at the minute, it’s just me as Joseph has now gone to LA to do a master’s degree in Film.
FP: What has the response been like during the courses you’ve been running?
LC: Well, in the beginning, we would introduce ourselves, relate with them and then speak about the history of House/Techno and show them that this music can also be an option for them. The response was great because once they got a bit more comfortable with us, we got them to approach the decks and just let them do their thing and guide them. I would say not every young person there was super interested, but the ones that were for us, that’s a lot, and of course, you can always build with time.
FP: Is there a wider aim with what you guys have set out to achieve or do you think you have reached that target already?
LC: We don’t think we have reached the target. This is just the start because these young people still have to grow up and experience life. So it’s also about guiding them. We also feel that the history of House and Techno should be magnified a lot more, especially within the inner city lower-income areas where the demographic is predominantly black and minority ethnic. Drawing from my own experience, I found that the whole world of this music was utterly foreign. Still, once I knew that this music also came from the struggle created by Black and Latinx people. I could relate to it a lot more, and we feel that this is super important. So it’s all about creating that bridge and accessibility to it. Whether it be DJing or producing and starting from there. The more people we can get through the door, the more opportunities.
FP: What would be the ideal set up for one of your community events?
LC: An ideal setup for us would be to have a space that allows us to bring in young people and offer them opportunities to get involved in music and not only music but also other multimedia skills. We reckon that by accomplishing this, we’re able to create our community and maybe even some sort of conveyor belt where we’re leading young people to succeed in whatever sort of musical direction they go in. I always like to reference Youthville in Detroit, where Mike Huckaby, RIP, used to do a lot of his work by going in and offering his knowledge and experience with music production workshops.
FP: OS team, thank you so much for spending the time with us today. Before we let you go, we like to sign everything off with anything you guys would like to share, that could be gassing up an event, a message of positivity, whatever you guys want really?
LC: I just wanna big up our mix series called ‘The ExpOSe Mix Series.’ What we do is we get an up-and-coming or lesser-known artist and pair the mix with a more established one. This way, the more established artist’s fanbase is introduced to the lesser-known, creating exposure. We just recently released the latest one featuring Call Super and Kiernan Laveaux and should be releasing our next instalment around mid June so keep an eye out.
