Come Saturday (and Sunday) the 9th and 10th July a huge throng will gather in Okehampton to dance 'til they drop before the speaker stacks and flashing lights of Californian SCOTT BLACKWELL. For the legendary producer, mixer and deejay dubbed by one critic the Father Of Sanctified Dance is making his first ever-British appearance at Cross Rhythms '94. He spoke to Karl Allison.

"'Once Upon A Time', like 'Walk On The Wildside' before it, had a pretty wide direction. There wasn't one centralised sound that we went for. We just sampled all different types of dance music. I love R&B, I enjoy producing jackswing and funk tracks. I wouldn't say there's one particular market that we're going after. Whatever is happening on the streets is the type of music we want to be producing. As trends move and arrangement ideas change, so will ours to accommodate the tastes of the kids so we can meet them right where they're at."

What's happening with your radio show?

"The Clubhouse radio show is entirely Christian dance music. Steve (Nixon) hosts it and I mix the music and interact somewhat with him on the mike. It's very music intensive, with a lot of mixing and dubby kinda things going on. We're on a dozen stations nationally now, with about 35 more wanting to come aboard as soon as we can solicitate a sponsor to help pay for the production of the show."

What kind of live work are you getting through?

"The last mainstream secular rave that I played at was the night before Halloween last year, and I'm not pursuing that avenue right now. We're going into churches, or we're renting out clubs for evenings and having sanctified raves. We do Nitro Praise concerts over here. Half a dozen of our artists who are involved in the project will do a three and a half hour music programme that's just dance throughout the night - hip-hop, rave, house, techno - the whole thing. When we do concerts, we see large groups of Christian kids coming together fellowshipping in a sanctified manner and it pleases God when his children can worship him in ways that are comfortable to them. We're not saying that this type of praise and worship music should replace the acoustic guitar on a Sunday morning, but we are saying there's a time and a place where it's just right. That's why we put a lot of theological weight into the writing of a song. Sometimes we're quite confronting with our words, but I think that pleases God too. We're doing our part to fulfil the great commission. We see fruit from this music on a weekly basis. The Christian music industry has received us with open arms. People within the industry understood that it needed something fresh and that, for now, this is providing it. They can see that there are so many kids starving for this type of music. So we get support across the board."

What can we expect from you at the Cross Rhythms festival?

"I'll be coming over with Sandra Stephens, who sings the lead on the majority of tracks that I produce. Sandra will be performing to tracks and I'll be playing keyboards. I'm looking forward to coming over and talking to as many kids as I possibly can. In the last seven months with Steve over here I've grown to appreciate the difference in the way that evangelism works in both of our cultures. I want very much to be exposed to that, so that we can more effectively produce records that will speak specifically to both of our cultures."