(gentle music) (rock music) - [Riz] I start generally with one song and see where it takes me.

I've done it for decades, but that's how it works every single week.

I have never done a show or a gig and not been mid to high level anxious about it.

The mix is almost 70% spontaneous, so I'm hearing as I go along and thinking, what, how's this gonna sound?

After doing it for so long, you gotta say, "Okay, I know how to do this."

I don't have a whole lot of tricks.

The only trick I have is music.

- [Artist] Seattle really is just a big neighborhood.

It was a place for us to grow.

- [Artist 2] We all have a gift of some sort.

It's just my vision of what I see.

- [Artist 3] Theater allows you to hit harder and be more.

There's a sense of hope that your story will survive longer than you will.

(gentle music) - [Riz] Church was the way I learned how to read people and it's real easy as a DJ 'cause you could see all of them and they're really not paying attention to you.

You know, I can look for head nods, I could look for people tapping their feet.

They don't have to dance, you know?

'Cause you don't know what's going through a person when they're hearing something, but I look for little physical signs, and I follow that muse.

(upbeat pop music) I became DJ Riz 'cause somebody yelled it at me across the street.

Yo, DJ Riz!

Like, oh, I guess that's who I am.

I'm just different.

I'm a freak.

The choir director at my grandmother's church stood in the front.

The left row was for the senior choir.

The right row was for the junior choir, and you swayed and you bounced, and you swayed and you bounced.

I grew up with that.

I just feel I had this wholesome, kind of complete experience with music.

So I don't listen to it from here so much, from my ears, as I do from the lower half of my body, but I've been that way since I was a little boy.

They took me to the opera, and I thought I was gonna poop my pants.

The, it was Chicago Lyric Opera.

They were doing La Traviata, the strings of the overture hit and I got the shakes.

The curtain goes up, and there's this huge ballroom scene with chandeliers and the whole bit, and I could barely breathe.

Other kids were falling asleep.

And I was like, what?

I was groomed to be a pastor.

The pastor of our church said he's gonna be a great preacher someday.

And I said, hold that thought.

(Riz laughs) I don't want to do that.

Without further ado, I'm gonna check my phone for the lyrics.

(crowd laughs, guitar strums) I sang a lot.

I sang in the choir and Operation Breadbasket.

Then Operation Push with Jesse Jackson.

So I decided to go to Bible college.

When I went to school in the seventies, they were trying to do what eventually they did and establish, you know, Christian White Evangelical Christianity as the national religion.

I thought my last year, this will kill me.

The only way that you could fit into that culture is if you die to yours.

And one of my roommates, my best friend moved to Salem, Oregon and he came through and he said, you look like your light is about to go out.

I said, I feel like my light is about to go out.

I've been telling people.

And he said, no, you need to come live with us.

And then after a couple years in Salem, Oregon, I thought, this is Mayberry.

I can't live here.

So I had to choose between San Francisco and here.

And I chose here because I just started coming out.

When I was sad, when I was a kid, I used to sit in the living room listening to Dusty Springfield and cry.

'Cause I was wishing and hoping and thinking and praying for something, a kind of love that I was attracted to but hadn't seen experienced.

And I knew when I was a young boy that I liked other boys.

I just did, but I wasn't supposed to.

So I said, well, okay I'm not.

Then I'm not gonna like 'em.

But I wish one would just like hold my hand.

You know?

I wanted to go steady.

I wanted to have a a boy I can go to the movies with.

Raid.

♪ Everybody on the dance floor ♪ I have a husband.

I never, ever, ever thought it would happen.

The first record I loved was called The Peppermint Twist.

'Cause I'm that old.

I found myself at 30, saying to God, I'm a failure.

I was at a complete loss.

I only knew how to wait tables.

I couldn't get a job waiting tables here because back in 1978, 1980, you didn't see black people waiting tables.

Seattle was a melting pot for all sorts of freakdom.

And that's how you got grunge, and that's how you got your underground hip hop here.

Freaks, blerds, black nerds.

Seattle embraced a black nerd.

I worked at a record store where all the members of all the grunge groups, Mother Love Ball, Nirvana, Sound Garden.

We all knew each other 'cause it, Seattle really is just a big neighborhood.

After being there for a few years, a woman came in, her name was Paula.

And she came in and she said, there's a club that just opened up and we're looking for DJs and I was wondering if you'd be interested in being a DJ.

And I said, no.

No, I don't do that.

(Riz laughs) I am not good at aspiration.

I was never able to say this is what I'll do when I grow up.

But I've been really good at opportunity.

Opportunity in Seattle was a great place for opportunity.

Radio happened the same way.

In fact, it's about maybe a week later, a guy had been coming in and he was a music director at KCMU.

And he said, I really want you to come down and apply for a job.

And I said, no.

So that means I just didn't like the sound of my voice and I think I made my peace with him.

So I went in there and started being on the radio.

And I've been there ever since, 35 years.

(upbeat music) - You are listening to 90.3 KEXP, big Baba.

We believe music heals.

A mission around KEXP is basically to bring community together and to change people's lives through music.

A song, an artist, things we're playing, talking about, can truly save lives.

I don't know if we'd have a mission around community and trying to save people's lives for music without Riz, because he created that early when other DJs weren't doing that.

Without him, Seattle is a very different city.

He has been a constant for decades here in the community, playing music, bringing people together, championing causes.

He has been the soul of this place, as I've said, since he started decades ago.

So he's on the air, in the clubs.

He is physically present in our community, which a lot of people are not.

He is present in so many different communities and clubs and locations and music in our history.

You can't have a music community without Riz in Seattle.

He is everything.

The city's arts at least, has been built on.

- There's a phrase where you present yourself to the divine as an empty vessel and then God pours into it.

That's the way it's felt for my life.

That my life has been filled.

I'm from the school of thought that if you wanna be used by the divine, all you gotta do is say yes.

(electronic music)