Joel Bevacqua is an American rave DJ, music producer, promoter, and writer known as DJ Deadly Buda. He is also known as the graffiti artist âÂÂBuda.â Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he is credited by authors Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon in their "The History of American Graffiti" as being "PittsburghâÂÂs first graffiti superstar" and inventor of the âÂÂmonster rock styleâ of graffiti lettering. He is also recognized for instigating Pittsburgh's rave scene in 1991. In 2005 part of his techno dance music collection was a notable acquisition of the US Library of Congress: Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.
In 1985, Bevacqua chose the tag name âÂÂBudaâ while doing a book report on Buddhism for a junior high school social studies class. He would frequently travel to New York City where he would meet and learn from graffiti artists at Henry ChalfantâÂÂs Soho studio at 64 Grand Street, like Tracy 168 and T Kid 170. Wanting to be better than anyone in New York, Buda developed a new lettering style he called âÂÂMonster Rock.â Most New York graffiti lettering styles were drawn in such a way as to give the illusion of 3-dimensionality. However the âÂÂ3-Dâ as the graffiti writers called this illusion, usually only went in one direction, so that the letters looked like a cohesive block coming from a singular direction even when they were complex wildstyle letters. âÂÂMonster Rockâ differed in that the âÂÂ3-Dâ twisted and deformed in such a way as to make it appear that the letters were coming from different directions, as if it were a moving, organic form. The first appearance of the Monster Rock style was executed in Millvale, PA, and appeared in the book âÂÂSpraycan Artâ by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff. The style was influential to graffiti writers. Twisting âÂÂ3-Dâ is now a common stylistic element of modern graffiti art.
On choosing the name "Deadly Buda", Bevacqua said that he wanted to capitalize on his graffiti notoriety, and at the same time sound like a kung-fu dj name like "Grandmaster Flash".
DJ Deadly Buda's first appearance occurred on December 13, 1991 in West View, PA (a municipality in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area) at the Psychotronic Slack Rave, which he co-promoted with the Slacker clothing store. He co-DJâÂÂed with DJ Controlled Weirdness from the United Kingdom. The two DJs would form the rave production group âÂÂHear to Goâ inspired by the Brion Gysin book Here to Go: Planet R-101. In 1992 he opened one of America's first rave record stores, Turbo-Zen Records. The record store would sponsor events such as Power Rave, Hi-Voltage and Soul. The flyer for Hi-Voltage, which was drawn and written by Buda and also printed on T-shirts, contained the quote "Technology must be used to liberate the individual." Dan Mross, the Bitcoin miner featured in the documentary "The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin" cites the quote as an inspiration that described his later interest in the Bitcoin technology.
In the early 1990s, Deadly Buda began writing scene reports and record reviews for several popular rave fanzines, most notably the Brooklyn-based fanzine Under One Sky, published by Heather Heart, and was even quoted by Charles Aaron in the July 1994 edition of Spin magazine. His writing was also prominently featured in âÂÂSlurp!â a rave publication from Philadelphia. Other fanzines or magazines that he wrote for were: Alien Underground (UK) - which later became Datacide magazine, and who published his popular underground article âÂÂThe Morphing Cultureâ which proposed a new classification of rave music. Milwaukee's âÂÂMassiveâ Magazine, Streetsound (Canada), Raveline (Germany), Freebase (Los Angeles), and Now?! (Pittsburgh).
Since 2015, Bevacqua has written several popular articles concerning hard electronic music and rave culture for the LA Weekly (online and print), insomniac.com, and The Hard Data (a website and print magazine that he began publishing in 2015). According to the LA Weekly website, some of his articles have gotten over 5000 Facebook shares. Some of the more popular articles have been: âÂÂInside the World of the Kandi Kids, Dance Music's Most Colorful SubcultureâÂÂ, âÂÂIs America Ready for Rawstyle, the Hardest Offshoot of EDM Yet?âÂÂ, and âÂÂ10 Hardcore Techno Tracks for People Who DonâÂÂt Know Shit About HardcoreâÂÂ.
Deadly Buda's music has appeared on the following electronic music record labels. Sounds (a sub-label of Communique), Praxis, Level 2, Mokum, Fukem, Atomic Hardcore, and his own label, Deadly Systems. In 2017 Deadly Buda's track "King of Style" was released on Industrial Strength Records. The track and its video features audio and video samples from the hip hop documentary Style Wars.