The Soundtrack of a Seductive Hippo
Caleb Trouwborst, aka DJ Seductive Hippo, launched a career as a DJ and plays 3-5 gigs a week. || Photo credit to Gabriela Kressley
Sheets of drizzle plague an open-air amphitheater in upstate New York. Undeterred concert-goers, dampening under the steady shower, continue rolling toward the stage and back again in an uncoordinated dance. Matt and Kim, upbeat indie band, have the stage.
Fifteen-year-old Caleb Trouwborst is alone in the rain. His friends recently abandoned the concert to seek drier ground.
He might have ditched the concert with them, if only he hadn’t worked so hard to get here: this is the first live show he’s ever been to, and he basically had to beg for his parents’ permission.
It’s nerve-wracking at first. The crowd is large, and Trouwborst is near the stage, involuntarily being pulled into the wave-like movement. But he soon realizes that everyone is smiling; everyone is enjoying their own dance.
The bass hits. The noise is deafening.
“I remember experiencing that by myself,” Trouwborst said, “and being like, ‘Wow, what am I feeling right now? This is the best feeling in the world.’”
Trouwborst, 24, said this is the first time he experienced music in a way that moved him. Before, he’d only considered music as a flat aspect of his faith.
“I was honestly pretty sheltered growing up,” Trouwborst said. “Music wasn’t a huge part of my childhood, and the music I did listen to was bad Christian music.”
Raised the son of a pastor with eight siblings in a small town, Trouwborst doesn’t immediately resemble what a DJ might. His family is supportive of his choice for the most part, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t get a little backlash.
“People back home don’t think I get paid for this,” Trouwborst said. “I’ll tell them I DJ, and they’ll say ‘okay, but what do you do for work?’”
Fortunately, music serves as both a passion and a career. Trouwborst works as a part time playlist-maker for Jukeboxy, a company that provides playlists for businesses like Starbucks, Applebee’s and Gregory’s Coffee. The primary source of Trouwborst’s income comes from his career as a freelance DJ.
He didn’t have dreams of becoming a career DJ until recently.
His roommate and The King’s College ’18 grad, Christina Markakis, said she takes full responsibility for the career choice.
“He started when I would throw these filthy parties on the Lower East Side,” she said, “and I’d ask him if he wanted to play for free. He’d say, ‘Sure, why not?’”
Additionally, Trouwborst would DJ King’s events, such as spring formal, in which he said he’d just queue music and push play.
“I remember clicking on Spotify songs and being like, ‘Ah, I wish I could make that sound better,’” he said.
When he graduated in 2017, Trouwborst scored a few gigs that properly launched his career; currently, he plays anywhere from 3–5 times a week and makes at least $200 per gig.
He plays at bars, clubs and weddings under the stage name Seductive Hippo, a unique tribute to his faith and representation of his style.
Seductive Hippo’s set up on the floor. || Photo credit to Shannon Mason
St. Augustine of Hippo, the Christian theologian, inspired the second part. Trouwborst attended Augustine Classical Academy in Mechanicville, NY—where the school mascot was the hippo. He chose seductive because he “liked the contrast.”
“My conservative friends from back home are like, ‘Ugh! No. So uncouth,’” he said. “So I have that reaction from people back home… It grabs people’s attention, at least.”
Other complaints from more conservative, Christian friends have to do with his career as a DJ. He recognizes that many of the venues he plays are a breeding ground for immoral behavior, and the music isn’t always sanctified.
“A lot of people think that a good, Christian boy should just stick to Switchfoot,” he said.
“[My faith] is the most important part of who I am,” he said. But it’s impossible to have a successful career only playing traditional Christian music, or for only Christian crowds.
To fight the contrast, Trouwborst often mixes Gospel songs and spoken-word Bible readings into the music he creates. In his summer Soundcloud mix, he began with a reading from Revelation 21—before fading it out into a funky, upbeat bop.
“I know it’s small, but it’s still a way to say who I am,” he said.
It’s Thursday night, and I’m on my way to see Caleb play at Bowery Electric in the East Village.
(You’re right. Going to a club on Thursday night is bizarre. But he puts it like this: “At night, almost always, people wanna drink and wanna dance.”)
I start getting texts from Caleb as the subway sputters to a stop at Bowling Green and my phone service flickers on.
BAD NEWS
they cancelled me tonight
I ask him what happened.
another struggle of DJing...flaky bookers
Getting double-booked and cancelled happens sometimes, especially with the turnover of management at various bars and clubs. Managers and performers are frequently rotated through different jobs.
Trouwborst says that isn’t the only problem club management creates. He’s expected to create flyers, post about his gigs on social media and pack the venues he plays.
“Managers will be like, ‘Bring all your hot friends,’” he said. “I’ll invite my friends—who are like, sometimes attractive, sometimes not so attractive. They’re just my friends. But it’s not really my job, I don’t think.”
But bars do have to make sales and have crowds. Trouwborst has learned to fulfill requests to be more promotional of his gigs with social media flyers and other advertising. It’s one of the reasons he keeps getting hired.
On Friday, Caleb’s playing the happy hour set, which traditionally lasts from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., at Pianos. Getting gigs at Pianos was “a big career step,” he said, as it’s “the biggest place on the Lower East Side.”
His setup is simple. His Macbook, fully equipped with curated genre playlists and appropriate software, and his sound board—which he fondly calls “my baby”—are hooked up to the bar’s speaker system.
White wood floors amplify every footstep; double windows open onto a sunny street, music and chatter spilling out. The noises compete with each other, voices raised to be heard over the music from the loudspeakers.
DJ Seductive Hippo is in his element: he towers over the booth, eyes fluttered shut, his blond fop of hair sliding back and forth over his forehead as he rocks back and forth and mixes his music at once.
No one else is dancing, but the music isn’t unnoticed: a man in a red flannel and camo baseball cap starts tapping his fists to the beat on the concrete bar. Another, with his family, raises his hands in the shape of a field goal and squirms sensually in his seat. At the first sign of a hip-hop beat, a table full of twentysomethings shouts, “AYYYY!”
“[My faith] is the most important part of who I am,” he said. But it’s impossible to have a successful career only playing traditional Christian music, or for only Christian crowds.
Seductive Hippo’s most devoted fans are a group of four strangers, sitting in the seats adjacent to the DJ booth. Erik, in shorts and flip-flops, leans over to introduce himself. His breath is fragrant with yeast; a pilsner, half full, sits on two brown paper napkins in front of him.
He flew in from Uganda to visit his friend Mark. Mark, bald under a khaki baseball cap and holding a pair of aviators on the front of his black quarter-zip sweater, is Pianos’ most eager patron tonight. He frequently takes breaks from talking with his friends to step into the middle of the floor and dance for half a minute or so, gyrating his hips and raising his arms.
I tell Erik I’m here because writing about the DJ. “What do you think of him?”
“Oh, he’s very good. He plays a lot of good oldies that you never hear,” he said.
I particularly enjoyed a funky remix of Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison,” which looped back to the instrumental lines and pleasantly chopped up the chorus.
Seductive Hippo and his set up. || Photo credit to Shannon Mason
Erik leans over to me several times after that, index finger pointed toward the ceiling to identify the sound. His eyes are alight with joyful nostalgia.
“I haven’t heard this one in a long time!”
He says that about most of the songs.
Later, when I told Caleb how much everyone seemed to be enjoying it, he grinned. “That just warms my heart,” he said.
When people dance to Trouwborst’s set, or acknowledge him with a thumbs up or a peace sign, he lights up. It’s daunting, he says, to be a DJ when you don’t know how people are going to react to your music.
“It’s kind of like that feeling where you’re in charge of the aux cord in the car,” he said, “but it’s that on a very big stage.”
Trouwborst does have to fit the vibe of whatever venue he plays, whether it be music for a chill happy hour or a trashy late night party. He’s worked extensively to curate playlists of unique music that go beyond standard, Top 40s hits.
He makes a weekly playlist—Hippo Selects—with 15 songs for anyone who wants to know what he’s currently listening to. careful, he warns in the description, it’ll bite you in the rump! He also makes a new playlist for every set he plays.
The other 144 playlists on his public Spotify account are mostly sorted by genre: Tasty Turnips, Indie Dance Vibey Vibes, Good R&B, A Nap on a Lily Pad, Angsty Music, Smooth & Sexy Jazz, and more.
“There’s just so much beautiful music and life changing music beyond the charts,” he said. “Good music, for me, makes me feel strong emotions.”
Playing the right music for the right venue—and, occasionally, bending to the marketing demands of management—is the way to secure more gigs in the future. More gigs, at higher profile locations, leads to the career standard of success. But Trouwborst’s vision for the future is relatively easy going.
“There’s very much a fame and popularity vision as an endgame for DJs,” he said. “That’s the main goal: tours, stardom, fame. Personally, I don’t have any huge aspirations other than, like, do the best I can, and make a living for myself.”
|| Photo credit to Shannon Mason
And, of course, he always likes to make people dance.
On Saturday, Caleb and his roommates have a small garden party at their apartment in Crown Heights. It’s sunny overhead; monarch butterflies float idly above the greenery, unaware of their strange, urban presence.
Caleb stands behind his own DJ booth, laptop and his “baby” in the same position as always. Anticipating the set, a friend fist pumps from across the garden. With a grin, he returns the gesture.
He pulls chunky black headphones over his ears, cranks up the volume, and begins to play.