Gabry Ponte

Gabriele "Gabry" Ponte (born Turin, 20 April 1973) is an Italian DJ best known for his membership in the Italian dance group Eiffel 65. With Eiffel 65's rise to fame in the late 1990s, his celebrity (or semi-celebrity) status was established, and he later went on to produce the Italian hits "Geordie" (a cover of Fabrizio de André's song by the same name) sung by Italian vocalist Stefania Piovesan as well as hits Time to rock and Got to Get and then "La Danza delle Streghe" (literally "The Dance of the Witches"). Also to his credit are a number of remixes of popular songs such as Gianni Togni's Giulia. In 2005, Ponte announced he would be separating from Eiffel 65 to pursue solo work. In 2006 he founded and still manages Danceandlove, nowadays one of the most important Italian dance independent labels. More recently he produced the band Tacabro, their first single Tacatà being released in 2012. In 2012 Gabry Ponte released his single "Beat on My Drum", featuring Pitbull and Sophia del Carmen which peaked at #11 on the US Hot Dance Club Songs. In 2014 his single "Buonanotte Giorno" became a summer hit in Italy as it hit #1 on iTunes. In the same year he entered the Top 100 DJs list from DJ Mag at #61.

Music career: Gabry Ponte first started his career as a DJ at BlissCorporation in 1993, in late 1995 he started his own record label there known as Worldbus Records. The primary focus of the label was to remake current and past hit songs of other artists into modern dance tracks. Several of the label's artists became some of BlissCorporation's biggest, Full Sex, Karmah, Funktastica, and Sangwara, which Gabry Ponte was directly involved in. After three years Worldbus Records became Piranha Records and Gabry Ponte, as part of a trio dubbed Eiffel 65, went on to create a song called "Blue (Da Ba Dee)", at that point a normal BlissCorporation release under the label Skooby Records. The song became a hit in Italy and was the first from BlissCorporation to be released outside of Europe, from there it became a worldwide hit. Eiffel 65 then produced an album called "Europop" which too became a large hit. 2 Albums, 10 singles, and 6 years later, Eiffel 65 parted ways and Gabry Ponte stayed with BlissCorporation to continue with his solo work, releasing a number of singles and staying active in Italy's music scene.

Sangwara: Sangwara was one of the projects that was released under Gabry Ponte's record label, Worldbus Records in the late 90s. It was the only one he was directly involved in and produced the most hits the label had to offer. Their first release was a cover of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise", which was well received in both Italy and Spain, followed by a remake of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly", which had also been recently remade by the Fugees. This track became one of Sangwara's most well known and was made into a music video. This was followed by a release called "Bohemian Rhapsody", a cover of Queen's classic, also recently remade by The Braids. This release wasn't such a big hit for them and is now hard to find as a result. In early 1997 they produced their fourth release and final cover, a remake of No Doubt's "Don't Speak". This became Sangwara's biggest hit and was released on CD throughout Europe. After being inactive for almost a year Sangwara recorded their final release, an original track titled "Find A Way" which was released with four remixes. It was at that time that Worldbus Records ceased existence, which may have contributed to Sangwara's end. Over the 2 year career of Sangwara, its primary members, DJs Gabry Ponte and MTJ Capuano, and vocalist Claire Thomas, often paired up with various other people to make the releases. Jeffrey Jey sung vocals on two of their releases and Joe Fancey, an American rapper, on one. Simone Pastore, of Da Blitz was also one of many well known figures from BlissCorporation to lend his hand in the production and mixing stages. Ultimately Sangwara was Gabry Ponte's big entrance into the world of music.