Guy Cuevas

Guy Cuevas is a Cuban-born writer, musician, and legendary Paris disc jockey. Born Guillermo Cuevas Carrión, he worked the turntables and the crowds at Club Sept, and Le Palace before becoming the artistic director, first of Les Bains Douches, then the Barrio Latino.

As a DJ, he was known for a creative mix featuring the funk and soul of the Philadelphia Sound, along with his close connections to the world of high fashion.

Guy Cuevas, (Guillermo Cuevas Carrión) was born in Havana, Cuba in 1945. Showing early promise as a writer, he was awarded a scholarship to a playwriting workshop created shortly after the 1959 revolution.

Held at the National Theater of Cuba directed by Fermín Borges, other students included Eugenio Hernández, Gerardo Fulleda León, Ana Justina Cabrera, Santiago Ruiz and José Mario Rodríguez, many of whom have made names for themselves as playwrights and authors.

Fulleda León remembers the group hanging out for long hours after class in cafes or street corners to talk about essays, plays, ethnographies, stories and poems, whatever they were working on.

While still attending the workshop, Cuevas published a collection of short stories, "Ni un Sí, ni un No" with Ediciones El Puente founded by fellow student José Mario Rodríguez.

In 1964, Cuevas immigrated to France where he continued to write, sleeping on floors, and working odd jobs until he got his first job DJing at club Nuage. His big break came shortly afterward, when he was discovered by the openly gay impresario Fabrice Emaer, who hired him as a DJ at Club Sept, his restaurant-discothèque at 7 (sept) Sainte-Anne street.

In Paris you got to be seen at Maxim's
The Palace
The 7 and then go Chez Regine
Champagne
Caviar
Haute-couture
Expensive cars
Saint Laurent and Loulou
Rich ladies with a few bijoux.

—Amanda Lear, Fashion Pack, 1979

Situated in the middle of the gay neighborhood near the Palais-Royal, Le Sept was one of the most exclusive clubs in the city with a restaurant on the ground floor, and a minuscule dance floor in the basement. Club goers hailed the extravagant décor, the mix of beautiful people, fashionistas, artists and intellectuals, homos and heteros, and of course, the music.

One writer has called the Sept, "the epicenter of disco with DJ Guy Cuevas at the turntables.

He played the O'Jays, Billy Paul, Teddy Pendergrass and Marvin Gaye, as well as Salsa and Latin American music, and sometimes, "stuff that wasn't at all danceable, like Marilyn Monroe or bird sounds or tam tam, whatever passed through my head."

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