Are DJ’s True Artists

The crowd cheers and pushes their way closer to the Disc Jockey (DJ) booth, and the lights start to lower in anticipation for the music that will lead their night. The DJ leaves the backstage and makes his way towards the 4 Technic turntables, 2 Pioneer CD players, 3 Pioneer mixers, and 2000 vinyl records from various genres. He slips on his Sony MDR-V700 headphones and places his first vinyl record on the turntable to his left. Sliding it back and forth under his fingers to find the first beat of the song, he lets go and slides the cross-fader towards that table. The crowd goes crazy as the first beat pounds through the speakers into their bodies. Glow sticks are now being waved, break-dancing boys/girls (b-boys/b-girls) are breakin’ out their moves, and the DJ has started his next vinyl in motion. Matching the next song’s beat to the song currently being played, the DJ can now play both songs at the same time. With songs playing simultaneously, the DJ can now trade beats, create new sounds, and control treble, mid, and bass. After transferring from vinyl to vinyl, the DJ puts down a special record for scratching. This record will have certain phrases, s

The next point and most important point I would like to make is DJ’s are so diverse they can play alongside any music style with ease. In a recent article written about DJ’s moving from one industry to another, the author explains the DJ’s diversity. “The skittering sound of a record groove being scraped back and forth against a tonearm is not just returning to rap records and rhythm-and-blues singles like Janet Jackson's latest. It can be heard in the latest albums, singles and concerts by Portishead, Sugar Ray, Beck, Hanson, Less Than Jake, Joan Osborne, Cornershop and Primus, to name just a few rock acts, as well as Branford Marsalis, Courtney Pine and other jazz musicians.” (New York Times, Nov. 1997) The turntable is not just an instrument for playing music, but creating it. The turntable can be a drum set, guitar, synthesizer, organ, voice, piano, ect. By using different records, a DJ can create an entire orchestra.

“Hip-hop is so full of raw unfiltered life – and is also such a marketing force – that some people have trouble seeing it as an art. But art it definitely is... this fabulous, constantly mutating hybrid drew on rhythm-and-blues, disco, salsa, reggae and the ancient ritual of call and response – all brought together by DJs who made a structurally new music by scratching, cutting and sampling existing records on double turntables.” (New York Times Sept. 2000)[Emphasis Added]

Incubus is a band including a DJ into their set and has only seen good things from doing so. Selling two million copies of their last CD, having 4 different successful tours, and receiving the most airtime on radio than any other band last year. They have been called diverse, dynamic, inventive, imaginative, different, and… have a DJ in the band.

Now that DJs have created this whole new form of music, you would think their work is done… far from it. DJs didn’t stop with one music style, they influenced many more: electronic music, rock and roll, blues, even classical.

Some topics in this essay:
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