So You Say You’re a DJ
The first-ever instance of a DJ dates back to 1935, and more specifically to 1943, when Jimmy Saville threw a dance party where he mixed jazz records using two vinyl players, an analog-based mixer, and tower speakers. At the time, the DJ was always in the background, whether at a dance party on TV in “Soul Train” or in-person at a hip-hop concert. In both cases, the DJ was essential but not in the limelight.
Fast-forward to the 2010s, and the explosion of electronic dance music has paved the way to the forefront for the DJ. In 2023, everyone is either a DJ, wants to be a DJ, or thinks they could be a DJ.
When people ask me what it takes to be a DJ, I say you must have good taste in music, have an ability to read the room, and be a quick problem solver. In my eyes, you need to be proficient in all three skills to be a DJ.
Good taste in music doesn’t happen overnight, but over the course of years. It’s an understanding of how different music makes you feel, which, over time, turns into an understanding of how music makes a crowd feel. Pair that understanding with the ability of the DJ to find new music that can intrigue a crowd in different ways, and you have a DJ with good taste.
Maintaining good taste in music means you have to stay up to date with music and find new music or, as a DJ would say, “dig” for music. And in 2023, there is no shortage of ways to find new music: Spotify, radio, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Mixcloud, boiler room sets, record stores, etc. Finding music is like picking all the different colors for your easel and having a sense of how the songs go together so you can paint a masterpiece. And that masterpiece is dynamic, because you have to paint a different picture for each unique situation.
This segues to the next skill: reading a room. Between its inception to about 2005, the original DJ was responsible for the music for the entire night. A normal DJ set would be from 10 p.m. to close. In New York, that could be till 4 a.m., so you’d have to be prepared with a lot of music. And with all that music, how do you make sense of when to play what? You have to make sure you play a seamless set, where you start the party with a few songs to get people on the dance floor, but you can’t play the heaters too early. You have to understand when it is time to transition to a new genre if the dance floor is looking stale. Whether you are DJing for 6 hours or 30 minutes, you have to be flexible and adjust as you go.
Today, many people who say they DJ might only have a flash drive with a few different sets on it. They can get away with that, because most club gigs today are specific time slots, and you have to use a USB to plug into the equipment at the club. That means you don’t have access to all of your music, but rather you have to prepare a specific set. (Building a set is its own skill, and I might write a separate post on that topic.) But I’d still push back and say a true DJ has more than just a flash drive. They have all the equipment to throw a party: speakers, lighting, mixers, and microphones.
And when you have all this equipment, something is bound to happen. It could be an equipment issue that requires technical troubleshooting. It could be a venue layout that requires a workaround solution to ensure optimal sound. Timelines could change, and now you have to prepare for something scheduled 2 hours from now. That’s why the third skill required is flexible problem solving, because things will happen.
I once had all my equipment stolen from my car the night before an event. It was an unlucky and lucky situation at the same time. The event’s videographer had a similar DJ mixer and an extra laptop. He was willing to let me borrow his equipment for the event, so I quickly drove to the nearest Starbucks for Wi-Fi and downloaded as much music from the cloud as possible. While I was super annoyed that my equipment was stolen, the event went great, and renters insurance was able to cover everything that was stolen.
Another time, my internal hard drive stopped working right in the middle of a set and I had to hard reset my computer via a time machine (which took 35 minutes). This happened at a wedding, right when the guests were wrapping up dinner. The crowd was ready to dance, and I had to scramble. I couldn’t wait 35 minutes, so I leveraged my iPad and iPhone and manually connected them to my mixer. I also had a couple of 20-minute mixes backed up on my phone. Because I was prepared and could quickly pivot to an alternative solution, I kept the wedding guests happy and dancing.
If you are truly a DJ, you’ll have similar stories where you had to devise an alternative solution and the event still went great.
I say all of this to push back on the limited ideas of what a DJ does. If you built out a dope set on a flash drive, that is just curating music. If you play this dope set but no one is dancing, then you are not reading the room. And if you have never had to troubleshoot on the fly, you’re not yet prepared to be a DJ.