Just before Christmas, hip-hop legend DJ Shadow was booted off of the decks at Miami club Mansion for, according to venue bosses, playing “too future” and thereby confusing a party-hearty crowd simply there to dance. The incident renewed debate on the DJ’s true purpose - artist first or entertainer; sonic pioneer or glorified popular jukebox? Here, Defected’s Ben Lovett examines some more recent examples of friction between art and commercial appeal and speaks to a few of the scene’s key players about which side of the debate they reside...
In fairness the debate hasn't ever really gone away. Other developments across clubland last year, including Dennis Ferrer’s ‘retirement’ from the same club (for much the same reason) and a high-profile BBC story on the use of pre-record, push button sets, prompted intense scrutiny of best DJ practice from both in and outside the dance scene. From the very beginning, there had been wildly contrasting cultural views of the DJ as god and cheating musical magpie but nothing like this. Never before had DJing as a profession been so brutally dissected.
Shadow, refusing to compromise his booth beliefs or selections, tweeted at the time: “I don’t care if I get kicked out of every rich kid club on the planet. I will never sacrifice my integrity as a DJ...ever #All basses covered”, and soon received support from several of his peers, including Erol Alkan: “Respect to @djshadow #2future4u”.
Italian house duo Souldynamic suggests that the DJ should find “the right balance” when considering creativity and crowd reaction but still lean towards the former: “Popularity and being fashionable has become a sickness when added to the social media effect. We are all, in some way, writing pages of music history these days and we have a big responsibility. Music is a pure art, and it needs to be explained to new generations, otherwise they will never understand what it really is, and we’ll have a world in mute state soon.”
A stronger commitment to compromise, however challenging that may be, is demonstrated by Horse Meat Disco’s Severino. “I’ve been DJing since I was in Italy when I was 16 years old in my local disco, so I’ve seen different generations and music” he remarks. “It is always tricky to be underground and a bit commercial too, just feeling it and playing 50-50...what you like and what they like.”
Soul-house stalwart Ralf Gum adds an interesting geographical element to the argument, suggesting that the DJ can tip his performing balance accordingly depending on where he plays. “It depends on the market you are in or want to be in, and on the music you are playing” he says. “While you cannot get away for too long in territories where you find extremely educated crowds for certain sounds, you might be able to play purely to build your brands at venues where the main focus is not the music itself but ‘entertainment’ in general.”
The word ‘brand’ resonates strongly within clubland, fuelled in large part by the changing requirements of some club fans. According to A-Trak, “crowds used to come see DJs for a musical journey. Now they expect to hear specific songs, and furthermore, they want to see a show.” The desire for spectacle in a digitized and media-saturated world serving stimuli at every twist and turn is such that many of today’s DJs choose to build brand over music so they can fully sate and leverage it.
This brand-building exercise has been super-charged by the rise of EDM in mainstream America. “EDM has...bypassed the club culture on which house and techno were founded and gone straight for the stadiums and festival jugular” DJHistory.com’s Bill Brewster told the Guardian in November. “Judging by the many clips on YouTube, its stars have taken their cues from rock stars rather than the clubs who helped to create dance culture around the skill of DJs such as Frankie Knuckles. This new breed of star DJs is not content to be hidden away. Instead they mosh and crowd surf from their elevated stage, while the crowd look on...whooping.”
Brewster gives the example of DJ Steve Aoki who was hospitalised last year after stage-diving from a trampoline during one of his jet-setting shows in Puerto Rico. “Worse still” he adds, “some of them [star DJs] are alleged to perform the kind of pre-mixed sets that have caused the Calvin Harris controversy.”
Harris’ troubles relate to a BBC Radio 1 story last November in which he appeared to endorse the use of pre-recorded DJ sets. The piece was primarily driven by video footage appearing to show Swedish House Mafia’s Steve Angello pressing play on a pre-mixed segment of a summer festival set. “I think it’s not a problem” Harris was quoted as saying. “In the club you want to hear a produced piece of music, you want to hear the bass, you want to hear it as good as it can sound.” He subsequently denied the response (threatening legal action) but Angello’s partner Axwell was happy to defend the Mafia’s arena shows as something far greater than automated procedure: “In a way, yes, you push a button but you’re still there performing your art.”
Editor of Mixmag, Nick Decosemo, points out that revellers may “just want to go to a show because you’ve heard these songs, you love the artist and you’re going to see some kind of mind-blowing light show – you’re quite happy there, lost in the moment.”
Entertainment is key urges producer and Familia, EGG resident Nick Tcherniak. “People go to have a good time and dance, yes we are educators to a certain degree but more importantly our job should be about making people forget their troubles and get lost in the grooves; that’s the most important bit of all.” Blogger and journalist David Hepworth takes the point even further, in his since deleted post on DJ Shadow’s Miami misadventure: “There must be an implied social aspect to your trade. If you take to the stage to play records then you are entering into a sort of contact. You must accept that your job is to increase the amount of happiness in the room rather than reduce it.”
Needwant boss and Future Disco maestro Sean Brosnan doesn’t think any useful comparisons can be made between EDM-pumped stadium rockers and classic underground DJs. Attempting parallels only confuses matters further; “Often the best or most successful DJs have the balance right – they play interesting music but still the crowd goes crazy” he says. “OK, there are hundreds of examples of those who are easy targets like David Guetta or Swedish House Mafia, but for me it’s a different market. This is pop people watching pop artists, I don’t consider them DJs in the sense of what I know to be a DJ – the guy or girl who sits at the back of a dark room and creates the restrained soundtrack.”
EDM’s catalysing effect on the popularity of celebrity DJs has also highlighted how far apart dance music’s over and underground industries are right now, and yet there is the risk that A-list wannabes threaten to undermine the DJs general credibility. Celeb spinners are nothing new (their role as promoter’s tool is well documented) but their cult has rocketed in recent months with often disastrous results, epitomised by Paris Hilton’s decks debut in Brazil last summer. A botched opening mix of Gotye, Rihanna and Avicii quickly forced the soundman on stage and a barrage of Twitter criticism from the likes of Deadmau5 and Digitalism; even ex-boyfriend Afrojack who claimed her set was pre-recorded: “Being a DJ is hard work. It’s not just about pressing ‘play’”.
Where does technology fit in to all of this? Does the DJ’s rapidly evolving kit push us closer towards polished mainstream performance than edgy underground freewheel? “Not at all,” Brosnan fires back. “The job is the same, the tools are different. A bad DJ is still bad if he uses vinyl or pre-programmed tracks on Ableton.”
Matthew Benjamin AKA Bushwacka agrees: “Technology can take a lot away from the art of DJing if it’s not used creatively. Or it can add a lot too. It's not about what you have, it’s about how you use it”; so too Lost My Dog co-founder Pete Dafeet, within reason: “New technology [in the Noughties] revolutionized DJing. All the shiny new gear and possibilities caught people’s attention. New technology has opened up so many more possibilities for DJs and producers to play music live or near-live...but now some of that novelty is wearing off and people are rediscovering the roots of DJing. Just look how people like DJ Harvey are bringing that artistry back.”
Like most clubland debates, there is no sense that this DJing one will end anytime soon. As the global dance scene continues to expand and diversify, so too do the opinions within it. The number of mass market, pre-record, stadium-style DJ gigs is increasing – particularly in EDM’d America – and yet fiercely independent underground nights continue to thrive around the world, many of them leveraging the current revivalist appetite for house music’s original DJ talent; truly skilled operators like Frankie Knuckles and Todd Terry. Some say the dancefloor only records its DJs these days (its visual yet prosaic superstars captured by smartphones, not body and soul); others say it still offers two-way, transcendental interaction – the most powerful of connections between artist and dancer.
London DJ-producer Richard Earnshaw wonders if any of it really matters: “At the end of the day, whether you’re a gifted musician crafting together a seamless blend of pitch-matched tracks and layers, jumping about in front of 50,000 people pointing at the sky, or DJing with your left nostril and a stick of celery up your arse, our fundamental purpose as DJs is to entertain. And being entertained is subjective...whether the sync button does all the work or not...”
Words: Ben Lovett
Sean Brosnan releases compilation Future Disco 6: Night Moves via Needwant Records on March 4.
Nick Tcherniak’s next Familia party at EGG is March 2, also featuring Cristian Varela. More on www.twitter.com/familialondon
Layo & Bushwacka play the EGG on February 23; new single Don’t Make Me Wait For You, as Just Be, is released on Crosstown Rebels this summer
