Inspiration

I was spring cleaning in my apartment today, and I came across a pamphlet that I picked up while DJing a party over 10 years ago at Columbia University in New York. The party was for an SAT mentoring program that Columbia students organized for inner city youth. As I was disconnecting the equipment and cleaning up, I found this pamphlet. I made an effort to keep it all these years because it was influential to me during my formative years of DJing.

The pamphlet is called Roots and Culture, and the specific article is entitled He's the DJ by Tabanitha T. Mcdaniel, CC '94. Tabanitha interviews Super DJ Clark Kent and asks him questions about his style, his life, etc. It's not exactly the article itself that struck me, but the opening quote by DJ Peter Panic:


"Any good DJ that really gets into the music is a good lover. He plays music according to feeling because DJing is like fucking -- you have to be able to predict what people want: when to slow down, when to speed up, when to pump it real hard, and when to cool it off. A DJ must know how to bring the crowd to the point of no return, when everybody feels what the DJ feels. After a DJ masters the technical stuff, turntables, mixing, etc., it's pure feeling. He has to be able to play upon and interpret feeling"


Don't just think about that. Go to your local parties, and see how your DJ interprets feelings, or if in fact he has no feeling at all.