DJs remix the past into the present as they curate a contemporised sense of history from a vast electronic dance musical archive. We have been dancing to recorded music for a good century now, in particular to jazz and R&B. This was intensified after the vinyl format was introduced by Columbia during the late 1940s, making recordings less vulnerable to breakage and therefore more portable than the brittle Shellac discs. RCA-Victor adapted this in 1949 for their 45rpm 7" music singles, which normally featured one track per side and, due to the large hole in the middle, could be used in a jukebox. From roughly the 1950s onwards, DJs in the UK and the US started to employ the dual turntable – previously used in cinemas – to curate a continuous soundtrack for their dancing crowds.
During the process of mixing two recordings, the third record came into existence. For example, Albert Goldman reports in his 1978 publication, Disco, that by 1970 in New York, the Italian-American DJ Francis Grasso was mixing two overlapping recordings with the use of a monitor headphone. In 1982, David Toop noted in Rap Attack how hip-hop DJs mixed the instrumental sections of a pop song, »cutting between the same few bars on two turntables, extending the break into an instrumental. One copy of a record – forget it.«2
Together with the narrative structure of the music selection, the third record is the nomadic component of the DJ’s curatorial practice, in the sense that it is an improvisatory mix, a fleeting authentic moment of interaction between the various elements that make up a dance night: the dancers, the space, the moment, the DJ, the archive of available recordings. Over the years, DJs have explored a variety of narrative strategies, from the hedonistic flow of funky disco and the spiritual repetition of trance dance to the antagonistic musical ruptures that can be heard in rap, turntablism, and reggae sound clashes. During these genre specific techniques, the archival past of recorded music is brought into the present and into the embodied presence of the dance floor.
Since the 1970s, dancefloor-friendly (re)mixes have been produced to blend in with the musical mix of a particular DJ, suiting the tastes of their specific dance crowds. According to Dick Hebdidge in Cut’n’Mix, reggae sound systems in Kingston, Jamaica, upped the competition against each other by introducing the production of unique dubplates, pioneered by King Tubby from 1968 onwards. In a parallel world of New York discotheques, the 12" disco single developed as a DJ tool and became commercially available by 1976. Stems of vocals and instrumental tracks are mixed by the DJ/producer to emphasise rhythm sections, cut and given a new spot in the musical structure, and combined with new instrumentation to contemporise the overall sonic texture. Such music production practices genealogically connect specific contemporary dance music genres to relevant DJ cultures of the past – for example, UK breakbeat DJs still work with the dubplate, even if this exists as a digital file in the possession of one DJ or DJ team. Yet, as the economic weight may be more in the auratic exploitation of studio recordings than in the authentic DJ performance, remixed back catalogues can be cynically exploited to engage crowds of thousands.
Genre bending, transcultural sample hopping, surfing oceanic waves of an ever-growing archive of recorded sounds, the creative potential for remix re-combination is vast, yet limited by market and industry demands. A brief rappadelic radio mix here, an orchestrated diva mix there; a banging trance mix for the backpackers, a wobbly dubstep mix for the kids. Although this may lead some aging sample-spotting connoisseurs to interpret this as a nostalgic approach to dance music production practices, I suspect that a new generation does not necessarily make such connections. Historical (arte)facts blur into a new present through slippery creative processes that seem similar to what Foucault (via Nietzsche) calls counter-memory; the practice of the DJ not only creates and reveals memories of nostalgic origin, it simultaneously breaks linear chronologies within the mix. In this way, young dancers can experience mixed and remixed music as new, in a soundtrack that is nevertheless authenticated by snippets from forgotten or unknown pasts that are yet to be discovered anew by new keen dance music fans.
DJs have increasingly shifted the practice of blending and re-mixing into a live performance of electronic and sampled music creation. During the 1980s, competitive DJs in genres such as electro and house would utilise synthesisers and special effects (like echo and phasing), as well as drum machines to boost and change their collection of vinyl-based dance music, in addition to playing specific remixes. This practice is now further enhanced by current digital DJ technologies, first using CDs but now software-based, allowing digital music files to be sampled, restructured, and manipulated on the spot.
Because beat-matching, or syncing, can be automated on CDJs and with software such as Traktor Pro or Serato, the focus of the DJ-driven dance event returns to music selection and to the overall structure of the musical journey. In other words, as Kai Fikentscher pointed out in 2013, music programming once more becomes an important aspect for a DJ performance. DJing producer Deadmau5 (Joel Zimmerman), whose show incorporates his unmistakable mouse-like logo that is worn as a mask throughout, argued in 2012 that with the sync button, anyone could be a »cheesy« DJ. Nevertheless, a successful dance event requires more complex creative skills, in which both »reading« the crowd, as well as effective music selection play a role.
Music editing software entered the DJ arena over a decade ago. Rather than blending two, three, even four recordings, music sequencing software like Ableton Live enables live composition though the use of fragments from multiple sources, as well as the repetition of specific components from one source through the entire mix by way of refrain. Effects and digital instrumentation can be added to the soundtrack with relative ease. Original recordings can be mixed into the overall musicscape during an improvised performance that also benefits from various degrees of studio preparation.
In the process of digital miniaturisation, the mobile virtual studio is effectively taken onto the stage, further blurring the lines between DJs and producers. Music production, remixing, dubplate practices, and music curation have started to rub shoulders, sometimes prickling an audience that expects to observe a risky, yet relatively simple, improvised blend of music recordings. In multiplying the possibilities to create the third record, the authenticity of DJs is doubted, yet their creative aura seems enhanced. New musical material is spiced up with, for example, samples or quotes from the »classics« to create a sense of a historical continuity to legitimise and sell one’s DJ pedigree to the crowd.
With the disappearance of the materiality of visible and tangible vinyl records, how do we know what the DJ does? Nowadays we are less likely to see black discs being physically selected and the needle metaphysically dropped into the groove, magically bringing dead matter alive. In the journal Dancecult, Bernardo A. Attias and Tobias van Veen discussed throughout 2011–12 how the creative activities of the DJ are demonstrated through skillful manipulation of interface controls. However, we'll have to trust that the various interfaces that are used by the digital DJ are indeed steering the live performance in an improvised manner.
Such trust in the DJ’s creative improvisational skills is often based on the crowd’s musical engagement with the DJ. Although the activities of the digital DJ may be mysteriously invisible, they are indeed audible. Dancers engage kinetically with the sound of the selected music, improvising their part of the music-making process on the dancefloor. As Pedro P. Ferreira argued in relation to digital DJ performance technologies in 2008 in Leonardo Music Journal, the actor network tightens into a closed circuit that grips an ensemble of DJ, crowd, and music into a single energetic flow.
In the context of live music sequencing and sonic manipulation, we should not be surprised to see the increasing success of studio producers who perform as DJs. Although many dance music producers may have started their musical development as DJs, whether Henrik Schwarz or Kerri Chandler, something seems to have shifted in the creative relationship. Where previously the DJ entered the music studio to create a remix, studio-based producers and composers, including the financially successful Calvin Harris (Adam R. Wiles), have entered the world of DJing to embody their own production work, blended with the music that inspires and emphasises it, on stage. This not only markets their compositions, but also supplements their potential copyright income.
Large crowds, hundreds and even over several thousand strong, tend to dance less with each other than those on the intimate floors of clubs and dance parties. Pleasure is gained from watching the DJ on stage and from singing along with the crowd to known recordings, while audiences often remediate the spectacle via mobile phones onto social networks. These are the occasions when the music producer presents their studio-generated mixes to crowds and when trust in DJ skills may be based as much on their skills in music manipulation as on their reputation as a logo-trading brand.
Where crowds become stadium-sized, the improvisatory element of music programming, selection, and narrative structure can become an impossible challenge, making tight advance preparation a priority. Some of the high-end DJ shows may be entirely rehearsed and, possibly, even pre-recorded, although no DJ would admit to the latter. Most large popular shows seem carefully pre-programmed, requiring significant creative and logistical management to coordinate the interaction between the sound and light show, which can include live camera work and bespoke VJ-produced material, comparable to a stadium rock show. The newly successful performers may nevertheless be accused of cheating or »faking,« as occurred when fans thought EDM DJ David Guetta was »miming« his music performance at the Tomorrowland Festival in 2012. Even where this is no longer the case, DJs are expected to act as »risk-takers« who provide momentary authentic links between dancers and music through the curatorial exploitation of their record collection.
Of course, music scenes can vary in what audiences expect from their DJs, not only in terms of performative skill sets, but also in terms of music selection or programming. One can see a balancing act between the need for nostalgia and for innovation. Recorded music enables time travel to the past, which is particularly embraced by older generations wishing to relive their youth for one night, as can be illustrated by 1970s and 1980s-themed dance nights, or, indeed, the Northern Soul and tango dance scenes. Sound recordings also enable travel across geographical locations, enabling migrants to stay in touch with their home lands, as can be illustrated in the case of reggae within the Jamaican population in the UK or salsa amongst Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the US, which next blend into new forms of dance music. Finally, some studio-generated forms of electronic dance music may help dancers to make sense of their relationship with their mediated computer-dominated life experience, enabling a certain amnesia to herald a sonic here-and-now, and even a (perhaps nostalgic) futurist vision, embodied in dance genres such as glitch, future soul, future jazz, neuro trance, dubstep, or the pop-a-delic overdrive of EDM.
As a curator, the DJ may have started out as a discerning consumer, a selective gateway between industry output and dancing consumers. In this leadership role, as also Richard Middleton argues in Radical Musicology, DJs may have gained god-like status as they bring to life the memorabilia – those still-dead objects of nostalgia – in the mix, raiding their archives for sound bites and textures. The DJ-curator established their aura as authentic performer through improvisatory engagement with their dancers.
As a creator, the DJ became active in the studio, first to create (re)mixes that suit their sets. Such remixes have, in some cases, expanded into highly prepared sets. In particular, spontaneous engagement may be lost during DJ mega-gigs, which lend themselves well to the delivery of studio-prepared soundscapes, as the crowd is too large to engage in improvised music programming. And, although even here there is still space for the spontaneous party DJ, as DJ Tiësto (Michiel Verwest) passionately claims, this is especially a place where stadium-filling studio producers seem to have successfully slipped into the performative role of the DJ, representing and embodying their trademarked sound while bathed in spectacular light between stacks of speakers.
In short, in the age of digital performative music technologies, the roles of producing, creative DJ and DJing producer blur, morphing the DJ from invisible entertainer to stage performer, from music blender to music maker, from archivist to creator, and from spiritual leader to logo-bearing copyright earner. Through these shifts, dance musical histories are continued and disrupted in generational waves of nostalgia, amnesia, and (re)discovery. The afterglow of the image of the DJ and a nostalgic popular music culture that authenticates this role can be further evidenced in various DJ apps on smartphones, enabling the user to cannibalise the recorded past and create music for the present in the miniaturised networked here-and-now of the present.
Yet, in the unsettling blend and fissure between the studio producer and the staged DJ, current digital music performance technology plays an important role. For this reason, our understanding of the role of the DJ needs to be broadened to that of a contemporary electronic music performer, who may work with samples from archived recordings and who will most likely treat these electronically to produce new sonic cultural forms, whether it be underground aural art or populist mass entertainment. Perhaps, then, we can understand the DJ as a kind of a Time Lord of counter-memory, not only playing with the temporality of the musical rhythm and the narrative structure of a musical journey, but also enabling audiences to surf multiple perceptions of historical time.