Can an artist call themselves "DJ ___" if they don't use turntables?

Was DJ Kool (of "Let Me Clear My Throat" fame) a DJ? I forget.

just as the term 'refix' has blurred the boundries between original track and remix...

There is a snobbery amongst a lot of the DJing community that if you aren't using vinyl, it isn't 'really' DJing. What a load of crap. The most important thing about DJing is track selection and sequencing. Having an ear for how to put a set together is a lot harder to learn than how to match beats. Thus, whether it's vinyl, cd, or mp3 is not relevant. The format should be transparent to the listener anyway.

I have to admit to being disappointed when the first round of DJ so-and-so records came out that were essentially instrumental hip-hop with the occasional guest vocal (and a lot of over 'seriousness'--ugh)But this question feels about 5-10 years too late--the battle is over and the DJ-as-auteur in his/her own right is now firmly established for better or worse.

2003 BEIGE Cassette Jockey World Championship

These people rock.

Whatever happened to predictability?

Okay, I see your point, and I'm sure this is the same way DJ's Shadow/Krush/Vadim/etc. see it, too. I'm gonna argue the other side, just for discussion's sake: the thing that bugs me about this line of thinking is that it makes such a big deal about the fact that only other records were used in the production, and therefore the result is, by definition, on the continuum of DJ-ing. That strikes me as ridiculously catholic and a misplaced artistic self-limitation. I mean, once you've got all your sounds in an MPC 3000 (as Shadow did/does), WHO CARES if that single bass note or snare hit originated on vinyl or came from a commercial sound module? Are producers who use both samples and original keyboard or drum machines less "DJs" by this definition--seems like a hair-splitting definitional trap.

Also, part of Shadow's production aesthetic seems to be to strip out pieces from his source material so that the original can't be recognized, or to use original material so obscure (e.g. high school jazz band records) that they wouldn't be recognized anyway. That is a quite different approach form DJ-ing with two turntables (or CD-players, or whatever), where I think a lot of the artistry comes from working within the limitations of source material that can only be deconstructed and layered up to a point. Even beat-jugglers, who take deconstruction to an extreme and re-compose records on the spot, always begin a routine with a few moments of the original recording so that a listener can appreciate the way they have transformed a record from its original state.

Finally, there's the difference between real-time and studio-time. Another of the limitations of tradition DJ-ing (that also simultaneously gives it appeal) is the fact that the thing happens live, in real-time. How DJs deal with this, and how much they can squeeze into a set as it unfolds, is part of the pleasure of listening or dancing. Studio-time, on the other hand, presents few constraints (especially when your studio is entirely contained in a portable box like the MPC 3000). In that realm of composition, a DJ can take 2 hours or 200 hours to complete a 5-minute segment of sound, and the listener's expectations and engagement adjust accordingly. There's a gray area in between these extremes of course, like the Pro-Tools-assisted "mix-CD", but that doesn't change the fact that there's a gulf between the work of live DJing and studio production.