Has DJ-ing always been an artform?

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I'm leaving the answers up to you.

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 3 March 2005 01:32 (twenty years ago)

every person will DJ for at least fifteen minutes.

― donut debonair (donut), Thursday, 3 March 2005 01:37 (twenty years ago)

lock thread!

;-)

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 3 March 2005 01:42 (twenty years ago)

Seriously though, hasn't DJ-ing always been an artform just as much as music has, since the beginning of the age of selling recorded media?

― donut debonair (donut), Thursday, 3 March 2005 01:57 (twenty years ago)

or are we talking about the virtuosos only?

― donut debonair (donut), Thursday, 3 March 2005 01:58 (twenty years ago)

Seems like it got really interesting around the time of the Jamaican sound-system parties and the British northern soul scene.

― Steve Gertz (sgertz), Thursday, 3 March 2005 02:32 (twenty years ago)

Has DJ-ing ever been an artform?

*groan*

― ambrose (ambrose), Thursday, 3 March 2005 11:23 (twenty years ago)

who was the first DJ?

― Sven Bastard (blueski), Thursday, 3 March 2005 11:32 (twenty years ago)

jimmy saville

― ilkley lido (gareth), Thursday, 3 March 2005 11:35 (twenty years ago)

ignore that answer, please

― ilkley lido (gareth), Thursday, 3 March 2005 11:36 (twenty years ago)

― Sven Bastard (blueski), Thursday, 3 March 2005 11:36 (twenty years ago)

x post

R.W. Fessenden 1907.

― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Thursday, 3 March 2005 11:38 (twenty years ago)

http://www.coutant.org/freedwabc.jpg

― earlnash, Thursday, 3 March 2005 13:19 (twenty years ago)

"Well,he freed a lodda people.."

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 3 March 2005 13:44 (twenty years ago)

This is what I'm getting at. At what point did DJ-ing go from being a craft or just a job to becoming an artform in itself? I think the above answer about Jamaican and Northern Soul DJs may be correct. Would early broadcasters have believed that their successors would be using two turntables and hae crowds flock to see them play records?

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 3 March 2005 14:12 (twenty years ago)

Seriously though, hasn't DJ-ing always been an artform just as much as music has, since the beginning of the age of selling recorded media?

well, yes IF you accept that making a crush tape is art, that writing a diary is literature... i'm not syaing they're not entirely but it's useful to have definitions that distinguish between things.

― NRQ, Thursday, 3 March 2005 14:15 (twenty years ago)

Some people consider it an artform (not sure why exactly or who they are) and some people don't - I suppose the people that don't should really stay away from this thread! See ya!

― Some Dadaismus Implied (Dada), Thursday, 3 March 2005 14:19 (twenty years ago)

If we're talking about beat mixing and wuckawucking, it might be considered more of a circus trick, like juggling plates. Selection of records may be an art form perhaps. A fine selector of records is a bit like someone who knows which restaurant to go to and what wine to choose.

― moley (moley), Thursday, 3 March 2005 20:21 (twenty years ago)

LP-curian

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Thursday, 3 March 2005 20:56 (twenty years ago)

that book "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" is a decent history

― The Argunaut (sexyDancer), Thursday, 3 March 2005 21:25 (twenty years ago)

so is the song!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 3 March 2005 21:46 (twenty years ago)

Using two turntables, cross-fading and beat-matching definitely stemmed from the NY disco era via DJ Kool Herc. He was of Jamaican descent and thus was probably influenced by the whole sound-system/ toasting thing. The phenom of white-labeling and the sense of co-opting a track or record as your own definitely stems from the uber-elitist northern soul DJs.

― Steve Gertz (sgertz), Thursday, 3 March 2005 22:10 (twenty years ago)

Terry Noel? Francis Grasso?

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Thursday, 3 March 2005 22:13 (twenty years ago)

If you're talking about the start of beatmatching then see here:

Who was the first to beatmatch?

But I suspect dog latin meant more than that.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 3 March 2005 22:15 (twenty years ago)

the point where the records became a tool for the dj to create something rather than the records being the ends unto themselves?

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Thursday, 3 March 2005 22:16 (twenty years ago)

DJing is better than an artform.

― tylero (tylero), Thursday, 3 March 2005 22:45 (twenty years ago)

who gets a blowjob when they're painting after all?

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Thursday, 3 March 2005 22:48 (twenty years ago)

Picasso, I'll bet. Or Pollack.

― Steve Gertz (sgertz), Thursday, 3 March 2005 22:58 (twenty years ago)

Hence Pollock's drip paintings.

― moley (moley), Friday, 4 March 2005 08:22 (twenty years ago)

When there were only humans in caves, there were DJ's. Only they didn't have turntables.

― Bimble... (Bimble...), Friday, 4 March 2005 08:27 (twenty years ago)

NEANTHERDAL IPOD SET

― Sven Bastard (blueski), Friday, 4 March 2005 10:34 (twenty years ago)

the point where the records became a tool for the dj to create something rather than the records being the ends unto themselves?

Did john cage not do something with records playing at the same time in the 50s/60s. Does that count?

― hmmm (hmmm), Friday, 4 March 2005 11:17 (twenty years ago)

And I say unto you, Pierre Schaeffer

― Some Dadaismus Implied (Dada), Friday, 4 March 2005 11:20 (twenty years ago)

three weeks pass...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4567450

This is worth checking out..

― Yngwie AlmsteenMay (sgertz), Thursday, 31 March 2005 19:19 (twenty years ago)

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