The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries
Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)
In The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries, Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton contend that the underlining motivation for DJing is to share music with others. “This is the thrill, and the compulsion, of DJing. This need to share music, and to constantly find new music to excite people with, this is the primal force of DJing” (4). The book focuses on this premise by exploring the lives of DJ pioneers who have been influential in the creation of popular music and dance culture scenes and helped to shape social trends, sensibilities and the worldviews of generations of partygoers.
Brewster and Broughton craft a carefully considered mix of narratives which explore the lives of DJs across historical post-war music scenes and dance cultural movements, contributing an eclectic and informative text for anyone interested in the history of DJing as a cultural practice. Those expecting to encounter the authors’ usual humorous writing style may be slightly disappointed as what we are presented with are 46 verbatim interviews followed by illustrative discographies, unfettered by commentary and analysis, save for brief scene-setting introductions.
The opening encounters hook the reader up with some of the earliest pioneers who can lay claim to making DJing visible (and audible) in the public’s consciousness. Those familiar with the authors’ acclaimed book Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (1999) will have come across the authors’ archaeological finds before, digging up the tales of pioneer Jimmy Saville, who as early as 1943 began disrupting the societal belief that dancing in public could only be accompanied by live music. “Now, it’s a startling admission that people didn’t think you could dance to records, but then nobody conceived it” (8). Rare interviews with Terry Noel and Francis Grasso also highlight that contemporary DJing sensibilities and techniques such as beat-matching aren’t as new as we may think, being practised in the late 1960s.
After these early encounters, Brewster and Broughton weave together a series of storied arcs that bring together the tales of key DJs and producers instrumental in shaping some of the most memorable underground party scenes and dance music moments from the 1950s through to the early 21st century. The arcs progress in a broadly chronological manner, covering northern soul, (proto) disco, house, techno, Balearic and acid house before Brewster and Broughton bring into the mix players who have been influential in the British post-acid house inspired genres—jungle, progressive, garage and big beat. This final arc also brings to the fore narratives with DJs responsible for the mass popularisation of electronic dance music (EDM) from the mid-1990s, with the advent of the super-club and the emergence of DJs as global nomads, folk heroes and pseudo-religious icons (e.g. Sasha and Tiësto).
Placing interviews of DJs from the various scenes side-by-side, we learn of their lives behind the decks and in the studio and their reflections on the scenes they helped to shape. This makes for a stimulating read, as the voices of the players collide with one another, sometimes confirmatory and on other occasions casting contradictory lines of thought on the scene in question. The arc on Chicago house was one of my favourites in this respect.
Enough space is given to the DJs to tell stories on their own terms. This breathing room is particularly welcome, given the historical importance of some of the insights shared—witness the rare interview with Francis Grasso who passed away shortly after their conversation. Investigative sensibilities also ensure plenty of moments where Brewster and Broughton the urban archaeologists come out to play and sample on behalf of the historical archivists and DJ anoraks, enquiring about the novelty of equipment and techniques used and whether interviewees were aware of the significance, for example.
If, as the authors contend, the primal purpose of DJing is to share music with others, the book uncovers key first person insights that illustrate how emergent techniques, tools and sensibilities which have informed DJing as a cultural practice are deeply rooted in the learning that occurs on the dance floor. For example, Tom Moulton, pioneer of the disco mix and inventor of the preferred DJ 12-inch format, alludes to an observation he made in 1971 sitting at a beach party on Fire Island:
They’d really start to get off on it and all of a sudden another song would come in on top of it and the people would be... And he was a terrible DJ, too. It was a shame that the records weren’t longer so people could really start getting off. I came home and tried it and it took forever (137).
In all respects, this was a defining moment that shaped Moulton’s life in dance music production and as a consequence gifted DJs the format they craved, an extended mix designed specifically for the dance floor. Reflecting on the production of Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock”, the renowned electro producer Arthur Baker describes his conscious decision to capture what DJs were doing in their sets by transferring it onto wax:
What I was trying to do was mix in the DJ bits of other records. It was a conscious thing. It was almost like a medley, but not really, because you only used little bits of things. I tried to create what a DJ would do with records (208).
The sampling-like approach coined by Baker on “Planet Rock” prior to the widespread advent and use of sampling technologies illustrates how DJ sensibilities honed on the dance floor have been fed back into the production process, helping to create the sampling cut and paste aesthetic that became so influential with EDM production.
Somewhere between the sound-bite journalism of the popular music press and the reification of music and dance culture studies proliferating within academia, there is a genuine need for first person oral histories. This book provides a welcome reminder of how and in what ways oral approaches can contribute to our understanding.
I believe this book has some fairly unique gifts to offer DJs with an interest in understanding the roots of what they do and exploring more deeply their own relationship to creating and sharing music, not least because of its dialogical qualities. This conversational approach worked because it engaged me personally. I was able to place my “I” alongside the others and join in the conversation. In doing so the book spoke to the DJ within me and re-ignited my passion for finding and sharing music. The book ultimately succeeds because this is what it sets out to do. Its dialogical qualities also sets The Record Players apart and allows it to make a unique contribution to cultural and historical studies in popular music and related fields of enquiry. The conversational space created prompts the reader to engage with the text directly in an open and reflexive manner so that you become actively involved in the sense making process. This is refreshing and contrasts with the third person gatekeeper role favoured in academia, which bookends informants’ narratives with thoughts on what is meant, foreclosing alternative readings and interpretations.
There are some minor criticisms with the book. Most of the interviews took place in the mid to late 1990s giving The Record Players a slightly dated feel. There have been quantum-like shifts in DJing over the last decade that have questioned the primacy of the spinning record and reconfigured the ways in which DJs create and share music. The emergence of digital vinyl solutions (DVS) and controllerism are indicative of these developments and are an obvious omission in the present collection, save for some thoughts by Sasha on using Ableton to DJ. The authors observe in their introduction that there are some important scenes that haven’t been included, namely reggae. In a book that attempts to plot points linking DJing across times and geographies, there is always a risk of omitting important scenes. Whilst an anticipated future volume will likely seek to redress this, in any follow up I’d like to see the authors make a more conscious effort to disrupt the predominantly Anglo-American narratives of DJing and club culture to be found in this book. Small criticisms aside, I think this is a vital book. Brewster and Broughton seem to have a knack of producing accessible and informative material about DJ culture that engages both practitioners and interested souls, whilst simultaneously making serious and valuable contributions to historical and socio-cultural studies of DJing and popular music cultures. Their latest effort does much to continue this tradition.
Brewster, Bill and Frank Broughton. 1999. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. London: Headline.
Bambaataa, Afrika and The Soul Sonic Force. 1982. Planet Rock. Tommy Boy Music (12-inch): TB 823. <http://www.discogs.com/Afrika-Bambaataa-The-Soul-Sonic-Force-Planet-Rock/release/1080424>.