I would argue that the great DJs are poets of a different page. You would probably argue back at me, right? But I learned everything I believe about form and rhythm (and love and joy) from DJs. So I'm a true believer. As an apostle of House, I was excited to find this interview with Marshall Jefferson, the DJ who developed Chicago's House music genre in the 1980s.
In this discussion, with the Guardian's Paul Morley and Orlando of Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Jefferson addresses the question of whether the artist who spins in clubs is the oldey timey idea of disc jockey. Musician? Performer? Composer? Artist? The label may not matter to the men and women who are out there innovating. But I think that asking this question opens a window into our perception of the cultural value of artists who create their work outside the academy and without the credentials that come from some kind of accredited institution.
About the interview:
"Marshall Jefferson, who, what with one thing and another, made some records in Chicago in the 80s that, pretty much, helped work out a new form of electronically conceived post-techno anti-disco dance music that ended up being given the name house. He got fed up within a matter of months with the way that electrifying house was being turned into an easily cribbed formula, and helped turn out a zonked, fractured, pretty twisted version of house that got tagged as acid house, which soon flew into cities such as Manchester, where it was accepted and adapted with instant, addicted relish."
Marshall Jefferson, The House Music Anthem
Rachid Baba Ahmed, an Algerian club music innovator, took his art seriously enough to sacrifice himself for its creation. Rachid was killed by religious zealots for making music that they believed was offensive to God (Popular artists allegedly being murdered in Algeria, Sinclair, Abiola. New York Amsterdam News. New York, N.Y.: Oct 26, 1996. Vol. 87, Iss. 43; pg. 5). He was warned. He left Algeria and he kept creating music until he was caught and killed.
Rachid,
thorny beats
draw blood.
Raï, rave and leave.
DJs most definitely make poams —and in some ways, DJ poams are among the more honest of poams for the acknowledgement that the DJ reconfigures, re-calibrates, reinvents, re-envisions hidden tonal and rhythmic possibilities so that new sonic children are born out of marriages DJs arrange. Sonic matchmaking —and the child can have any number of parents contributing whatever the DJ finds necessary.
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