Lvl 20, Int+10 is an opinion column for my rants and ravings that will hopefully encourage thoughtful discussion. On today’s menu an expansion on ZBot aka Will’s well written article What’s the Point of a DJ?
We live in a truly revolutionary age, technology is advancing at a faster pace than ever imaginable and the world is facing some of the largest humanitarian and imminent ecological crises ever. On the same global scale huge amounts of information can be transferred over thousands of miles instantaneously at the press of a button. The so-called information age has allowed the exchange of ideas at an unbelievably huge scale; cross culturally, trans-continentally, even globally. One can find out the weather conditions on top of Mount Washington as easily as one can find the latest news in England or what’s happening at RandomCon X in real time. So what does all of this have to do with music?
Music has always served as a vehicle for self expression, who’s expression it may be and how that effects its inherent value is up to debate, but regardless it is what we call art. With every form of art there are intrinsic relationships between the artist and the audience who are viewing it. Music however is what we refer to as a performing art, it requires more than just a creator and a consumer. We need to introduce a third variable, a performer. In the classic definition of the medium the creator would be composer, the performer would be the musician, and the consumer would be the audience. The interesting fact is that we refer to the intermediate, the performer, as an artist as well even if they are just recreating what someone else has written. Why is this? Is it because it requires skill to play the Berenstein Mass? (It requires mad skill actually.) We don’t consider a construction worker an architect regardless of how skilled they are. How an orchestra plays a piece may differ but it’s usually not a result of the creativity of a tuba player. In the strict classical sense the performer is just recreating a piece of music they did not write. This of course is not the case as explained later, but it adds to the ambiguity of the term musician.
So why is it that we so quickly dismiss a disc jockey as a musician? Are they not stringing works together using techniques such as beatmatching and blending much in the same way a classical musician strings notes together? Tactile control of a song can be just as challenging as that of beating a snare drum, so why is it that a drone of the London Symphony Orchestra percussion section is more qualified as a musician than someone like DJ Kentaro.
The reason is our ties with the word musician. The definition has become somewhat skewed due to the rock band formula of the 20th century. The role of the composer and the performer are blurred into one regardless of who writes the music in a band. Recorded music people buy on iTunes has become their manuscript and the tour is the performance, but there is no separation of the two. There are no longer composers and performers there are just “musicians.” For example, Trent Reznor is a composer who performs his music in the band Nine Inch Nails as a performer. If someone else were to perform his music does that make them composers? Of course not, they are musicians in the traditional sense. However we have created and adopted the term “cover artist” which implies that people who simply play other’s music are of somehow less status than the band who originally performed the works of the composer. I’ve seen old dudes on barstools in Nowheresville Maine with nothing but an old beat up six-string who outperform most of today’s pop artists both harmonically and rhythmically just playing classic standards. Ironically a lot of pop acts aren’t even composers, which further complicates the public understanding. What all this boils down to is the word “musician” no longer holds any intrinsic value, it is a blanket term used for people who “play music.”
There is another common misconception about the role of a performer which further complicates matters. I am a jazz musician, I’ve played the flute sine I was 9. I play the alto flute because it sounds badass. I’ve soloed for 128 bars using basic chord progressions. I’ve transposed and arranged music because no one writes jazz pieces for flute. However I have never considered myself a composer. I am a performer, I am a musician. A musician is not limited to strict reproduction of someone else’s composition, they use the works of another to convey their own ideas or feelings, they adapt. So why does this not make the performer a composer? It is the adaptation process in itself that makes the difference. When one adapts and idea they did not originally create that idea, they are responding to it. The difference between composer and performer is that response. Inherently the composer would seem to be of more importance for coming up with the original idea; it would not exist in the first place otherwise. However the performer is of equal importance for taking that idea and breathing life into it, otherwise the idea is meaningless. They are separate entities of equal importance.
And yet there the stigma that a performer is not worth as much as a composer still exists ironically as a double standard. Performers in a rock band are not looked down upon because “they have musical talent” and yet disc jockeys “just play other peoples music.” Perhaps it’s the macro scale of it all, who knows. Of course I’m not going to compare someone who’s mastered their instrument to some two bit Top 40 loser who just fades between tracks, but I defy anyone to watch a performance by Grandmaster Flash and say “psh, you don’t need skill to do that.” (And if you do, frankly, you’re a pompous closeminded jackass, why are you reading this column.)
Coming back to the function of a DJ again, they are strictly in the sense of the word a performer, or what is sometimes referred to as a “digital performer.” They are there to entertain, to convey the composer’s original work in a stylistic manner. In most cases though, especially here at Nerdfit, we’re just there to party. We’re there to have a good time, to entertain, and hopefully to open your mind to good EDM (as opposed to that generic Top 40 stuff you’ll hear on pop stations that masquerades as EDM.)
This brings us to yet another relationship; the relationship between performer and audience. The performer responds to the composer, and the audience responds to the performer, as such the audience plays as integral a role as both composer and performer. In the classical scenario the audience was there to see the performer, and the performer would play for the audience, and the audience would be like “how nice,” and then everyone goes home. In a way the relationship has always been two ways, if the audience doesn’t respond well the performer loses motivation to perform, while if the audience is lively and enthusiastic the performer rides that energy and gives a much bigger and better performance. The audience is as important to setting the atmosphere as the performer themselves. The digital age has allowed for a much closer relationship between performer and audience. It’s much easier for the performer to be in direct contact with their audience, to see how the audience responded on a personal level and take that into consideration during their next performance. Also in some cases it allows a closer interaction during the performance itself, even allowing the audience to become part of the performance regardless of musical skill or ability. There is a lot more focus put on audience interaction in modern performance, because in fact the audience is just as much part of the adaptation process as the performer, neither exist in a vacuum and they actively effect each other on an emotional level.
I think that people need to absolutely solidify these terms before they can even begin to judge the worth of an artist. A composer is one who creates, one who starts the whole process. A performer is one who adapts, who responds to the composer, interprets the idea and conveys it to the audience. They are separate identities but they are of equal importance to music as an art, and they are both artists.
All in all the way I see it is I’m just a dude who’s there to have a good time. Performer, musician, whatever, I’m just there to jam and I’m the guy who’s responsible for keeping the party going. If you can’t dig that go see a band, you’ll see me on that stage too.
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