The Cult of the DJ: A Symposium
1995; Duke University Press; Issue: 43 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/466627
ISSN1527-1951
AutoresAndrew C. Ross, Frank Owen, Moby, Frankie Knuckles, Carol Cooper,
Tópico(s)Diverse Musicological Studies
ResumoAndrew Ross: With no shortage of literature devoted to most other kinds of popular music, it's astonishing that we don't yet have a proper book about dance music. There isn't even a credible history of the DJ. After all, the dance club has been one of the most important cultural institutions of the last two decades; a social rendezvous that is the crucible not only of musical progress but of fashion, courtship, performance, and sexual display. If and when such an account is written, it will carry an unseen weight because of all the unrecorded voices there; the people, mostly gay men, who died too young and who played a central role in that history. In retrospect, there are many undertones to the meaning of a club classic like Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. Among other things, the redemption vibe is an important element of a club culture which is para-religious in its loyalties and passions. Anyone who has been at a dance temple like New York's Sound Factory on a Sunday morning while the Christian nation is readying to go to church will know what it feels like to believe that the gods have ordained this pleasure especially for you, along with the people dancing within a five-yard radius. It's no surprise that people have come to talk of the cult of the DJ in terms that are not secular, and not always in a tongue-in-cheek way. And yet a decade ago, it would have been unthinkable that the DJ would occupy such a central place in popular culture, let alone be the object of such devotion in the underground club scene, and, in Europe at least, in the realm of superstar culture. The changing role of DJs in the history of popular music has been quite profound: from the heyday of hipster radio DJs like the jazz generation Daddy O'Daylie and Dr. Hep Cat; to seminal rock'n'roll radio DJs like Alan Freed and Wolfman Jack and, above all, John Peel in Britain, who has probably been the single most important shaper and mover of musical culture in Britain for almost three decades now; to the development of disco music and hip hop in the late 1970s, when DJs moved from the position of industry go-between, promoter, or midwife to the position of independent producers and creators in their own right. It's arguable that this redefinition of the role of the DJ has been one of the truly revolutionary developments in popular music. But DJ-generated
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