What is a DJ?
A DJ is art, passion, the soul of music, the dance floor shaker, a composer, the one with the secret weapon, the one who creates and interprets the soundtrack to your life, the artist who selects the right record at the right time, the fun of the party, a creator of trends, a continual learner, a lifestyle…
For DJs it all started in the United States when, back in the ’60s, they were tasked with putting on a record after the other. Back then the DJ didn’t own the records, rather they belonged to the owner of the club and the DJ came into the venue without any equipment and simply pieced together a set based off of what he was given. As the ’70s “Saturday Night Fever” began to spread with the explosion of disco, so did the role of the deejay, gaining more and more importance as the years went on. As anyone truly devoted to the history of electronic music knows, it was Dave Mancuso’s Loft that inaugurated the start of a new era, hosting the likes of Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Nicky Siano, Francois Kevorkian and Larry Heard who at that time were simple lovers of the garage sound of the past. The Warehouse in Chicago followed suit and the rest, as they say, is actual history. At the time DJs received pay that was equal to or lower that of a barman, yet were entrusted with the track selection of the entire night. Things have evolved drastically to what we have today when, since the 1990s, popular DJs became the idols of countless thousands who travel from city to city to see their favorite acts perform.
As a child growing up in Italy, whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew older the response was always the same: a football player (soccer for those who want to say it wrong). I imagine that a lot of kids in the States grew up with similar dreams, dreams and desires that will never disappear from their head, but that may now be joined by another equally profitable and fun activity: the disc jockey, the entertainer of the masses.
