DJ Motivations
I started DJing when I realized I wasn’t hearing the music out at dances that I wanted to hear. I had started dancing and traveling and got to hear a lot of great (and some not so great) music. Then I got home and the music at my local events just weren’t pushing me onto the floor. I wanted to hear music that really made me (and everyone else) want to move. I was also living in a town where blues music was just not appropriate for dancing, and that was something that didn’t sit well with me. I wanted to hear the blues. I wanted to dance to the blues. And I wanted other people to share my passion.
To be frank, I had a chip on my shoulder about it. I loaded up my laptop with a bunch of songs and set off to create blues dancing in my town. I think, in my early days, I had success more from blind luck and gumption than from skill and finesse. As I’ve grown as a person, a dancer, and a DJ, my tastes and perspectives on music and dancing and DJing have changed. My passion has not. While I may have spent more time listening to Alternative Rock than jazz and blues when I started dancing, the roots of American music have grabbed me with a stranglehold and I think I’m more at home with music that was recorded before I was born than I am with a lot of the music I hear today.
So why do you want to be a DJ? I’ll guess it’s largely for the same reasons that I did. You’re not hearing the music you want to hear at your dances. Maybe you want more blues. Maybe you want more traditional jazz. Maybe you want more modern cuts. Maybe you’re wanting to fill a hole in the dance landscape. At the top and bottom of it, something’s missing for you.
That’s a great start.
It may be all you need, especially if no one else is doing what you want to do. But then again it may not.
One of the biggest dangers of being a new DJ is walking in the door to try something new only to find out that your great new idea has been tried (possibly even years ago) and abandoned for better things. To pick a quick example – you may love neo- and punk/rock based swing music. No matter how fired up you are about it, it’s a bit passe’ these days as many serious dancers have pushed for more and more classic jazz. Your audience may dig it for nostalgia’s sake once or twice, but you may find quickly that despite your love and passion, your tastes just aren’t aligned with the folks you’re playing for.
At its heart, being a DJ is being an entertainer. There’s little difference between the DJ and the actor or the musician or the stand-up comic. At the end of the night, the person who’s got the most power to make a person have a great time or have an awful time is the one up on the stage – you.
If your tastes fall too far outside the realm of what people want to listen to, you’ll find that they’re not having a good time, you’re not having a good time, and your employers won’t be having a good time. It’s not a good situation in which to find yourself.
So, you may walk in the door with a chip on your shoulder just like I did, but at the end of the day you are there to make sure people have a good time. You can educate people, or try to push the boundaries of where your audience is within those constraints. You can take people on a journey with you through great music that you love and that they come to love. But if your focus isn’t on your dancers and making sure they have a good time, the only journey you’ll be making is one toward obscurity.