Disc Jockey Day

What the day is

Disc Jockey Day is observed on January 20. The term dates from the 1930s, coined by an American commentator for a radio presenter who played records and talked between them, jockeying the discs.

Origin and background

For decades that was the whole job: choose records, introduce them, fill the gaps. The interesting change came when disc jockeys stopped presenting records and started using them as material.

The pivotal observation was made at parties in the Bronx in the early 1970s. A DJ working as Kool Herc noticed that dancers responded most to a specific short passage in a funk record, the break, where the melody drops away and the drums carry alone. On a record that section lasts seconds. His solution was to buy two copies of the same record, cue both to the break, and cut between the turntables, playing the passage on one while resetting the other, extending a few seconds into as long as he wanted.

That technique turned the turntable into an instrument rather than a playback device, and everything downstream follows from it. Refining the cut so the transition landed precisely on the beat produced beatmatching. Manipulating the record by hand against the needle produced scratching. The extended break gave dancers something to work over and MCs something to talk over, which is the structural origin of hip-hop as a form.

The modern descendant is largely digital, with software matching tempos automatically, and the argument about what that removes has been running for twenty years. What has not changed is the underlying job, which is reading a room in real time and deciding what it needs next.

How to take part

• Listen to a funk record and find the break. Once you hear it you cannot stop.
• Watch footage of a DJ cutting between two copies of the same record.
• Make a playlist that has to work as a sequence rather than a collection.
• Tip the DJ at the next event you attend, which almost nobody does.
• Try beatmatching two tracks by ear once, to appreciate how hard it was.