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themostexpensiveboningknife · 4 years

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A DJ Story Part One

My name is Ollie and I’ve been a hard-working, well-known DJ in-the-making for 8 years. I’ve been working so hard to try and make it as a touring DJ. I’ve always been a fan of music and I really believe that my knowledge of music and skills behind the decks should warrant me a global audience. I don’t want to sound arrogant, because I don’t think I am, but I know that I have what it takes to be a big DJ. Who wouldn’t want to be respected for their knowledge of music and technical skill behind the decks? Plus there’s all of the fans and the nonstop travelling around the world.

My passion for it started in school. It’s then that I first got into electronic, or underground and alternative, whatever you want to call it, music. It started with House and Techno music, growing up in a small city there was some of it around, I especially liked Berlin-style versions of the sounds and also some stuff that came out of Detroit although I knew less about this. This was good music with big variety, mellow to hard and heavy, as a budding DJ these were great tools that I could use to control the dancefloor and demonstrate my digging. Later I’d get into UK Garage, with huge, mostly untapped back catalogues it gave me the opportunity to make people dance and demonstrate my intelligence in finding these forgotten tracks. By this time, I was playing occasionally around my little city, working hard to build a name for myself, I took a monthly radio show on a local station also. When people asked me to identify tracks for them, I’d almost always not tell them. These were my songs that I’d worked really hard to find. I hadn’t been working and was living at home just so I could dedicate myself to finding new music. I wasn’t going to give up my tracks so easily. After building up my name a bit, still playing mostly house and garage stuff, I fortuitously came across some new music that I knew would be the key to my success.

African music has really got a particular vibe. There’s regional variety but when you’re playing it out people just know that you’re playing African music. There’s so much out there that no one plays in clubs yet! I thought the stuff I was playing before was what would make me stand out, but I’ve found that it’s playing African music that really works well with the crowd. I have spent a lot of time following artists and labels, there’s one label that is full of tapes that the label owner has physically found himself on travels across the continent. I wouldn’t do that myself but I do think that I am deeply in love with the music and its potential. My commitment looks more like scrawling through YouTube, Discogs and various forums, there’s also a few people in my local area who share my interest and we share tips on where to buy old vinyl or new represses.

It was a pretty normal Tuesday. I’d had some success in finding some new music, especially some Ghanian Highlife stuff. Lots of it was pretty well-known though, what I really needed was a track that packed a punch but was totally unknown. It was this track that would work for my big gig next week, my biggest to date. A one thousand capacity club in the big city nearby, I was second on the bill. I needed a tune that was so rare, so special in sound, one that I could totally own, I wanted it to be my signature. At about midnight, I thought I’d found it, a disco number made in Senegal in the ‘80s, but then I found someone had posted it on a forum a few years back. I’d still keep hold of the 320 I found on Soulseek, but it wasn’t the song. At 3am I really did find it. I was watching a very rare piece of footage of one of my favourite African DJs from about 15 years ago, the video itself had only 5 views. There was one song she played that was dynamite. A heavy, funky bassline, aggressive chords and a slow, rumbling voice over the top switching between English and a language I couldn’t recognise.

“Oh baby, sweet down by the river was where we should have met, oh baby,” were the lyrics that I could recognise. I knew it was going to be hard to find the song, but this was the one I needed, I could feel it, this would be my signature song to really blow away the crowd at the coming rave.

“Ollie, turn down the music, it’s well past midnight!”, my mum shouted up the stairs to me. I turned it down a bit, but I of course wasn’t going to stop now. It took me about an hour more to find the exact track. I tried all sorts of variations in the lyrics, I tried looking through all the other mixes of the DJ I’d seen playing it, finally I found the artist. A female singer from Mali. The track itself could only be found on an old tape. One single copy was all I could find on the internet, I paid whatever the price was and happily went to bed. Truly content and confident that I had found the ultra-rare piece of music that would show me to be the great DJ that I knew I was.

The day of the gig had come. I’d received the tape and had already used a machine to digitalize it, the song was already safely sitting on my USB. I travelled up by train and met the promoters, two young chaps from the city who had been running nights for a year here now. I had on shorts and a tropical style shirt plus sunglasses. We checked a few record shops in the city and then had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant that had just opened. It was delicious food, plus I had a bit of a chat with the owner about Ethiopian music and, of course, my collection.

At the party it was pretty packed. Young people from all over the local area were here. The two DJs before me had played a bit intense. I’d have to slow down the mood a bit before dropping the track. I’d played out enough times to not be that nervous anymore, but I anxiously anticipated seeing the reaction to that song tonight. I had a few drinks and then stood behind the DJ playing before me while fingering my USB in my pocket.

I was up. I played for about 45 minutes before I cued up the track. The crowd was about 4/5 there now. Hundreds of faces looking expectantly up at me. I knew that I had to deliver and I knew that I would. I’d decided to not mix the track into the preceding one, I wanted it to be heard in all of its glory. I slowly brought down the track before, a generic William Onyeabor joint. I could hear the funky bassline slowly coming in and so could the crowd. As I slowly brought the track in, adjusting the EQ and saving the full bass impact to very last, the atmosphere in the crowd seemed to change a bit, at least from where I was standing. I continued to bring in the track, looking more at the crowd than the mixer. When the omphy bassline finally hit there were a few shouts from the audience. People seemed to be dancing a bit harder. There was definitely a reaction. Maybe not as much as I’d thought. But there was something. I saw a few people using their phones to try and find the song name, not going to work I thought proudly. I spent so long gauging the crowds’ reaction that I almost forgot to cue the next track. Three quarters of an hour later it was all over. I refused people’s offers of drinks and had the promoters organise a cab for me back to my hotel.

While I waited for the car, I mulled over what had happened. It maybe wasn’t the ecstatic response that I had envisioned. I was sure there would be a more significant response. It was probably just not the right crowd, plus the lighting and smoke guys hadn’t been very responsive, I thought. Anyway, I still had the song, it was my signature, my calling card and I’d be pulling it out to wow proper crowds in proper clubs soon.

The taxi arrived and I sat back reasonably content. “Good evening, sir.” The radio was on but the traffic outside was quite loud so I couldn’t hear much, I asked the driver to turn the sound up a bit. “Oh baby, sweet down by the river was where we should have met, oh baby,” I realised it was my song playing. The driver sang along to it, clearly knowing the words. I sat back again, this time distraught. Maybe it was time for me to find a new kind of music, I thought to myself.

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