Nonetheless, most DJs, even those with an impressive technical background, still love playing Harvard’s campus dances and formals. “I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, and I’ve learned the hard way that you don’t want to be too rigid about any of your principles as a DJ,” remarks Dan J. Thorn ’11, who DJed Hell at Currier’s Heaven and Hell Halloween party last semester. “If you’re rigid and get angry and [don’t] play ‘Party in the U.S.A.’ [by Miley Cyrus] or [don’t] play some song twice, then it’ll just make you more stressed out and you’ll have a worse time—your set will be worse overall.” For Thorn, songs like “Party in the U.S.A.” are not intrinsically problematic; according to him, “the mainstream party culture at Harvard is focused around a really small canon of Top 40 music but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing... I don’t feel disappointed not playing the music I’d rather listen to on my own. That’s not what those parties would ever be about.”
Ultimately, DJing is about striking a balance between the narrow register of pop jingles and an endless catalogue of the music DJs love—what for VanMiddlesworth includes “European techno minimalist house,” but for other DJs comprises a range electronica and hip-hop. John R. Regan ’11, who was the heavenly coefficient to Thorn’s Hell at the aforementioned party, has found a way to reconcile his approach with the demands of his audience. “I’m a remix DJ,” said Regan. “Even if I do play Top 40, it’s not the original.” Still, Regan said his goal is to a find the “happy medium.” In terms of his priorities, he added, “I perform just so people can have a good time.”
COMMUNITAS ET VERITAS
On this point, all DJs seem to agree; they perform “just” so people have fun at parties. “The money is not the reason I DJ. It’s to have a good time and to put what I’ve practiced to good use and to make people happy. The money they pay me, I couldn’t care less about,” says Regan. “If people leave and say, ‘Wow, that was a great event,’ that’s all I care about. That’s it.” Zisiadis agreed, summing up his time as a DJ with the thought that, “as far as I see it, DJing is about creating a hugely positive experience for people. It’s about enabling them to have as a good a time as possible at parties.”
As with any form of community service, making the community happy is not necessarily easy. To explain the social maneuvering involved in DJing a good party, Thorn said, “[Y]ou have to be really conscious of how many people are dancing, who is coming in, and who is leaving. You have to make sure you don’t play too many of the popular songs until there are a good amount of people [on] the dance floor... You really have to learn how to gauge your audience.” This micromanagement amounts to an extended empathy; from noting who goes and who stays, Thorn adjusts his music according to what he believes they will like. While DJing, his entire focus is centered on maximizing his crowd’s happiness.
Zisiadis presents a more narrative view. “You take people through a journey the whole night, building up the music into peaks, bringing it back down, teasing the audience, and then bringing it back up into a marvelous climax.” Though Zisiadis may lack Thorn’s reserved sensitivity, it is clear that they are saying the same thing in two different languages. For both artists, the DJing act is one devoted to crowd pleasure.
In fact, argues experienced DJ and Harvard graduate student in ethnomusicology Sarah E. Hankins, “The ideal of a good DJ is that you are in a position of service to a crowd, to the taste of the crowd.” Hankins herself puts this idea into practice. “I DJ for the queer community and I never charge for those things because that’s my community,” she said. “[Those are] the people I want to show a good time, bring together, and unite... [I want to] strengthen the idea of a queer community as opposed to a bunch of people entering a club to drink, hook up, whatever." However, unlike other forms of service, DJing puts you in an empowered, controlling relationship with those you are trying to help. "You’re sort of a shaman in a secular ritual to bring people to a place of ecstasy.” This moment, she elaborated, embodies the term “communitas,” or an “über-community feeling: [the] feeling of in a moment being boundaryless, being connected to everyone around you. The DJ is trying to maintain that feeling, picking the right song at the right time to keep the crowd dancing at this moment of ecstatic communitas.”
SEEING THE (STROBE) LIGHT
If DJing is a service-based, rapture-seeking religion, it is also a proselytizing one. After speaking with Hsieh, he whipped out a flash drive, uploaded his latest playlist and $100 of DJ software, and handed it to me. “The more people that can play at parties the better,” he said. “I’m totally for people learning how to use the software themselves.” VanMiddlesworth himself started giving advice about how to get started, and nearly every DJ reported that they learned their art under the tutelage of an older, wiser, charitable DJing friend. For the sake of their art, and for the sake of good parties everywhere, student DJs take it upon themselves to continue spreading the good word in every way they can.
—Staff writer Alexander E. Traub can be reached at atraub@college.harvard.edu.