THIS STARTED as a twit on Twitter last week that segued to Facebook and it opened up a very interesting exchange of ideas and particularly opinions mostly contrasting some concurring, including silly and stupid ones.
Well, it was my twit and unfortunately for them and fortunately for me I still have the last say, hence this column. By the way, the repartee on Facebook was fun, nothing “road” or untoward.
The political scene seems boring anyway, the usual whining cry babies of the “devotees to the cult of the yellow ribbon”, Leni Robredo hanging precariously to the vice presidency by her “wet” yellow knickers.
A bit of good news though. Kaya FC Iloilo once more trounced Davao Aguilas FC at the Iloilo Sports Complex with a score of 2-1, making Kaya undefeated at home. And let’s segue (pun intended) to the topic at hand…
From that free online encyclopedia a.k.a. the internet:
Musician – a person who plays a musical instrument, especially as a profession, or is musically talented
Disc jockey – often abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays existing recorded music for a live audience. Most common types of DJs include radio DJ, club DJ who performs at a nightclub or music festival, and turntablist who uses record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records. Originally, the “disc” in “disc jockey” referred to gramophone records, but now “DJ” is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files on a CDJ or laptop. The title “DJ” is commonly used by DJs in front of their real names or adopted pseudonyms or stage names.
In my book, a disc jockey or DJ is not a musician. I don’t believe, as most of you do, that playing other people’s music in vinyl records on turntables qualifies one as a musician.
Check out Mr. Webster’s definition above and see if it fits, and compare it with the definition of a disc jockey and you will see that there is no resemblance at all; both totally different animals.
It’s like comparing aesthetically Mae Paner aka “Juana Change” and Jover Laurio with Agot Isidro and Mocha Uson; the first two are definitely not beautiful while the next two are in terms of aesthetics only.
Of course, we are not here to discuss which of the four above mentioned females have “beautiful personalities”; we are just comparing them at face and body value in the same manner we are comparing or looking for similarities between a disc jockey and a musician.
By popular and common knowledge, a disc jockey’s weapon of choice is the turntable and unless by some weird quirk it is suddenly classified as a musical instrument then a DJ is a musician. Until then, they are not.
From PASSIONATE DJ.com:
A DJ is simply someone who plays pre-recorded music to an audience… that’s it. Just like a photographer is simply someone who takes still pictures with a camera.
DJs can be musicians; they are just not musicians inherently. You don’t need to be a musician to be a DJ, but some musicians are. Can it help? Certainly, it’s just not a prerequisite.
And from /www.quora.com:
Are DJs musicians? At what point does musicianship ends and knob twiddling begins? How is remixing/mashing up a track composed of other tracks creating new music?
A DJ is not a musician; you are merely a track selector and mixer. It does require a great deal of practice and some precision as does playing an instrument but one does not imply the other. Musicians can certainly be DJs and vice versa, but composing music/playing it as opposed to “just” mixing is totally different.
There was a comment on my twit that said disc jockeys are musicians as they are now giving Grammy Awards for them. For the uninitiated or those living under a rock, the Grammy Awards are the music industry’s version of the Oscars.
While it may be true that the Grammys have a specific category for disc jockeys, it still does not qualify them as musicians. Take note the Grammy Awards also have specific categories for record producers, sound engineers, album cover designers to name a few, yet nowhere does it say that these automatically make these technicians musicians.
And the same goes for the disc jockey. At best they’re just sound engineers just because they’re good in splicing together other people’s recorded music. Using a laptop or a turntable does not make them musicians.
Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix and Jaco Pastorius are musicians while Tiesto, Avicii and the Swedish House Mafia are not.
Calling these disc jockeys as musicians is like saying the house painter is an artist. Pablo Picasso must be turning over in his grave. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
