A Brief History of DJ-ing

DJs have become an indispensable part of the world’s nightlife, but where did the ‘disc jockey’ come from? Was it born in the roots of hiphop, or did it all start with the radio DJ? Our resident DJ expert Marc van den Hurk dives into a little slice of DJ history.

Martin Block: News & Records

If we skip all the way back to the beginning, way before the festival DJs of the current era, we come to the radio studio. While we now have two kinds of DJ, the radio DJ and the mix DJ, the general term ‘disc jockey’ was first thought up by the American radio presenter, Walter Winchell. Walter started his radio career at WABC in 1930 in New York. His show famously featured a 15 minute segment in which he reported the current business news. He didn’t come up with the term ‘disc jockey’ to refer to himself, but to Martin Block (below), who laid the foundations for the radio show as we know it today: a news outlet with records played in between. A jockey usually rides racing horses, while the disc jockey was someone who controlled vinyl playback equipment – riding the records, as it were.

A Brief History of DJ-ing

Ray Newby & Jimmy Savile: From the Basement to the Stage

So, looking at just the name of the art of DJ-ing, we find its origins in commercial radio. And if we stay in this arena, then you could say that Ray Newby was actually the first ever disc jockey – and he existed way before the term disc jockey had even been dreamt up. In 1903, Newby was sitting in his basement in California sending music out from his little short-wave transmitter. Of course, he didn’t have much range so his show had only a handful of listeners, but it was only actually a few decades later that, across the pond, the first club DJ emerged. This was none-other-than the now discredited radio and television presenter Jimmy Savile. In 1943, Savile was the first person to step out of the radio studio and onto a stage. He would organise parties in the small town of Otley where he would play jazz records. He later claimed that he was the first ever DJ to play with two turntables, but as you might have guessed, this has never been proved.

Grasso & DJ Kool Herc: Modern DJs

If we look at the equipment involved in DJ-ing, then we should maybe look at the first ever DJ mixer, which was built by Alex Rosner in 1971 in response to a request from Francis Grasso, who was the DJ in-residence at The Haven club. In turn, Grasso has since been credited as the godfather of modern DJ-ing. Running parallel to this story is the emergence of hiphop DJs in the ‘70s. Instead of killing each other on the streets, some New York gang members were battling with music. Being able to quickly create mixes using two turntables and pulling tricks out of your setup was a must, and one of the forerunners in the quickly-growing art was DJ Kool Herc from the Bronx. The new approach essentially transformed the turntable into a musical instrument.

A Brief History of DJ-ing

House Music

If we’re looking for the founders of DJ-ing, then we also need to look at Chicago in the early ‘80s, where Francis Nicholls, better known as Frankie Knuckles, was forced by necessity to start manipulating old ‘70s disco records and ended up developing an entirely new genre of music: house. It was necessary to manipulate the records so they didn’t sound like disco anymore, which had been made an outcast by the ‘disco sucks’ movement – to the point where record labels were refusing to release disco records and some clubs even forbade disco music. Gradually, the beats got tighter, partly thanks to the introduction of drum machines, and the style of mixing also changed as a result. At the same time, the production style evolved away from the more complex song-like structure of disco to become something more repetitive. A new DJ mixing style also started to develop around this time, when you suddenly couldn’t tell if one track had finished and a new one had started.

What’s It All About?

Between then and now, DJ tech has evolved dramatically. Most DJs now work exclusively with digital music, whether it’s mp3 or WAV files, while vinyl still enjoys a loyal but less prevalent following. Also, you can now easily combine the best of both worlds. Since Stanton first released Final Scratch in 1998, they cornered a market and made it possible for DJs to playback mp3s while performing their skills with real vinyl. This is what’s referred to as DVS (Digital Vinyl System). But while the technology has changed, the basics haven’t: whether you’re talking about a radio DJ, club DJ or hiphop DJ and whether they work with digital or analogue music, the foundations have remained the same – so it’s still all about playing back tracks to a live audience. I’m curious about where DJ-ing will go from here and really hope it’s going to be surprising.

What do you think? Has Dj-ing gone as far as it can go? Or are there more exciting developments on the horizon? Share your thoughts in the comments.