Groove Music by Katz Mark

Author:Katz, Mark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cities and the American Revolution
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2012-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

FROM THE BASEMENT TO THE STAGE: A PORTRAIT OF A BATTLE SEASON

To understand the preparation required of the most dedicated battlers, let’s follow an American DJ in the months before a national competition in the mid-1990s. The story is a composite, drawing on and extrapolating from the experiences of a variety of battlers active at the time. I take this approach rather than simply reporting second-hand in order to communicate the visceral intensity of the battler’s life, from the months of relentless preparation at home to the mere minutes onstage, where a single routine can shape a DJ’s life for years to come.

June, 1994: Our battler is a man in his mid-twenties living in a medium-sized city on the East Coast. DJ X, as we’ll call him, has been DJing for nearly a decade and battling for four years.40 He works at a local copy shop to make ends meet, but he only works part-time so he can prepare for battles. As battle champion DJ Slyce has said, “You gotta work constantly on your routine[s], don’t think you can win while doing five other jobs. You gotta focus.”41 X has just returned from a national battle, having earned a spot by winning the preliminary regional battle in May. He’s not unhappy with his performance—he made it to the second round—but he knows he can do better. May and June were exhausting, so he enjoys some down time in July and just gets on the decks long enough every day to keep from getting stiff.

During this down time, X spends countless hours studying videotapes of battles. He wants to familiarize himself with the strengths and weaknesses of potential competitors, and to draw inspiration for his routines. DJ Swamp did the same, watching eight years’ worth of DJ battles in preparation for the 1996 DMC US finals in San Francisco. (Swamp is the Cleveland DJ who surprised everyone by beating heavily-favored battlers from the X-Men and the Beat Junkies.) When he would see a move that impressed him, he would ask himself, “Now, how can I take that to the next level?” For example, he saw Shortkut beat juggle with one turntable going forward and one going backwards: “So that’s why [in the 1996 DMC battle] I did both in reverse, so I could one-up it,” Swamp says. His “homework,” as he called it, paid off. His final routine, a catalog of next-level moves, stunned the crowd and impressed the judges; no one had expected him to win.42 Swamp’s success in San Francisco gave a huge boost to his career; among other things, rock musician Beck invited him to be his DJ on tour and for his next album. This is the kind of success story that drives battlers, and it is this kind of success our DJ X dreams about during these long months of study and practice.

August arrives, and DJ X is ready to create some new routines. He likes to have a single song at the core of a

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