Why I’m Not a DJ Too
I miss the rage. Club culture is dead; so are house parties. ‘365PARTYGIRL’ is being screamed out car windows by half sober girls going 30 on a 40. Everyone has a DJ board, including me. But no one is dancing. Maybe it’s for fear of looking stupid or having too much fun. Or maybe, it’s the fear of letting someone else take the wheel.
Everyone is a PartyGirl– there’s been a striking rise in club music. Charli XCXs ‘brat’ pill has seemingly been slipped to all neighboring pop girls. Pure-bred pop girls can be found raising Vodka-Cran’s above their heads behind a DJ board at a Boiler Room-esque location in New York, or LA, or London, or Berlin. And when you look into the sea of people who have probably paid a $50 minimum to be there, they’re not dancing. Just a nod of the head. A raising of a solo cup. A flash of a camera. Music is magic made to move you– and yet we’re not moving.
Image Credit: Pinterest
@DaniOffline writes in her essay “Everyone wants to be a DJ, no one wants to dance”on the “seductive title of an ‘artist.’ An aura of mystery, genius, and importance surrounds the word.” Dani draws back to a 2015 ‘The Atlantic’ essay by Debbie Chachra, wherein Chachra bites at “maker culture,” saying “I’m uncomfortable with any culture that encourages you take on an entire identity, rather than to express a facet of your own identity ("maker," rather than "someone who makes things").” It is easier than ever to be an artist right now. The artist's “lifestyle” is one of the most coveted of the 2020s– most coveted ‘aesthetics.’ To be an artist is to be cool, edgy, unique. To own every single room you step in. The “artist” is always in control.
Miami culture is pretty club heavy. When you ask a non-native, they may call E11EVEN, or LIV, or SPACE the pillars of Miami. But are clubs the pillars, or the DJs? After asking a few of my DJ friends why they started DJ’ing, I noticed a common answer:
“I want to share.”
DJ Hunter Steel x DJ 8DHD at ARTHAUS
Hunter Steel, Miami-based DJ, says “there is so much competition that other DJ’s don’t want to support [one another],when [DJ’ing] should be a community, not a competition.” I think this idea, competition over community, has infiltrated our society so deeply that we, inadvertently, are rejecting the idea of supporting one another– of being free of judgement of one another.
Individualism has murdered the dance floor. Authority is valued over community.
I find myself in constant conversation about lack of community– that being said, I am not holier than thou, should there ever be a dance floor, I am seldom on it. Kate Solomon from Monocle says “Given that they [Gen-Z] came of age during successive lockdowns and were thrust into a world in which they can’t afford to go out, how can we expect Gen Z to know what to do in a club once they get there?” It seems like the chips are stacked against Gen-Z clubbers.
To have a village, you must be a villager. I write this blog as a plea, to you as well as myself. Support your DJ friends! Dance with your friends, create with them. Live in the moment– let the smoke machine fog-juice fill your lungs, and the strobe lights take you away. Let your metaphorical hair down, and frat-boy-flick till the cows come home. Authority does not trump community. Nothing beats a good night out with your girls (or your boys, or your NBs) and the DJ you just “keep meeting like this.”
Strike Out,
Anett Martin Sosa
Miami
Cuban-American writer Anett Martin Sosa is a Senior student at Florida International University, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Writing & Rhetoric, with plans to pursue a Master’s degree in Copywriting. She writes short stories, poems, personal essays, and columns about fashion, art, Miami, and the human experience. She is most influenced by David Lynch, Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, and surrealist art, and she explores all on her Substack blog, under the handle @neoprncss.
