Authenticity and Liveness in Digital DJ Performance

This chapter explores the DJ as a mediating, mediated and mediatized performer in electronic dance music in order to assess digital DJ performance in relation to audience expectations. The DJ (Disc Jockey) is understood here as a performer who not only plays existing music recordings but who creates a musical journey for their audiences through a selection, programmed to fit the mood of the crowd and the overall context of the event. In this way, the DJ operates as a type of curator and performing composer, (Rietveld, 2011, 2013a). Katz (2012: 33) further distinguishes performative DJs, or turntablists, “who treat their turntables more like musical instruments than playback devices”, while Fikentscher (2003: 290) defines “the club deejay (as) a pioneering force transforming the relationship between music as defined by performance and music conceptualized as authoritative text”. Hereby, the studio is the compositional tool, the turntable the instrument and studio produced music is (re)presented by the DJ. In the context of digitalization, this chapter, will address the blurring between studio music production, remixing, DJ-ing and music performance, from which a performative digital musicianship has emerged that is indicated here as the ‘digital DJ’. It thereby assesses innovative musical and communicative skills employed by the digital DJ to achieve effective, transformative, interaction with their participating audience.