#13: DJ's are wizards, not shamans 🧙♂️
Dear Dancer, welcome to my news letter! I got invited past month to play at a theatre festival at Theater Utrecht. A dancer asked me and the team from Ecstatic Dance Utrecht to give a taste of the dance to her colleagues at the theatre. Ecstatic Dance inspired her theatre performance with which she is currently touring, and she wanted to connect these two worlds.
The dancer (Naomi, currently liberating the country through her performance Sexodus) gets interviewed by journalists alot, and she told me that she has a hard time talking to (some of) them whenever the subject got into meditation or spirituality. Talking about sex? Fine! About power? Sure! But whenever they got into matters of the spirit, faces would go blank and awkward, and it got harder to relate. So there is still a world to win out there for all of us who enable feelings to come into expression.
October was a bit too heavy with the personal circumstances, so I had to say no again a few times for November 😦. There is not many chances to dance with me left in 2027. But hope to see you soon, in Zutphen this Saturday maybe?
To the content!
DJ's are Wizards (not shamans)
One organiser called me a ‘Cosmic Shaman’ once. This was very flattering, although I think what I do is neither cosmic-because what does that even mean?- nor shamanic. It is something else…
Shamans tend to be a bridge between worlds, but two specific worlds: that of the mysterious world of spirits and nature and that of the human consciousness. And no matter how much I would like to be that bridge, as a dj my purpose is a bit more humble. We, dj’s, are a bridge, but an entirely different one. Dj’s are not shamans. We are wizards.
Shamans get their inspiration from the natural world. It is maybe more close to what a musician does: connecting to tangible reality, the heart, the body, and bringing it into direct expression through music. But wizards get their powers from another source: knowledge. Wizards have libraries full of magical books and scrolls, with which they cast spells that affect or transform reality. In other words: wizards deal with information. And that is more or less what dj’s do too. Our music collection is our library, the tracks in it are powerful transformative spells. Bear with me, skeptic reader...
Moreover, wizards tend to embrace technology as sa source of great power. Think of the stereotypical wizards like Merlin, Gandalf or bad boy Saruman: usually they have all kinds of trinkets in their lairs, from telescopes and crystal balls to magical weapons and. In the case of Saruman in Lord of the Rings there is even heavy industry with which he threatens to ruin an old-growth forest. This leaning on technology makes wizards potentially very powerful, but also harmful. As is also true for dj’s. Because in the same way that Saruman needs to exploit the natural world for his heavy industry to create a powerful army, the power of electronic music is also the power of colonizing and dominating technologies. DJ’s need expensive industrially produced hardware in order to do their thing: Computer, controller, sound system. Without this, we are nothing.
Moreover, we also need affordable music: we pay what, like 1-2 euro for a track on Bandcamp? A few coins for music that the producer poured many hours of effort in. Let alone the South American medicine woman, Bulgarian choir or African tribe that was sampled on the track, who might not get paid, and might not even know that their soul work is being used for a dancefloor. We, dj's however, have access to their powers through on cheap click on a button. These colonizing power structures of the internet is something that we as dj's, also depend on, which makes me want to just stop all this nonsense and do only drum circles from now on.
I have always found this to be the dark side of being a dj - I can’t do it without all these electronics. It makes me jealous of the shaman, or the musician, who don’t need all that many trinkets to transform a space. A guitar, tidy outfit, some soft lighting, and the setting is set! Furthermore, shamans and musicians seem to get their powers from a direct connection with nature. We wizards merely grab some information that imitates the real thing, and we need so much technology to do this! Aren't we a sad kind of craftsmen..
But no. With our imitations, we do create something entirely new, something powerful and awesome. We can set atmospheres, summon beats of every genre and melodies from every corner of the cosmos (oh so I am cosmic after all 🌠), and make dancers go through deep transformative journeys. And this has proven irrestible to me until this day, so I have to accept the double edged sword of being alive in one of the richest countries in the world today.
Musicians vs DJ's (but it is not a competition)
We do need a different skillset than the musician for our work. As a dj, you are more the conductor of an orchestra than one of the musicians. For a musical conductor, the performing past is actually (relatively) easy. But you can only be a good conductor if you back it up with a mountain of musical knowledge and experience. The same is true for the dj: the software and hardware nowadays is so well-evolved that learning simple technical basics is not that hard anymore. Most effort gets into learning the effect of music on a dancefloor.
For a musician, having good technique is one of the main skills: you need to play neatly. Musical knowledge is good, but playing well is more important. For a dj, this is the other way around. You are primarily a gatherer of information: you depend on your library, need to know it deeply and be able to access it. Perhaps this is why dj'ing attracts the nerdy types (although I have seen nerdy musicians everywhere so I don't know)
The main thing that (good) dj’s and musicians have in common are musical intuition: knowing music, its effect on a space with humans in it and, most important of all, the capacity to enjoy it. You can have perfect technique, but if you don’t enjoy yourself on stage then you will just not be as good as a musician who is a little less perfect but does have swagger on stage. The same goes for a dj: you need to be able to somehow embody the pleasure that music brings in order to actually be a good dj.
The archetypical DJ?
The comparison of a dj to a wizard also makes sense on a more mythical level (at least I like to think that). The wizard, in stories, is often an enabler of the hero, helping him on his transformational path. If the dancers are the heroes of their own stories, then the dj definitely is the wizard empowering them during a d. I really want to go deeper into the dj as a modern embodiment of some Jungian archetypes, but I will save that for another letter.
Just know that, as a child, I wanted to be Gandalf. And now I am a dj.
Let me know in the comment section what you make of this wizard story!
Music of the month
So, here is a shaman for you. Ayla Nereo is a highly creative and versatile musician/artist. I’ve learned about her from the collaborative project Starling Arrow (Bonus tip: end your set with Midnight Hum). Nereo blends a longing for connection with nature with embodied presence but also a little looping and flirting with electronic music. Not everything she makes is really for me but her versatility makes me bow in respect. This is her latest EP called The Flow, which I have been playing alot in my sets lately. The powerful chanting and humming has such a softening effect on the dancers.. Perfect for opening or closing a dance, or just building a restful moment after a big release.
If you don't see the player, listen on Bandcamp or Spotify.
Upcoming events
November
7 Ecstatic Dance Zutphen
17 Ecstatic Dance Amersfoort
December
4 Ecstatic Dance Utrecht
18 Ecstatic Dance Culemborg <- Let op: another 'wizard' might replace me here
Download this set
Last week in Utrecht. I Opened with Ayla Nereo's Sunna here so I couldn't go wrong. There is some debate going on though whether that big third peak was really necessary. I doubted in the moment and discussed with Lâle, the ceremony leader. We went for it anyway. The mosh pit approved, did the rest of the dancers? I'm not sure..
Download here!
Thank you for reading. You can reply or comment, I always answer 🧙
