Academics discuss changing role of DJ

When not studying and working on her doctorate, Larisa Mann is busy spinning beats as DJ Ripley.

Mann, along with several other academics and professionals from around the country, gathered Friday to discuss the changing art and culture of the DJ.

The speakers were part of the “Festival on the Hill” event during the Collaborations: Humanities, Arts & Technology festival.

Speakers used Powerpoints, pictures, video clips and music clips to demonstrate how hip-hop culture has evolved around the world to a small crowd Friday afternoon in Hyde Hall.

Dance, music and specifically DJs have become part of many different cultures worldwide. Comparing the Filipino DJ experience to the Jamaican street dance scene, the panel opened by analyzing how different cultures have incorporated hip-hop.

Mann, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, talked about the street dance culture in Jamaica.

“Music is humans being creative together interactively in a dynamic social process. At least, that’s how I’ve come to feel about it,” Mann said.

During the seven months that she spent in Jamaica, Mann said she discovered how Jamaican street culture created a participatory experience.

She explained how artists would use each other’s “riddims,” or instrumental backgrounds, and record their own vocals over them.

She said this system created an important familiarity in Jamaican music as the population generally shares their riddims instead of copyrighting them.

Oliver Wang, an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach and long-time DJ, discussed the impact of DJs on the Filipino-American population in California’s San Francisco Bay area.

He said that for Filipino Americans, DJing was a way to come together. It gave the population something with which they could identify.

“It was a shared social experience in an environment designed to foster unity and connection,” Wang said.


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