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My Guam djing experience....
(I'm posting this in a few message boards, I figure it's a decent read...)
So, I get a chance to play at Guam's top club hands down. The capacity of the place is 1400, they have 3 cdj-1000's, a high end sound system + lighting, projection screens everywhere, and a just comfortable all around.
Well...thanks to the MTV, top 40, BET crowd, that came along with us in masses it just messed everything up.
I played in the club earlier so the resident djs could hear what I had to offer. They liked it and assured me when the Japanese, Korean, etc tourist would come in that they would like that. The way the music was going to be played was I was going to do that electronic/house/dance type of stuff and they would take care of the hip hop. No prob, we thought it would work out great.
So, I'm about to play and have a look at the crowd and see it is overwhelmed by the Americans from the other ships. Initially, I said fuck it and played some more vocal stuff that was on the gritty side. Guess what...shit didn't work out. Through out the night the resident djs still wanted me to play, but the floor was not changing. People wanted to hear gangster rap, with the little hip hop thrown in, or something they were familiar with. I threw in the towel and thanked them for at least giving me the opportunity to play for the amount of time I did(20minutes).
People came up to me afterwards who were in the minority of actually liking dance music and thanked me for trying to change it up and complaining of the crowds lack of diversity for quality music that you can actually dance to and not do the: spiderman, superman, soldier boy, etc type of wack ass movements which are done for this type of music.
It really got good when this other "dj" of 12+ years came up to me and was telling me how to dj dance music for "that" type of crowd. I told him if people only want to hear gangster rap + hip hop, you can't change them. First he says..you should of eased into it. The first track I played had a reggae type of rhythm that went into the house music, so it doesn't get much easier than that. Then he tells me I should of played "Sandstorm"...are you fucking kidding me! Wow...I almost lost it, but he bought me a drank so I continued to talk with him. Apparently he was one of Hawaii's top dj's, but um...maybe for a top 40 club because he told me he played like every single genre from hip hop, dnb, house, blah...
What a night...
What are your thoughts of playing house music to a crowd only set on gangster rap + hip hop. I think it can't be done, even if playing remixed shit because they want to do the fucking superman all the damn time and just jump around and act like fools and not actually dance.
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http://www.raymond-enrique.com
myspace.com/dj_raymond_enrique
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