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"Turntablism"
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer. The word 'turntablist', Turntablism was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer to manipulate sound. The new term co-occurred with a resurgence of the art of hip hop style DJing in the nineties:"Turntablism".
The appearance of turntablists and the birth of turntablism was prompted by one major factor - the disappearance of the DJ in hip hop groups, on records and in live shows at the turn of the 1990s. This disappearance has been widely documented in books and documentaries (such as Black Noise and Scratch The Movie), and was linked to the increased use of DAT tapes and other studio techniques that would ultimately push the DJ further away from the original hip hop equation of the MC as the vocalist and the DJ as the music provider alongside the producer. This push and disappearance of the DJ meant that the practices of the DJ, such as scratching, went back underground and were cultivated and built upon by a generation of people who grew up with hip hop, DJs and scratching. By the mid-90s the disappearance of the DJ in hip hop had created a sub-culture which would come to be known as turntablism and which focused entirely on the DJ utilizing his turntables and a mixer to manipulate sounds and create music. By pushing the practice of DJing away, hip hop created the grounds for this sub-culture to evolve. Turntablism.
The origin of the terms turntablist and turntablism are widely contested and argued about, though over the years some facts have been established by various documentaries (Battlesounds, Doug Pray's Scratch), books (DJ Culture), conferences (Skratchcon 2000) and interviews in online and printed magazines. These facts are that the origins of the words most likely lay with practitioners on the US West Coast, centered around the San Francisco Bay Area. Some claim that DJ Disk, a member of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, was the first to coin the term, others claim that DJ Babu, a member of the Beat Junkies, was responsible for coining and spreading the term turntablist, Turntablism after inscribing it on his mixtapes and passing them around. Another claim credits DJ Supreme, 1991 World Supremacy Champion and DJ for Lauryn Hill. The truth most likely lies somewhere in between all these facts. Turntablism.
In an interview with the Spin Science online resource in 2005, DJ Babu added the following comments about the birth and spread of the term, Turntablism:
“ "It was around 95, I was heavily into the whole battling thing, working on the tables constantly, mastering new techniques and scratches, and all the while working in a gas station and spending my spare time concentrating on all these things. One day I made this mixtape called 'Comprehension', and on there was a track called 'Turntablism' which featured Melo-D and D-Styles. And this is part of where this whole thing about turntablist came from. This was a time where all these new techniques were coming out, like flares and stuff, and there were probably 20 people or so, in around California between Frisco and LA, who knew about these. So we worked on them, talked about it and kicked about the ideas that these techniques and new ways of scratching gave us. And what I would do is write 'Babu the Turntablist' on tapes I was making at the time, and somehow it got out a bit, the media got hold of it and it blew into this whole thing we now know. But it was really nothing to start with. We'd all talk about these new scratches and how they really started to allow us to use the turntable in a more musical way, how it allowed us to do more musical compositions, tracks, etc. and then we'd think about how people who play the piano are pianists, and so we thought "we're turntablists in a way, because we play the turntable like these people do the piano or any other instrument". Beyond that, it was just me writing 'Babu the Turntablist', because it was something I did to make my tapes stand out. I'd just get my marker pen out and write it on there." ”
So by the mid to late 1990s the terms turntablism and turntablist had become established and accepted to define the practice and practitioner of using turntables and a mixer to create or manipulate sounds and music. This could be done by scratching a record or manipulating the rhythms on the record either by drumming, looping or beat juggling. Turntablism.
The decade of the 1990s is also important in shaping the turntablist artform and culture as it saw the emergence of pioneering artists (D-Styles, DJ Q-Bert, DJ Quest, DJ Krush, A-Trak, Ricci Rucker, Mike Boo, Prime Cuts) and crews (Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters, Beat Junkies, The Allies, X-Ecutioners), record labels (Asphodel), DJ Battles (DMC, ITF) and the evolution of scratching and other turntablism practices. Turntablism.
Visual turntablism is a more recent phenomenon in which "visual turntablists", or "VJs", incorporate pictures, video, and computer generated effects into their live performances utilizing a separate video mixer in combination with their turntablist equipment. It can contain visuals without the audio being necessarily directly associated or synchronized turntablism.
Like many other musical instrumentalists, Turntablism, turntablists compete to see who can develop the fastest, most innovative and most creative approaches to their instrument. The selection of a champion comes from the culmination of battles between turntablists.
Turntablism Battling involves each turntablist performing a routine (A combination of various technical scratches, beat juggles, and other elements, including body tricks) within a limited time period, after which the routine is judged by a panel of experts. The winner is selected based upon score. These organized competitions evolved from actual old school "battles" where DJs challenged each other at parties, and the "judge" was usually the audience, who would indicate their collective will by cheering louder for the DJ they thought performed turntablism better. Often, the winner kept the loser's equipment and/or records.
The DMC World DJ Championships has been hosted for 22 years. There are separate competitions for solo DJs and DJ teams, the title of World Champion being bestowed on the winners of each. They also maintain a turntablism hall of fame.
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