With Music Tech, DJs Once Changed the Dancefloor. Now the Dancefloor Changes the DJ.

A dimly lit, yellow-like room of upward steps followed the red noise and smoke sneaking from the door at the top left of the stairs. Looking to your right side, a wall horizontally mirrored the reflection of your pre-gamed face; you weren’t yet drunk, and *you looked totally hot. We were ready to dance to Carly Rae Jepsen and Charli XCX songs that ignited the neon pink and green dance floor of Heaven on Earth, *before recently a monthly party in Downtown Manhattan.

The music’s sound got louder as you passed another table with one single rose plopped in a vase next to a tattoo artist. A random hand with rainbow-colored nails scratched the leather of the person wearing it and walking in front of you. And finally, there it was—the infamous, corridor-ed back room, where the songs vibrated in your brain and the air was a one-night love filled with cigarettes. An initial, tiny square of celebration suddenly became so much more than anyone imagined.

A queer space that’s also dominated by queer-identifying DJs isn’t as private or underground as it used to be. It’s an atmosphere that welcomes its community, providing a home to the night owls of tomorrow—a chosen home they feel accepted to return to. DJing, plus a number of its specific technicalities: Trends, playlist curation, gig hosting and nightlife in general—especially regarding the LGBTQ+ crowd that it so often serves—has evolved. And it all starts with the flickering-wrist of the artist watching from behind the scenes.

“Playing house—[a genre of electronic music]—and disco has been very important to my identity as a 40-something queer person [now],” said disk jockey Jd Samson. “I was born in the age of disco; I heard it on the radio. My parents listened to it, and it was that rhythm that seeped into my consciousness as a kid. I grew to learn the roots of disco and house—being relative to the queer movements of their time—and [I] spend a lot of time appreciating, and in some ways reigniting that energy of being in a room together. Safe and sweaty, we share that space and we share it with joy.”

But even today—in a music world filled with more playlists, variety and originality—Jd’s entire library still is almost completely house or disco. “I don't play much new music at all,” Samson says. “I [might] play re-edits or sample-based tracks that have been made more recently. I started to lose touch with the present trends and gave up on wanting to follow them. I stopped wanting to be cool or keep up.”

Every DJ has their own practice, though—according to Samson, being a DJ now can mean a million things: “Some people may think it has moved from song selector that knows what they are doing on the equipment, to an artist who is playing their own material.” Yet, each DJ’s technique and come-up is also their own.

Enter: Ty Sunderland—popular for DJing his own iconically produced and hosted, New York-originated parties: *Heaven on Earth, Love Prism, Gayflower*. As a queer-identifying DJ, his set’s resources have expanded by the likes of rising, LGBTQ+ pop stars.

“There’s so many queer artists out there that we’re finding on Spotify, or on the internet,” Sunderland says. “You play Kim Petras for a queer crowd and most of the room knows all the words. It’s amazing having pop stars part of the LGBTQ+ community.” He contrasts his technical craft from playing for a queer crowd versus one that’s not: “I can play much deeper cuts—[basically, a less-commercialized or radio-played song] for queer crowds. When I’m a gay DJ playing for a straight crowd, I can pretty much only play Top 40—no B-sides or lesser-known singles.”

In terms of a DJ’s tools to rave, Sunderland says, for him, it all depends on the gig. For pop gigs and open format, he uses Traktor—a *Native Instrument *software for DJs—on his laptop, aided with a Traktor controller. If it’s a house music set, he just uses a Compact Disc Jockey, or CDJ, that a club provides. CDJs are blueprinted to be able to play files of music digitally compacted via a USB flash drive or SD card.

“I learned on a controller and I still use one half the time,” Sunderland continues. “There’s so many software you can easily download and learn the basics [of DJing] on.” Ty’s mission when actually curating and readying a playlist for before a set revolves around ideas of nostalgia and escapism pop; he exclaims Dua Lipa as an example artist who is putting out “uplifting, disco pop music.” He also points to the future of queer DJing and socializing itself, highlighting the return of destination parties.

“There’s a new wave of what I guess circuit parties started out as, but not circuit music,” Sunderland says. He uses next month’s Backdoor XL for instance, a queer music festival happening in Mexico City in February. “The lineup isn’t circuit music, but the concept of going to a foreign country to party is very circuit-y. I’d love to see more of those big parties that donate proceeds to nonprofits give to smaller organizations; there’s a lot of orgs helping those in our community who could really use the funds and exposure.”

Alex Chapman has DJ’d for Charli XCX and Kim Petras, among other pop-queen legends. LA-based, he’s also more-recently noted for his SoundCloud “THAT’S SO GAY” mix for Billboard, which he made in June of 2019—featuring tracks like Cher’s “Believe” and Destiny’s Child, “Lose My Breath” (Yung Death Ray Remix). Chapman first started DJing in New York during college: “[I was] just using Virtual DJ in my friends’ dorm rooms,” he said.

“I worked for a promoter/DJ for a bit—he’d pay me to bring friends to the club. I asked if I could DJ before him one night and he let me; I started getting gigs because venues knew I could bring people.”

Alex Chapman started his own weekly party, and started producing events, too—both of which he would DJ at—and it personified the modernized idea of what being a DJ today has become. Ty Sunderland told me that as a disc jockey in this age, you have to not only be a DJ: “To make it and maintain your bookings, you’re also an influencer, a music producer and/or an event producer,” Sunderland says.

“I think the secret is out, in the sense that [DJing] has been demystified a bit,” Chapman says. “You can DJ from an app on your phone and it’ll sound like you’re using CDJs and Serato: [self-dubbed the “world’s best DJ software”]. You don't need to follow the old rules as far as format and presentation.” Plus, he says, everything about a queer DJ’s space is operating at a greater volume.

“Queer artists are not just niche artists anymore—a lot of them are reaching mainstream. That success points attention to emerging queer artists. So now, what I'm doing isn't as specific.”

The similar goes for Amber Valentine, a DJ who says forecasting the future of queer nightlife is pretty impossible—but within its evolution, will always be a space that can continue to improve in inclusion.

“I love seeing DJ lineups that are not only more inclusive of but more driven & led by womyn, queers & QTPOC,” Valentine said. “I would love to see more underground spots open up with wildly diverse lineups and crowds.” Drawing inspiration from gems of the past—and nightclubs like Paradise Garage, The Loft, and Studio 54—Valentine says that her identity and its part in her DJ career is to not only create, but also add to a queer space.

“Queer [DJ] space to me is synonymous with "dance space" at this point,” Valentine says. “I remember being a kid in church and finding real comfort in the thought that I would see all of these people week after week and that we had that space to connect and share. Music was my favorite part of church. Though it’s not the same thing, queer nightlife spaces kind of occupy a similar space to me—we see people week after week and connect and share through the music.”

Valentine describes DJing and nightlife—especially queer—as one with its own language, aided with a way of expression and cultural reference. She says the outside world’s idea of what is sexy, beautiful, interesting or exciting is often super incongruous to what is set up both individually and collectively in these spaces. And for her, the most important thing DJing has brought her is friendship, as well as connection in and around queer spaces.

“Sometimes after I’m done with a gig, I will stop in at a different party across town in the middle of the night, just for like 15 minutes,” she says. “[I’ll] check in and connect with friends, share a few hugs, get into the music and have a quick twirl on the dancefloor before I go home! These spaces are invaluable to us as queer people in the world; we need them.”

Of the DJs I talked to, it’s clear that being a DJ in 2020 is not like what it used to be—nightlife has evolved, queer club scenes are way more mainstream, and beginning a DJ career—a queer one, at that—comes with an accessibility that once didn’t easily exist. Technology has made it so that one person can spark a crowded room with a simple sync to Bluetooth and a catchy Spotify or SoundCloud playlist. Yet, that’s the one question remaining: *What is the perfect, queer party’s playlist? *

According to Amber Valentine, such an immaculate group of songs might include “Catch The Beat”, by Honey Dijon and featuring Cakes Da Killa. Ty Sunderland undeniably mentions Britney Spears or Rihanna, and Jd Samson stans Cajmere, Kenny Dope, and Patrice Rushen among others. It’s the combination of old-school and new music—and a mixture of pop idols with a newer generation of singers we listen to today—that all help bring to life the energy that these DJs and more work hard to exhume. Their dedication, concentrated passion and skill in mixing, judging a room and being able to tell what will or won’t work—and then, being quick to adapt to a said crowd that isn’t vibing—takes a lot of patience, time and commitment. And this isn’t without fact that the queer parties we so eagerly wait to buy tickets for—for example, Ladyfag’s once-a-year, Brooklyn-based Pride party called LadyLand Festival—would not be what they are, or have become, without the DJs and producers that have inhabited their sets since the beginning.

“Things have changed,” Jd Samson says. “We have grown. Spaces have grown. But for the most part, we have splintered into so many sub-demographics within 'Queer', that each community has its own experience of nightlife and DJing, and the shifting of each. As a white cis genderqueer lesbian, I moved from playing whatever I wanted on vinyl to being a total codependent crowd-pleaser with mainstream hits—then, to refining my own purpose as a DJ as I looked deeper at my intention.”

For Samson, she has maintained a steady and popular club night for seven years—one that’s free and allows DJs to play whatever they want. It’s this power of creative control and in-exclusivity that she hopes to give to anyone that attends and plays her parties; Jd Samson says it encompasses what the queer community deserves: “Freedom.”

Lead image: An illustration of a DJ playing a rainbow-branded turntable. Credit: Aaron Fernandez.