Chi Phi Gig No.2

Last night was my second time officially DJ'ing for Chi Phi at Oglethorpe, and it very well might be my last. See, despite the fact that the first time I DJ'ed there everyone seemed to like me playing the type of music I play, this time very few people were dancing, largely because the average person there seemed to want me to play hip-hop exclusively, which I obviously don't have. Although I did end up playing for over two hours, I gave up around 11:30, agreeing with the fraternity brother in charge that it would be better for him to just put on an iTunes mix of rap songs.

While this wasn't my worst gig of the thirteen I've done in my short DJ'ing career (that honor goes to the time I spun at the Haagse Hogeschool's bar, The Pub), it certainly came close. While people were mostly fairly nice about me not playing hip-hop, it did become frustrating over time to keep letting people down and not much dancing. In the end, there was only one kinda bitchy girl who essentially said the following: "can't you play something that people can dance to without being on ecstasy, you know, something with words?" Although I was decently nice to her, this pissed me off a good bit, largely due to how wrong she was about what I was playing. First off, almost EVERYTHING I played had words. Second, everything I played was easy to dance to if you know how to dance beyond hip-hop. And finally, NONE of what I played required being on ecstasy to get into. In fact, I was totally sober!

Some other people were asking me to play "black-people music" to which I also got a bit inwardly frustrated considering at least half of the music I play was either produced or performed by black people. Add to this the fact that house (which is what I mainly play) came from black culture in Chicago and Detroit and you've got one frustrated DJ. Ultimately, I think last night is going to be the turning point forcing me to decide to either move to a city with a real dance scene (like San Francisco, Miami, New York, Chicago, or LA) or to quit entirely. I just don't know what to do any more. I suppose I could give promoting myself to the few real dance clubs in Atlanta one more shot (despite already having done so in a fairly serious way), but I'm starting to feel really powerless here in a city that doesn't know how to dance without having air-sex and pretending to be badass thugs...