2.1. GCSE Art assessment

Unlike music, GCSE Art & Design escaped the move towards examination by written assessment. The assignment requires that the student submits a self-directed portfolio (60%) and a response to an externally set brief (40%). The assessment outcomes are:

The externally set assignment requires that the student responds to a brief or stimulus within a supervised ‘10 hour sustained focus period’. The briefs are broad and fit into three possible categories: Theme, Visual Assignment or Written Brief. Some example themes given are ‘outside’, ‘fragile forms’, ‘narrative’ and ‘emotional’. Visual assignment is a creative response to a series of given images. Examples of the written briefs are ‘respond to a journey’, ‘play with scale’ and ‘explore dereliction and deterioration’.

The specification states that it

Students must ‘use drawing to support the development process within each chosen area of study’. However, ‘students are not required to demonstrate technical mastery of drawing skills unless this is relevant to their area of study’. Rough drawings can be used to document and detail artistic intention and process. These can support or be supported by written statements.

3.1. DJing as an instrument

Drawing on previous work including Broughton and Brewster, Katz, and Pershould, Sophy Smith (Reference Smith2013) lays out a broad history of turntables being used as a compositional device. She quotes commentators discussing the gramophone’s place as a musical instrument from as early as 1911, showing it was a live debate even then. She then goes on to detail its use by composers such as Ernst Toch in the 1920s, new music composers John Cage and Pierre Schafer, dub reggae sound systems in Jamaica, New York club DJs such as Francis Grasso, Larry Levan and Walter Gibbons, and hip-hop innovators from the 1970s to the present day. The term ‘turntablist’ was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to make a distinction between those who just ‘play music’ and those who ‘manipulate sound and create music’ (Gragg 1999 cited in Smith Reference Smith2013). Smith divides key turntablist techniques into three categories:

Mark Butler has defined a set of ‘musical technologies’. These are not the machines themselves but ‘principles of design that facilitate the kinds of actions that characterize improvised performance in Electronic Dance Music’ (Butler Reference Butler2014: 44). These principles are defined as ‘repeating, cycling, going, grooving, riding, transitioning, and flowing’. There is not enough space here to define these individually, but together they provide a taxonomy for working with pre-defined materials that is more relevant to EDM contexts than hip-hop turntablism.

Smith signposts the release of the Technics 1100 in 1980, and even more significantly its successor, the 1200 MK2 in 1984, as significant developments, as they were the first turntables ‘to meet the creative and technical needs of the DJ’. In their ‘application as an instrument rather than merely a reproductive device, the Technics turntables would change the shape of music history’ (Smith Reference Smith2013: 113). Published in 2013, developments in digital DJing are broadly viewed as positive by the turntable teams that Smith interviews, who use the technologies to expand the possibilities of their existing skill set via DVS (vinyl records that are imprinted with timecode so that digital files can be controlled with an interface that feels like a turntable). Hip-hop turntablists have incorporated dextrous finger-drumming and hot-cue restructuring into their routines as an extension of more established techniques using DVS.

Electronic dance music (EDM) DJs such as Karizma and James Zabiela employ classic hip-hop turntablist techniques, such as scratching, using Pioneer CDJs (the digital successor to the Technics turntable as the industry standard nightclub tool). More commonly, the CDJ cue button is used as a rhythmical percussion device in combination with pitch manipulation using the slider (e.g., DJ EZ and Lotic).

In 1997, John Carluccio developed a system called Turntable Transcription Method (TTM) for retro-actively transcribing famous turntablist scratch routines (Miyakawa Reference Miyakawa2007). The purpose of this was twofold: it was a pedagogical device, enabling budding turntablists to learn from the work of previous masters; and it was used to gain legitimisation from the wider musical community. Carluccio and his collaborator DJ Raydawn felt that turntablism would never be recognised as the virtuosic musical activity it undoubtedly is until it was notated. This was later echoed by DJ Radar, who composed his own system, based more closely on traditional Western musical notation, with extra articulations and composed a ‘turntable concerto’. Although TTM met with some ambivalence by the DJ community at the time, it is still used a teaching tool.

In 2018, an organisation called Future DJs collaborated with the London College of Music Examinations (LCME) to create a formal graded musical instrument examination in DJing in the UK. To achieve the highest mark in the LCME exam, students must demonstrate the ability to scratch at least to an intermediate level, read TTM notation, manual beat-juggle and finger drum using hot cues, that is, there is a strong focus on technical virtuosity (LCME and Future DJs 2020b).

Smith details how turntablist groups work in ensembles for improvised performance and composition. Outside of these hip-hop crews, turntablists Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei and Victoria Shen have a turntable trio for example. There are also precedents in the context of rock, jazz and electronic bands, including several I have worked with personally, where both DJs and/or sequencer operators have been employed to introduce scratching or electronic loops and textures.

3.2. DJing as an art

While DJs (generally) play music of various kinds, there are several conceptual precedents for framing DJing as an artform akin to a mixed-media fine art practice. Alongside Cage and Schaeffer, Smith gives equal credit to two primarily visual artists, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and Christian Marclay as ‘major turntable pioneers’ in the period between 1930 and 1980. Often viewed as a successor to Marclay, the contemporary turntablist Maria Chavez found the visual art world more accepting of her experimental approaches than the techno scenes where she started her career. She has performed or presented work at art galleries and art institutions globally. It is also worth noting that the Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.), a ‘community of queer, trans and nonbinary Black and people of colour involved in art, sound and radical activism’, were nominated for the Turner Prize in 2021 (B.O.S.S. 2021).Footnote ⁸

More generally, sonic art is now an established category in the art world, even if there have been many debates around its boundaries and definitions. The term was coined in 1970 and primarily sound-based work has been presented in major galleries for at least 20 years (Licht Reference Licht2009). In 2010, Susan Philipsz won the Turner Prize with a sound piece.

Looking at popular music, musicians and bands with an art school (rather than conservatoire) training were highly influential in the 1960s and 1970s (Frith and Horne Reference Frith and Horne2016), as well as in the post-punk movement of the 1980s (Butt Reference Butt2022). Simon Reynolds coined the term ‘conceptronica’ as a comment on the press releases for electronic music in the 2010s, which obviously originated in ‘art school or postgraduate academia, and [are] comfortable speckling both their work and their conversation with references to critical theory and philosophy’ (Reynolds Reference Reynolds2019). There are, of course, many precedents of highly conceptual electronic/dance music from before the 2010s; for example, the activist group Ultra-red, the Mille Plateaux record label and Terre Thaemlitz (DJ Sprinkles) were all active in the 1990s.

The use of pre-recorded media by turntablists has drawn comparisons to the assemblages and collages made by the Futurists and Dadaists (Weissenbrunner Reference Weissenbrunner2017). Smith frames all turntable composition as straddling both modernist and postmodern sensibilities. They are modernist in their ‘preoccupation with progress, innovation and experimentation’ and postmodern due to their ‘appropriation and recycling of existing musical texts’. DJ Spooky extends these comparisons, making little distinction between DJing, sampling and remixing in the digital domain (DJ Spooky and Lunenfeld Reference Spooky and Lunenfeld2004). Referencing the art/activist group the Situationists, he describes it as

Jesse Stewart, using DJ Spooky as a key example, warns against subsuming ‘hip-hop under the slippery rubric of postmodernism’ as this runs the ‘risk of obscuring its origins in the African diaspora and its continuities with earlier Afrological formsFootnote ⁹. He proposes the term ‘Afro-postmodernism’ to describe creative works that explore the

The highly influential DJ style pioneered by Venus X, Shayne Oliver, at the queer NYC party GHE20G0TH1K exemplifies Afro-postmodernism as Stewart defines it. The style utilises the specific creative affordances of CDJs and involves being extremely fluid with tempo and genre. Beyoncé and Rhianna are juxtaposed with syncopated club music of many forms, field recordings and textural ambience sometimes in purposefully jarring and chaotic ways (Lhooq Reference Lhooq2017). Venus X challenges orthodoxies around the necessity for smoothness in DJing saying

There are similarities in approach (if not aesthetics) to DJ Spooky’s 1990s ILLBient nights and the subsequent SoundLab events setup by Beth Coleman and Howard Goldkrand in New York. These nights sought to mix hip hop with ‘electronic, electro-acoustic, and classical sources, as well as ambient and industrial soundscapes’ with an aim of critiquing the ‘conservatisms of the NYC music scene’ of the time (Stewart Reference Stewart2010). While DJ Spooky sometimes refers to himself as a conceptual artist, Venus X and the many DJs influenced by the GHE20G0TH1K style generally frame their work primarily as a musical activity, despite many of them being multidisciplinary artists. It is also true that jazz musicians often incorporate Afro-postmodernist references into the work of others in their improvisations. So why insist on framing these DJs’ work as art? First, I do not wish to make a false dichotomy, the answer is certainly ‘it’s both’. DJing is a boundary practice where creativity is distributed across consumption, curation and creation. However, DDJT’s affordances for manipulating pre-recorded texts allows for artists to be playful and agile (Green Reference Green2011) across sonic, social and discursive dimensions without anything like the base-level technical skill required to do something similar with a saxophone, for example (on the part of the player or listener). I have no wish to diminish the considerable technical ability of any of the DJs I have mentioned, but if we only consider their technique and not the breadth of the discursive and socio-sonic aspects of their Afro-postmodern sonic collages, we are missing a huge part of the work.

3.3. A challenge to colonisation

In 2020, Joe Muggs wrote an article in The Guardian entitled ‘DJing Formally Offered at GCSE a Challenge to a “colonised curriculum”’ (Muggs Reference Muggs2020). He described the introduction of the DJing GCSE assessment and the development of the Future DJs/LCME graded exam in DJing as being ‘welcomed for promoting greater inclusivity’. Their efforts are praised in the article by Dr Monique Charles, DJ Sherelle and youth work practitioners, one of whom stresses the urgency of looking at the formal recognition of the practice through a ‘Black Lives Matter lens’. This certainly does need urgent attention; however, it is important to examine exactly what it means to decolonise the music curriculum.

DJ decks are the primary performance tool for many forms of contemporary Black electronic dance music and their inclusion in a music curriculum provides a more direct way for some young people to engage with the music that matters to them. However, Chris Philpott (Reference Philpott2022) warns against decolonisation and inclusion discourses that favour ‘curriculum as content’. Simply changing the existing curriculum to include a more expansive list of musical genres and technologies runs the risk of reifying this content and absorbing it into the ‘white racial frame’ (Ewell Reference Ewell2021) of Western music theory via assessment strategies and knowledge production. Philpott argues for an ‘emergent curriculum as an antidote to curriculum as content’ (2022). This emergent curriculum would centre students’ experience and meaning, and learning would emerge from context-specific discussions and interactions. Arguably, it would be important to include music theory and the white racial frame in these discussions so that its relevance could be assessed and critiqued.

This is touched on in The Guardian article. Jazz musician Xhosa Cole stresses the importance of learning about the culture of Black electronic music, not just techniques and technology. In the LCME exam, the only engagement with genre is via a set of listening exercises where students must identify various dance music genres based on stylistic elements (LCME and Future DJs 2020a). Austin Smart of Future DJs claims that teaching culture is the ‘foundation’ of their book How to DJ (Dent, Smart and Smart, Reference Dent, Smart and Smart2021); however, on close examination it has some problematic aspects. It provides some very clear instruction on certain techniques, but its section on dance music genres categorises them by a set of aesthetic/mood descriptors, a sample drum pattern, a list of key tracks, and a single contextual paragraph by an artist in the genre. Techno, for example, is ‘powerful, dark and mechanical in mood’ and ‘often in minor keys’. The contextual paragraph comes from an act called Abstract Man. They describe techno as

There is no mention of techno’s Black origins and political significance, and only one of the five tracks listed is by a Black artist. Using the language of wellness, this statement participates in the kind of whitewashing of dance music that King Britt is fighting to counter via his Blacktronika course (King Britt and Rodgers Reference Britt and Rodgers2022). In a recent interview King Britt stated that

In short, if their efforts are to decolonise education via Black electronic dance music, cultural context needs to be engaged with seriously so as not to reduce expansive Black artforms to a set of stylistic or aesthetic descriptors that are narrow to the point of inaccuracy.Footnote ¹⁰

The GCSE assessment is not as rigidly focused on technique as the LCME exam. However, the assessment criteria focus on technical ability and harmonic accuracy which, given the rest of the syllabus, we must assume is viewed through a Western classical music theory lens. To use George Lewis’ terms (Reference Lewis1996), this runs the risk trying to fit genres and practices that are Afrological in design into a Eurological context. Writing on hip-hop education, Hein explains that these terms

However, DJing potentially provides an excellent tool for a more emergent approach to music education. Research by Pete Dale (Reference Dale2017) into DJing in schools describes successfully involving students (in the case of his study, mostly male, white and working class) who were, in some cases, severely disengaged from schooling. He attributes this success to the value placed on their own music, in this case mostly the rave style happy hardcore, which is generally codified as white but had origins in Black dance music forms. The positive effect this kind of validation has on a young person’s sense of self-worth is echoed in studies by Ethan Hein (Reference Hein2022) of hip hop in classrooms in the United States and explorations of popular song lyrics in creative youth work (Howard Reference Howard2021). Dale (Reference Dale2017) sees this work as endorsing a more child-centred approach to teaching and learning that was common in the 1960s and 1970s, but which schooling has increasingly moved away from since the 1980s. The inclusion of DJing as instrument at GCSE level can certainly support some of this work within the current framework, but there is a risk that a Eurological assessment criteria and rigid canonical exam may continue to alienate young people. While it may help get some disengaged students a pass, they are unable to excel unless they engage with these other parts of the curriculum. I am unsure this provides the kind of validation that Dale and other educators advocated for. A decolonised, child-centred, emergent approach that values the music that young people bring to the classroom, discusses its rich discursive qualities and cultural context, and values it on its own terms could have great benefit for all students.

I have detailed the GCSE assessment criteria, some precedents for viewing DJing both as an instrument and an art, and the importance of developing an emergent curriculum. In the rest of the article, I will describe the workshops and reflect on my observations, along with teacher and co-facilitator feedback, in relation to these ideas.

4.1. Feedback

The music teachers commented on how engaged the students were throughout the duration of the workshops. One said that they had never seen them concentrate for so long on anything at any one time. From my observation (and that of the co-facilitators and teachers), the students enjoyed simply having their heads down and getting hands-on with the equipment. They (mostly) worked in pairs constructively and harmoniously. Sometimes it was hard to break them away from what they were doing to show them some more features of the software, much of which they were happy just to explore themselves. Both boys and girls were engaged. One of the co-facilitators commented that the some of the most creative work observed was from the girls. This is important to note because Dale’s research observed that it was mainly young boys who were interested in DJing. It would be interesting to see if this gender parity persists when the young people are given an option to choose a DJing workshop, rather than the participation being mandatory for the whole music class. The teachers were also encouraged by the relatively low cost of the entry-level controllers,Footnote ¹³ the expense of the equipment being commonly perceived as a barrier (Jenkins Reference Jenkins2019).

During the practice time, the students were observed actively experimenting with all kinds of functions of the software, often vigorously hitting the performance pads and operating faders. They were much more reticent when it came to performing in front of the class. A co-facilitator suggested that, while they were experimenting in private, they reverted to a more conservative approach when presenting to their peers. One of the teachers pointed out that this was the first time that the young people had shared their own musical tastes in the class and it was something they could be nervous about. A teacher acknowledged that the DJ session had validated the young people’s music tastes, and that this is important and something they should do more of. The confidence to share something personal could be beneficially nurtured. Having to perform in front of their peers highlighted the context of the classroom and how this relates to their music tastes. Interestingly, when field recordings were used, the recordings were of their peers in the school environment, and it was the voice aspects that were most used. The soundscapes were those of the school itself.

The teachers explained that there were a certain number of young people, who were into contemporary electronic music styles such as drill, who were disengaged from the syllabus. The best fit available was drums or keyboards which were not exciting to them. This, along with more general disengagement from the syllabus, meant students were at risk of failing. It was suggested that switching to DJing might get them through because, quite simply, DJ technology is used for performance in the genres they relate to. It was also suggested that we could run introductory workshops with Year 9 students to see if it encouraged any of them into taking music.

4.2. Reflection

Much of what the students demonstrated in the workshops were, albeit in rudimentary ways, creative techniques that could be used to achieve a decent mark in the GCSE performance assessment once developed and finessed. Without the requirement to manually beatmatch and blend tracks of a similar genre/tempo, many went directly to creative approaches utilising tracks of differing tempos and genres. Pad FX and EQ were commonly used to rhythmically manipulate the tracks, as in some case hot cues and loops were deployed for restructuring and remixing. Field recordings were used in musically interesting ways, either structurally or as a sample trigger. We should remind ourselves the students did all of this in a two-hour session with very little prompting beyond the basic functions of the equipment. This speaks to the tactile and intuitive nature of DDJT and its affordances for creativity with little base-level technical skill. I think it is unlikely the same would have happened with traditional instruments. It is exciting to think what a 20-minute performance would look like if these initial gestures from a two-hour workshop were harnessed and developed over two years. However, the question is what is the best focus for this development?

Given the highly distributed nature of creativity in DJing and plurality of approaches and styles, I would argue that it would be beneficial to work within a framework that values experimentation, context and reflection equally alongside technical skill. The students’ musical tastes could be engaged with much more extensively and the sense of valorisation would be much higher if their creative approaches are assessed on their own terms rather than within a framework based on Western music theory. A focus on contextualisation could also enable moves towards a more child-centred, emergent and decolonised approach, rather than simply content-as-curriculum. Truly generative explorations of Afro-postmodernist sound collages could be encouraged. Budding turntablists could still develop extreme technical prowess, other technical approaches could also be equally valued, but the context of these manipulations would be equally as important as the content. This is currently Art & Design, not Music. In theory, the music route would still be available if they preferred, particularly if they wanted to form ensembles with other musicians.

In an art setting, fieldwork of various kinds could be employed to explore the social and discursive aspects of DJing. Projects based on the local area could bring the kind of value that has been attributed to documentary filmmaking in creative youth work (Howard Reference Howard2021) and explore what the anarchist educator Colin Ward called Streetwork (Ward and Fyson Reference Ward and Fyson1973), a view of education where the classroom is used to process and discuss the surrounding urban environment. DJ equipment could be used as a tactile device to explore sound manipulation for mixed-media presentations and performances – for example, theatre – similar to the ways in which forward-thinking educators such Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann (Meyer-Denkmann, Paynter and Paynter Reference Meyer-Denkmann, Paynter and Paynter1977) and Brian Dennis (Reference Dennis1970) explored tape machines in classrooms in the late 1960s and 1970s.

There are obvious benefits to including DJing within GCSE Music as it stands. It provides a space to validate young people’s music tastes and a technology that is aligned with the performance of Black electronic music genres. Many DJs would not require significant extra training to deliver the GCSE programme, so more awareness among DJs that school tuition is a possible extra income stream might be beneficial. Future DJs also provide free and low-cost training to tutors via their Virtuoso platform. However, there does need to be the budget to employ tutors. Schools and music hubs are under considerable financial pressure, making it difficult to provide equipment and tutors. More awareness regarding low-cost iPad and controller solutions may help regarding equipment at least. The recent government National Plan for Music (HM Government 2022) has stated that music technology should play an important role in contemporary music education and that music hubs should provide resources and guidance. There is some suggestion of funds being allocated for this, particularly through pilot schemes for disadvantaged students, although there are not details on how this will be distributed. It is likely, however, that external funding bodies, charities or social enterprises will need to be involved to make DJing in schools a widespread reality, art or instrument.