Luca Bruls published a contribution in the New Media Review section of Cultural Anthropology titled DJing to Grasp Social Things: Imagining a Mixing Ethnography.
The text discusses an unconventional approach to research and communication, and brings into conversation two disciplines she holds very close: Anthropology and DJing.
Below follows a text snippet… For the entire text (including some audio snippets from her field site) read the contribution here.
Where Are the DJs?
Imagine entering a listening session with anthropologists. It is hosted at a big venue with several hazy rooms. On a regular night, a dense, dimly visible crowd that faces the sound system would hold space for the low-frequency sounds of kick drums. However, on this occasion the beat is absent as the DJ takes a different pathway. The DJ aspires to make their research heard, in conversation with the listeners and sounds. Some spectators stand and face the decks; others lean back on pillows and intentionally close their eyes as they listen to the mix emerging from pointed speakers across the room. Ethnographic samplings from field recordings are mediated through digital turntables to a mixing console. The spectators gather, listen, and share in attunement to the carefully selected, ordered, and sequenced ethnographic materials. Recordings blend like words in a narrated text.
In the collective attunement to mixing, people center the sense of hearing to mutually explore and gain knowledge with the attendees and the DJ. “DJ Scholarship” (coined by Lynnée Denise in 2013) is not simply academic, but also experiential and embodied. In this piece, I demonstrate how DJ Scholarship can enrich ethnographic understanding through the example of my scholarship with listeners and reciters of Islamic poetry in Chad. I move beyond the ideas of experiential epistemology, or learning by doing, and phenomenology, or experiencing by embodying, to assist in making sense of social relations. How can we further anthropological knowledge by tuning in to who is making sound, the speed of actions, the environment, and the timing of sonorities? It is through the act of listening that people can reach profound understanding of societies. Pauline Oliveros introduced the practice of Deep Listening in “Sonic Meditations” (1971). She differentiated between involuntary hearing and voluntary listening to address how listening reveals details and a more profound awareness of the environment. Oliveros’s participatory performances aimed to create collective presence and “community growth”1. What role can a Deep Listening practice play in enhancing anthropology’s participatory methods? How can aural participation in an ethnographic DJ performance engage audiences as collaborators?