By: Ben Iyoha (DJ Bentley)
Asked about who an average Nigerian disc jockey is? Then one is desirous to draw a quaint image of a young Nigerian bloke who finds himself behind his Jockey rig, holding up hours of uninterrupted music from Nigeria, Africa and across the globe.
Well, that's what is habitually seen and expected off an average Nigerian DJ. But in actual fact, the rev of a top-notch disc jockey besides financial booties is actually one of many reasons why blokes took up this line of work. After believing this so much as a fact, I went pondering profusely on why it has turn out to be ludicrously hard for DJ's to earn tangible bites of respect from a society that finds its groove from them?
in the light of this, I sought to briefly evaluate the norms of an average Nigerian Disc jockey in the 3 basic categories in which I personally place a Jockey, these categories includes the Radio DJ category, the Club DJ category and lastly the Freelance DJ category.
THE AVERAGE NIGERIAN RADIO DJ.
Note the word average, he's not top-notch; he's just there lurking, he thinks of himself so high and makes a diva out of his indisposition. At the sight of an upcoming artist he transforms into the biblical Moses who is destined to take the artist and his promo CD into the promise land; but unlike Moses, that promise land has a fee.
Still trotting on his façade and because he is average and he takes incentives as a non-moratorium to playing your song. He however doesn't have a PLAY-list; what he has is a PAID-list. On such PAID-list are songs that'll make him and his career sound average in the heads of the people, and as we all know today this is how some untenable songs make it to our airwave day-in-day-out.
In my very brief stint as radio jockey, I was jumbled about why a DJ colleague would devote about 30 minutes of his radio time overzealously playing musical skits of him? I also wondered why he'll play his hypes/skits on every passing track in his mix. You see brethren's; this is a hallmarks of an average Nigerian radio DJ, every good DJ who knows his onus would not force is name/moniker on his audience instead his good works will make his name what they want to hear. If you are conversant with the Nigerian airwave you'll realize this is a major blunder perpetrated by so many Nigerian radio DJs.
Having listened to a few top-notch radio DJs; and also confirming by every bite of fact that they have never been allied with the above conundrum, I beg to bring to fore the idea of making funny, uncorrelated screechy sounds in the name of what could be addressed as SCRATCH in DJ artistry.
The average Nigerian radio DJ attempts his scratches wrongfully, awfully and repeatedly non-simulating until it is regarded as noise and sorry to say, about 80 percent of DJ's rocking the Nigerian airwave are incredibly unbearable when it comes to scratching except for an incomparable few in the likes of DJ Humility, DJ Midas, DJ Snoop, DJ Xchris and DJ Tommy who have in the past and present shown exemplary dexterity of the Jockey-art. Respect to DJ Snoop tha Damaja who has made scratching on radio fun all over again.
THE AVERAGE NIGERIAN CLUB DJ
In 2009, Guinness was celebrating its globally acclaimed 250 years anniversary in Lagos. I was then with the syndicated Hype-Nigeria team and by stint of luck; I was able to land a deal with the Lagos unit of Richardson & Briggs, Diageo's global PR agency. This deal was straightforward, Guinness simply wanted Sean Paul's promotional single at that time "So fine" to be a constant play in every club that opened for business in Lagos, and I suspected that they wanted it to seem to Nigerians that Sean Paul was the best thing happening at the moment since he was the one every club was bumping. This rendezvous for me was an eye opener, as it took me to everywhere and anywhere that was a club in Lagos.
At Bacchus, Caliente, Red, Cubes Café, Michaels, Unique and a host of others, one grim image was uncharacteristic and this was the fact that most of the DJ's in these clubs played recorded mixes on their night shifts. Behold, this is the biggest crime a DJ can ever commit in the line of his duty and this is the grind of an average Nigerian club DJ.
Being a DJ myself and coupled with the fact that Guinness provided brown envelops for the promotional purpose, I was privy to hang-out in the cubicles of these DJ's only for me to discover this noxious practice of blasting pre-recorded mixes holding leap.
The brown envelop as a matter of fact is not a thing of surprise in Nigeria, and even without a brown envelop Sean Paul was a big name especially in clubs and at that time "So fine" was already a big song. But just like the average radio DJ; an average club DJ receives kickbacks from local artists to compromise his PLAY-List into a PAID-List, so the idea of the brown envelop made many of these club DJ's run into a wild frenzy. However, a couple of club DJ stood out; respect to DJ Benny of Auto-Lounge and DJ Frank of Soul-Lounge.
As we approached; DJ Benny most especially, vehemently retorted the idea of giving him a brown envelop not even when we made it clear to him that it wasn't a bribe but it was only a way Guinness was trying to identify with DJ's for their work in keeping the clubs jamming while Guinness products sold in the last 250 years, he stood his ground and likewise frank. The week that followed, we went round the clubs to do an assessment of "so fine" at many of these clubs most of the DJ's expected a follow-up envelop but at auto-lounge DJ Benny was out of the country in faraway United Kingdom but gave strict orders that "so fine" gets played once in every hour, lo and behold so fine was inadvertently the song on cue when we got to Auto-Lounge on our assessment tour.
These are a sneak peep into the lives of an average club DJ in Nigeria and basically these are some of the factor that makes and keep him average.
THE AVERAGE NIGERIAN FREELANCE DJ
There are so many things a DJ should be and should not be. Have you ever seen Freshprince and DJ Jazzy-Jeff on tour or DJ Green-lantern live on stage? If you have, then it's obvious you understand who a DJ is and how he must be seen when doing his freelance shows.
Foremost of the many errors of an average Nigerian freelance DJ is his choice of moniker. How on earth would I have a party and on my invitation a certain DJ Pussy or DJ Barcelona is billed for the event, such names will do no two harm than to make your event seem razz and create a furor of non-seriousness.
In some cases, there are some DJ's with a good moniker but the bane is that he can't even address his client least to talk of hyping his crowd. Hyping the crowd is a classic culture of the DJ spectacle, it's the perfect sync between the crowd, the event and the DJ; it puts the DJ in a position of a celebrity and makes him appear like he actually own the party. There is no two ways to assuming the spot of a top DJ without being a good hypes man and here lays a bane of an average Nigerian DJ.
In this paragraph I'll inconclusively sum up an average Nigerian freelance DJ. Disc Jockeying is all about three P's, and these P's are PERCEPTION, PERFECTION and your PLAYLIST. Your PERCEPTION has to do with your appearance which includes the dress sense, the persona and the moniker. The PERFECTION has to do with how seamless and spotless your mixes come to life, nobody in the crowd especially your client wants to hear that the two minute break-in-music was caused by a N100 cable or rather your drunkenness is the reason for your distractions, every song must be cued in spot-on. The PLAYLIST is a compendium of the latest and most intriguing songs that must keep your crowd asking for more, it must be up to date and must be well segmented but unfortunately an average Nigerian DJ gets these three P's absolutely wrong. In subsequent editions of DJ Bentley's JockeyTalk I'll extensively break down the three P's of Disc Jockeying and how it can be easily maximized.
Thanks for reading this piece, keep it real with the most-high and respect your DJ or spin it yourself.
CONTACT:
(Ace DJ Bentley)
djbentley01@gmail.com
+234 8020681186
Twitter: @djbentleytorent
Blogged from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
(DJ Bentley’s JockeyTalk) CHRONICLING THE NORMS OF AN AVERAGE NIGERIAN DISC JOCKEY
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Nice one bentley
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