Hip-Hop DJ as Technology
Ondra Sources
Hip-hop DJ culture provides a rich site for exploring how culture and industry can converge and collaborate, as well as how they need each other to move forward.
André Sirois teaches film and music at the University of Oregon. He is the author of the book Hip-Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology: Cultural Exchange, Innovation, and Democratization. He’s currently working on an exhibit and book featuring more than 60 DJ mixers and interviews with the DJs, engineers, and product reps who helped design them titled “Designed from Scratch: A Hip-Hop History of the DJ Mixer, 1975-2005.”
This article is excerpted from Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism.
