This DJs & Artists Scuffle Is Up There With The Chicken and the Egg Debate



Artists putting on club performance in Club La Face

Last week the big green monster showed it's face for the exchange between UK-based Ugandan artists and DJs was re-ignited. It's the old tale of [some] artists feeling they're not getting their rightful love from the selectors in the booths. UK-based artists, they reckon, should be getting playlist priority over their Kampala-based counterparts in Ugandan clubs in UK so they should be on top of the Ugandan DJs' playlists. One artist believes it's the DJs that are keeping Ugandan artists in UK underground and the artists remain 'upcoming for 10yrs'.

Incidentally we had a similar discussion, albeit a brief one, with the publisher of Eyecon Magazine (where I also happen to have contributed to the magazine's entrainment pages for a while) only a few weeks ago. Ours was a question of how long an artist should last in that 'upcoming' transition stage. And what should happen to the artists when they reach that expiry date but are still stagnated? That decision being in the hands of club DJs is a totally new perspective to me especially since any good DJ's playlist is not entirely his own doing. To be the best you've got to keep a crowd on it's feet. To keep the crowd on it's feet you've got to play music that the crowd feels. And to do that you've got to be dynamic. So dynamic that you should be able to drop a song just seconds into it the moment you realise it's killing your crowd.

 

DJs at work

For argument's sake, let's assume DJs did actually have the power to completely dictate what we dance to in the clubs. Does that give them the power to make or break a music career? This also bring into question the statistics of our clubbing community and if that's the size of audience that one believes will make one's career then one would continue to be an upcoming artist really. I wouldn't claim to even imagine the feeling when an artist sees people dancing to your own music in a club. I can only compare it to seeing my byline for the first time many years ago. It must be awesome. Unfortunately by the time we hit the clubs on the other side of midnight most of us are too preoccupied and half-conscious that we will hardly take time to find out who sang the some we're dancing to leave alone remember to download it on iTunes the following day. So as a marketing platform that's one reason to question the club playlist. All this is under the assumption that the music actually fits into the DJ's music plan and it will sustain his busy dancefloor.

Every little helps. Definitely. But an artist sending the DJs to the naughty corner for not playing their music only makes you question how many avenues there is for an artist to plug their material. Unless of course the artist is close to the DJ so the artist thinks the DJ will give him a leg up. In which case it becomes more of a test of friendship than a missed opportunity for career development. The scary fact is that they (DJs) could choose to enjoy the comfort of the naughty corner. They don't need the artists yet, with their options limited in the Diaspora entertainment infrastructure, the artists would struggle to stay afloat without the DJs.