By Dayo Showemimo
I remember back in the days when we were growing up as kids, there was this question that we were often asked by our parents, teachers, family, friends and well wishers: ‘what would you like to become when you grow up’, and like prophets who sees into the future, we were always quick to give answers like ‘I want to be a doctor’, ‘I want to be a lawyer’, ‘I want to be an accountant’. For those of us who nursed the ambition of becoming footballers or musicians, we dare not say it to the hearing of our parents; we could only whisper it amongst friends.
Obviously, at that time, no kid would have given the answer ‘when I grow up, I want to be a Dee-Jay’. This is partly because, being a DJ at that time was just a hobby; it wasn’t even on the same level as being a musician, so no one would have thought of making it a full time profession.
Interestingly, Disc Jockeying has been a lucrative job that has been around since the early 1900s. Ray Newby was the first radio disc jockey in California at the age of 16 in 1909. Newby began playing records on a small spark transmitter while he was a student at Herold College of Engineering, San Jose, California under the authority of radio pioneer Charles ‘Doc’ Herold.
It was originally called ‘Disco Jockey’ at that time, but it’s over the years evolved to ‘Disc Jockey’ or simply ‘Dee Jay’. Back home in Nigeria, the advent of private radio stations in the early 1990s, the rising hip hop movement in the country, the increasing number of night clubs, shows and concert necessitated the need for good music to be supplied by a DJ.
So out of the blue, a new occupation was born, and at the time of it birth, only few daring individuals embraced it, because no one would have thought being a DJ could maintain a family or pay bills. Little did we know that DJs would in the very near future be celebrated, respected and command outrageous fees for their services.
Today, DJs are the most sought after at radio stations, nightclubs, shows and concerts. And just in case you don’t know, Djing is an art that involves the mastery of mixing and scratching sounds on a turntable to create percussive sounds and rhythm, it’s as serious as any other profession, and believe me it requires a reasonable level of intellectual prowess, that’s why you feel like stoning some DJs off the deck when they don’t give you the right sound, and in all fairness, the profession of being a DJ has witnessed the influx of millions of young people, and has had its fair share of veterans such as Mix master brown, Mix Master Tee, Diplomatic OPJ (he started as a radio DJ), Cool DJ Jimmy JATT, Grand Master Lee, and several professionals like DJ Neptune, DJ humility, DJ Sose, DJ Midas, DJ Xclusive, DJ Spinall, and more.
Fast forward to 2014, if as a parent you ask your kid that same question we were asked as kids, you’ll surely get responses like ‘mummy I want to be like Messi’, ‘I want to be a musician’, ‘I want to become a DJ’, and you’ll console yourself with the knowledge of the fact that if one of Nigeria’s finest business moguls and billionaire Femi Otedola can support his daughter ‘DJ Cuppy’ to become a DJ, who am I not to let my kids follow their dreams?.