DJ's in school

[mccutcheon]

BOSTON - DJ Chi bobs his head to the hip-hop rhythm, one hand skipping over the vinyl record, the other on the mixer. Possum, Raydar, Moses and the other DJs in the room listen to his beat.

This is a "turntable technique" class at Berklee College of Music, perhaps the first of its kind in the country. DJ Chi is Yoon J. Suh, 21, one of eight students at the prestigious institution who spend two hours every Thursday manipulating old-fashioned records to scratch out "scribbles" and "stabs."


"I can't even do what you're doing, man!" says Needlejuice, a.k.a. Professor Scratch, a.k.a. instructor Stephen Webber, as he tries to recreate Chi's staccato scratch on his own turntable.


The DJ is the foundation of hip-hop, the urban music and culture that exploded out of New York City after someone decided to say a few words over the sound combinations of a Bronx DJ named Kool Herc.


Scratching, or moving a record rhythmically forward and backward with the needle still in the groove, is the core skill of turntable artists.

They didn't invite McCutcheon to the class because all he does is plays records and anyone can do that.

[Tommy Martyn]

As awful a waste of the california defecit as this class sounds, I did hear the guy who runs it do a segment on the radio and it was quite entertaining. Having said that, I'm not the one subsidising it.