Swing dancers owe a great deal to the Moving Pictures Expert Group. With out them the MPEG-3 or MP3 would not exist and DJs would still be buying Vinyl and CDs. Although CDs are much smaller than vinyl records, DJs that played CDs in the early 2000’s still had to buy the entire album to have the one song that everyone wanted to dance to. Music changed extremely slowly from the 50’s through the late 90’s. When MP3’s came out, a DJ could download the one song he needed for little to no money. New music became the norm and dancers were never happier!
The barrier to entry for DJs prior to the late 90’s was tens of thousands of dollars and it took years to amass a collection of music that made you worth hiring. DJs saw it as a point of pride if it took several hours to set up their systems because it meant they had more music than everyone else. It was obvious why they charged what they charged and promoters were willing to pay extra to get the guy who took the longest to set up and break down because he was obviously the best.
Starting in 2000 the barrier to entry was only a couple of thousand dollars and a computer that had a CD burner. DJs could “swap” music and burn the songs to a CD. This made set up much simpler and faster and beyond that it allowed DJs to carry WAY more music of value at once. Instead of having CDs that had one or two songs on them that dancers wanted, they could make their own compilation disks that held 15 songs each. Every song on each disk could be a winner!
If we fast forward to 2007 a DJ could get started for about $1000…$500 for his equipment and $500 to buy 500 of the most important songs. Just about anyone with a laptop could amass enough music as a dancer to eventually be a DJ at a dance event. Which is what I did! Next week I will share how a revolution was started in Boston that was nearly the down fall on this dance in the North East.
Thursday – Saturday Swingin New England is in town and is a googol search away!
I am not holding class as I will be down south for “The Living Legends of Swing”
Sunday Night
$10
6-6:45 2-Step lesson w/Steel
6:45-7:30pm WCS w/Steel
7:30-? California Mixer w/Steel
Longfellow’s Club JoEllen
524 Minuteman Dr off of Boston Post RD
(Rt 20) Wayland, MA
Leadership is the manipulation of energy.
Following is the embodiment of energy.
Connection is the tie that binds the two together.
Mr. Jonathan
www.MrJonathanIsMyDJ.com
603 475 1391
Dance on!