LOS ANGELES — The first day of the Scratch DJ Academy’s winter semester began last month for the six pupils in the DJ 101 class.

However, before the students are pairs of turntables instead of desks, and the classroom is the sales floor of Rehab Records, an outlet on Cotner Avenue devoted exclusively to selling vinyl records, a steadfast holdout in the era of MP3s and CDs.

Hapa, 25, co-owner of Rehab and the director of the Scratch DJ Academy in L.A., paces up and down the narrow aisle checking on the students whose hands are trying to master the latest scratch he just taught, called the release scratch.
“Release, follow, hold, pull!” he exhorts, as his charges manipulate the vinyl, releasing a cacophony of squeals from the speakers.

He heads over to Camille Sepina, 16, of Panorama City, and gives her pointers on how to fine-tune her movements. It seems to come naturally to the high school junior – she has had three years of prior experience with the violin, but once she saw DJs perform at her high school fiesta, she became hooked.

Her father bought her a pair of turntables as a gift, but she never learned how to use them properly until now.

Founded in New York City by Rob Principe, author Reg E. Gaines and the late Jam Master Jay from Run-DMC, the Scratch DJ Academy was founded to give everyone from absolute beginners to the most advanced DJ a cohesive curriculum to work from.

The winter semester began January 15. Classes will be held every Saturday afternoon and Wednesday evening until February 23. With one professor overseeing a maximum of 16 students per class, and teaching assistants – not to mention one-on-one tutoring opportunities, a vinyl library and hands-on “labs” – the staff is determined to break the invisible barrier between listening and performing.

Such is the long journey DJing has taken from the New York block parties of the ‘70s, when innovators such as Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc, and Afrika Bambaataa laid down the basic foundations and concepts that became the soundtracks to the then-emerging form of rapping, a spitfire delivery of rhymes and similes.

The following decade, no rap crew could do without a DJ to lay down a steady beat. Today, while the DJ has become largely separate from the rapper (except on tours), almost each continent on the globe boasts of a world-class turntable crew, and DJs have become a major component of popular bands such as Linkin Park and Incubus.

Hapa, who goes only by his moniker, said that having a formalized setting where the best DJs could share techniques and tips is a big first. “A lot of us who have been in the game for a while began to understand that to gain respect from society as a whole, we should bring in everybody and spread our knowledge,” he said.

However, Hapa admits that it’s one thing to perform intuitively and quite another to show someone else how to do it. “For us [being experienced], it’s simple,” he said. “But it’s also like, ‘we can’t even explain how to do it’ Being our first day, we are all still learning how to teach.”

Indeed, many of the instructors themselves have had to learn from trial and error. Jahi Sundance Lake, 25, one of the academy’s instructors for the semester and part of the original New York academy, remembers when in his teens he had to go a dance club, peek over the DJ’s setup, then hopefully be able to recreate the sounds at home.

“DJing has always been a secretive society,” he told Philippine News. “In the late ‘70s to early ‘80s, technologies were being invented at such a rapid rate, leading to new styles, scratches, and techniques. The people who were discovering these new techniques didn’t want to share them with other people because it was their unique style.

Now, we’ve reached a point where everything has been explored and the pioneers desire to reach back and teach.”

A good number of the most popular DJs are of Filipino descent, the most recognizable throughout the hip-hop and turntablist community being DJ Q-Bert.
At only 20, DJ Dynamix (neé Ellis Tenza) of Los Angeles is already preparing to teach a class on intermediate scratching.

“I’m a bit excited about this,” he says as he glances up from his curriculum text. He started out in 1999, and relied on videos and friends to keep up with the latest techniques.

“It’s a lot better for the DJ community on a whole. I can’t wait to see what the future holds, with people being able to catch up so quick,” said Dynamix, who is part of the Fakshuns Entertainment collective.

Another professor, Mike C., 27, quit his day job as an accountant to focus on DJing full time and other aspects of music. Although he has taught and given private lessons, Scratch will be the first time to showcase those skills in a classroom setting. “It’s nice to see there is something organized, so that it will be a lot easier for people now than it was back then,” he said.

Indeed, the cost of DJing could be prohibitive: a basic setup of two turntables, a mixer, and speakers could be $1,600, whereas one class for the entire semester is $300.

Lake hopes that at the end of the semester each student will fulfill the dreams when they first looked at a turntable. “Our main goal is to get you feeling like you are a musician.

You are a part of a community of musicians, and we are here to support you no matter how you want to take this,” he said.

Page 1 of 1