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Anyone who has seen the film Inside Out (or, I guess, anyone with a basic understanding of human psychology) can tell you that sadness is an important emotion for processing pain and loss, and without it we are incomplete. While we’re experiencing it, it can feel like our lust for life is being smothered, the flames of desire doused, but if we allow ourselves to feel it fully the fire will eventually be rekindled and we can start to move on.
People often listen to music to help them along this journey: the despairing break-up ballad that you bawl along to; the bittersweet house track that starts off sad but ends up hopeful; the resolute disco diva whose lyrics tell you there’s a way forward and, yes, you will survive. This emotional range also translates to the live setting, where a musician’s inner turmoil is often seen to enhance their performance, in turn helping the audience to sublimate their own difficult feelings into something more positive. Sharing the grief is part of the process.
Think about the average club night or festival, though, and you will likely picture a setting where the shared goal of everyone is pleasure, ecstasy and a kind of escape. People go to dance, to be together, to get high, hook up, and to forget their troubles for a time. The DJ’s role is to stand strong and firm in the middle like a radio mast broadcasting reliably good vibes to the crowd. And, if things go well, they will naturally pick the crowd’s vibes back up again, only to beam them out even more forcefully with their next selection. The DJ sets the emotional tone of the night through their selection, their technique, even their demeanour, and in general people expect that tone to be uplifting.
Now obviously a DJ doesn’t have to limit themselves to ostensibly ‘happy’ music to keep people happy: there are many levels of intensity, abstraction or inaccessibility that plainly still work in the pursuit of hedonism. And while most DJs I know also recognise the importance of not showing frustration or uncertainty while performing, it’s clearly not a requirement to throw your hands in the air or abuse the filters to get people going. But regardless of this broad range of personal styles and approaches, a couple of things remain pretty much constant at any party: first, the paying public expects to have a good time and leave the party in a positive frame of mind; and second, DJing is much easier when you’re relaxed and in a flow state, which generally correlates to being in a good mood in the first place.
So… is it OK for a DJ to be sad?
I ask myself the question because when I played at Renate on Friday night I was pretty damn sad. On a surface level I was happy because I’d had a great dinner that evening and a good dance to my friend Dana Kuehr playing in the downstairs room at Arkaoda. But underlying this temporary happiness was a profound sadness that I knew would outlast the uplift of the evening and night, and was unlikely to be obscured by the usual tonic of either alcohol or drugs. Another way of cheering myself up would be to play a blinding set, but while drinking and taking drugs is relatively easy regardless of your mood, playing a blinding set is an unpredictable proposition even on the best of nights. So I asked myself what to do.