Analyzing DJ performance in the dub diaspora: Case studies in grime and dubstep

Most academic studies of DJ practice in electronic dance music have so far favored canonical groove-based genres, namely house and techno. In these genres, transitions should generally be seamless, take listeners on a journey and build them up to elation. In this literature, different dance musics and their approaches to the craft of DJing have been left behind. While continuity is key for a progressive house or techno set, an artist influenced by reggae or hip-hop may relish instead in rupture: audience members or a collaborating MC may call for a “rewind,” when a bass line is so strong it simply has to be heard again from the top. Such creative interaction between MC(s), DJ(s) and audience and its emergent discontinuities run counter to stereotypes about DJing that circulate informally and academically. This article seeks to redress these (mis)conceptions, aiming to nuance how researchers understand live electronic dance music performance. To do so, it analyzes two DJ sets in grime and dubstep, genres that emerged from localized subcultures of early 2000s London. These are part of a wider field of electronic dance music that has been substantially influenced by reggae, and especially dub, its
experimental offshoot that integrates rewinds and similar ruptures of sonic flow into its aesthetic strategies. Using track listing, tempo mapping and spectrogram analysis, among other tools, this article builds on existing analyses of house and techno performance to develop a more inclusive methodology for understanding how DJs and MCs perform across electronic music.