Embodied Timing and Disability in DJ Practice

DJing is a sophisticated musical skill that requires a musician to perceive and manipulate multiple, continuously changing rhythmic patterns at the same time. The synchronization of two or more recorded tracks playing simultaneously is an embodied activity involving the coordination of processes occurring in the body, the brain, the turntables, and the sonic patterns in the music. Different physical and cognitive capacities lead to different ways of engaging with the instrument and performing the skill. Because DJ and dance music practices are neglected in music performance research, we do not yet know how the processes in the body, brain, turntable and music interact to make this skill possible. Furthermore, the exclusion of disabled musicians from academic research means that we know little about musical embodiment in the context of disability. There is increasing demand among disabled musicians and the dance music community for more accessible DJ instruments and environments, to improve inclusion of disabled DJs in dance music culture.

This interdisciplinary project will study embodied timing and disability in DJ practice, in collaboration with stakeholders among disabled DJs, music and disability charities and DJ technology developers. It will apply approaches from across music performance research, neuroscience, philosophy of mind and disability studies to investigate the dynamic interaction between periodic processes in the brain, the body, the turntables and the music.

The project will combine multiple state-of-the-art methods in innovative ways to capture these dynamic interactions. The first stage will involve simultaneously measuring neural processes in the brain, movements in the body and timing information from the music and the turntables while DJs synchronise musical recordings playing at different speeds - a skill known as beatmatching. Assessing the coordination across these different measurements can tell us how they interact to enable the skill. The second stage will use interviews to understand these interactions in disabled DJs, learn how disabled DJs adapt their performance strategies and instruments when DJing and what they need to make DJing more accessible to them. The interviews will be designed in conversation with disabled DJs themselves, in response to the call from disabled people to 'do nothing about us without us'. The project thus offers disabled DJs a voice in the academic discourse surrounding disability, DJing and embodiment.

The third stage of the project will involve theoretical developments in musical embodiment, dance music practices and disability. The embodied perspective shares important ideas with the social model of disability, which considers disability as the result of barriers in the environment rather than impairments in the body. Combining the social model and the embodied perspective allows us to see DJs' disabilities as resulting from blocked or thwarted interaction with the environment. In this theoretical framework, disability becomes a matter of contextual relationships and societal barriers.

The three research stages will culminate in a workshop where the project researchers and participants will work with Drake Music, the UK's leading charity focusing on disability, music and technology, and Native Instruments, a world-leading developer of DJ instruments, to translate the research to advance more accessible DJ tools and environments. The workshop will facilitate conversations between disabled musicians and industrial partners, allowing them to test existing and new instruments in light of the results of our research. This work will be documented in briefing papers aimed at and distributed to stakeholders among disabled musicians' institutions, the dance music industry and the music technology sector. In this way, the project will contribute to making steps towards a more inclusive dance music culture.