The One

Grandmaster Flash invented DJing as you and I know it. If you don’t know the name, it’s time for a 101 lesson on the Bronx native.

Backspin technique (‘quick-mix theory’) aka beat juggling, punch phrasing (‘clock theory’) and scratching were all invented by Grandmaster Flash. “I guess you could call it self-taught but I think it was more than what I saw DJs doing, I looked at it and felt it was not correct,” Flash says of his innovations. “From that point on is where I took my teenage-hood and just locked myself up in my room for three or four years. Then one day I came up with a science. I didn’t realise at the time but it was a science that has now become a standard for people to follow, which is pretty cool.”

Together with the Furious Five, Grandmaster Flash released such seminal rap songs as ‘The Message’, ‘White Lines’, ‘Rappers Delight’ and ‘Apache’. They broke a style of music that no one outside their own neighbourhood had ever heard.

“For me I think I was hoping that it would grow outside of New York City, that was probably my biggest hope,” he says of those early days in the ‘80s. “Once it grew outside of New York City into neighbouring east coast cities, I was really hoping that the world would catch onto this, that’s what I was hoping but never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that me putting my fingertip on the vinyl and moving it and manipulating it in the motions that I did, never in my wildest dreams did I think that that would become the way that DJs play music.”

These days, Flash listens to the likes of Armin Van Helden, Crookers, Boys Noise, Felix Da Housecat, Tiesto and David Guetta. “Almost every day,” he says. “What’s important to me is, the few nights that I have off, that I’m not working, I’ll go into a club and just see the gig with the latest greatest DJ. I love to come and sit with DJs who are doing music that’s new to me. Armin Van Helden, Boys Noise, these guys enable me to learn new things just by listening to them. I can enjoy a song but I think my habits are ‘how can we put this in the set to please others’, that is where I am at when listening to new music. A lot of times when I listen to a great DJ play, I am listening to how he is pleasing people.”

It would be hard to say when he reached ‘Grandmaster’ status, but looking back at the beginning, Flash sees what he was creating more as a science than anything else. “If you think about it, I was out of my time back then. So science is what I was first. Before I was a DJ I was a scientist. So whether I am sitting in the driver’s seat where I am the creator of it or whether I’m sitting in the passenger seat and somebody else is making new sounds, it’s fine with me. This modern aspect of DJing allows me to carry thousands of songs now; where at one point there used to be tension between me and the promoter of how much he would pay to load all those crates of records on the plane, I used to carry 10 to 15 boxes and that takes a lot of man power. So now I am traveling with 30 or 40 thousand songs, which allows me to continue to be the international servant that I really am, from a musical standpoint.

“I like the challenge to be able to please people on all different continents and countries and planets and this and that. I’m really happy about it. I think that every time I go on stage I’m inventing. Depending on the audience, they make me do things and I make them do things and then we become connected as one, I’m just into pleasing people, that’s what I do.

“So every time I play there is always something that amazes me and I think ‘Wow, okay’ but that comes from the energy of the audience that makes me go to that next place, the next level technically speaking. I’m just pleasing people overall. If I could put my show into one word, I would like to say, ‘joy’. It’s just me on the turntables, Grandmaster Flash, I’m coming out and I’m just gonna do what I do – pleasing them people with the turntables, as I have been doing for the past 15 years.”

Grandmaster Flash is joined by Justice, Snoop Dogg, Calvin Harris and many others at Summafieldayze on the Gold Coast January 2. summafieldayze.com