Styl(us): Asian North America, Turntablism, Relation

We cannot just grab on to any ideas of liberation just because they are being pushed by old friends of ours or because they give us an emotional shot in the arm.

—James Boggs

There's nothing like biting. Or cutting. Biting, or "stealing" a technique, beat, or phrase, in turntablist/DJ parlance, is an unspeakable act that demands accountablity.¹ Such is the case with Mista Sinista, a DJ who was with the now-defunct turntable group X-ecutioners and a secondary victim of theft. The situation: DJ 8-Ball, a Filipino American DJ, met Mista Sinista, an African American DJ, in the 1993 Supermen DJ Battle for World Supremacy finals. Mista Sinista, whose "main concern" in the competition "was having people like what I do," performed a routine in which he manipulated and combined minute sounds and beats on two turntables simultaneously to create a new, slower "track" (Battlesounds 1997). 8-Ball's routine was quite different; he played a "test tone" record, which consisted of a constant humming sound used to calibrate audio equipment, and manipulated the pitch control on the turntable, thereby creating "notes" that were strung together to create a melody. (8-Ball performed "Yankee Doodle" and Dr. Dre's "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" [1992].) The audience was ecstatic during and after 8-Ball's performance, and he won the title.

8-Ball's performance was a problem and a "theft." Mista Sinista, in one interview, called 8-Ball's performance "real original," yet he also admitted that "anyone" could do what 8-Ball did: "that's not too hard to think about . . . or do, for that matter." The criticism (and venom) then emerged. "The majority of the crowd doesn't understand [my routine]," Mista Sinista lamented, because "seeing visuals [8-Ball's gesticulating routine that accompanied the fairly simple pitch control manipulation] . . . that's what gets the crowd up. So why put myself through the strain when I can deceive the crowd with little crap?" The "strain" of work and sharpening one's DJ abilities was undercut by 8-Ball's "simple" routine. Around San Francisco, everyone associated the technique of using test tones to create melodies with Filipino American DJ Q-Bert anyway, since he was the first to integrate the technique into a public performance. Eddie Def of the Bullet Proof Space Travelers claimed, with more than a little contempt, that 8-Ball "was just fascinated [by DJ Q-Bert's manipulation of tones] and got stuck in that realm." "If you're going to take someone's move, I would do it better, you know, than that person did it or slightly change it—put your style into it," advised DJ Rectangle, who had to battle 8-Ball before the finals of the competition (Battlesounds 1997). The work of turntablism and the desire to reclaim work in service to "originality" and professional advancement signals one dominant strain of thinking in turntablist circles: the demand that one works for one's style and that, even though ultimately (and in the first instance) derivative, originality signals a break from association, relation, and, in Eddie Def's formulation, citation.

But how do we make sense of this style of plagiarism when, according to Hillel Schwartz, plagiarism is "recursive, unsolicited, irrepressible" in contemporary music(s) (1996, 313)? And why value originality in a genre and practice that demands aggressive, (mostly) undocumented citation and record crate "digging" in order to find old records for the DJ's arsenal? "The preference for originality, evident in the discourse both of consecration and of censure," contends Marilyn Randall, "can be seen as a strategy of institutional self-validation which projects the annihilation of difference in the guise of protecting individuality" (1991, 525). DJ competitions, and turntablism in general, strongly invest in the traps and follies of performative institutionalization and canon formation. For example, competitions held under the banner of the DMC (Disco Mix Club), one of the foremost sponsors of worldwide DJ competition, are usually judged by past competition winners and veterans (DMC 2006). Christine Z. Pabon, former events coordinator...