The Shine message board may not be the kind of forum on which you would expect to find an impassioned nature/nurture debate, but that’s exactly what emerged on a recent thread devoted to news that Belfast was going to play host to Ireland’s first ever DJ Academy. Judging by the responses, it was a topic that rubbed both the erogenous zones and raw nerves of the local clubbing community in pretty equal measures – touching on a whole host of issues that go to the very heart of present day dance music.

Kev Traynor, man behind Tech-House night Bassment and founder of the Academy started the chat and then looked on delightedly as things got out of hand.
“It was just a really great, provocative debate,” he says. “There are two schools of thought. One being that it takes hard work to be a DJ and that you have to really bust your balls over a lot of years to get on at it. You have to earn your place. That’s a really legitimate argument. But if six or seven years ago I had been able to sit down with someone who knew what they were doing, it would have saved me so much in the way of pointless frustration and anxiety.
“That’s what we’re going to try to do. You can’t give people passion, you can’t dictate what they’re into. But you can tell them what the world is going to be like for them and warn them of potential pitfalls. At the end of the day, it’s a service. We’re here to help.”
The Academy follows a template laid down by the likes of Technics and Sub Bass in England in attempting to provide its students with a grounding in the purely technical aspects of DJing (the brochure mentions modules available in Scratching, Advanced Mixing Techniques, New Technology), while also making them aware of more practical matters such as designing flyers and the art of getting (and staying) on promo lists. Kev maintains that the first intake due in November are, above all, going to get a crash course in pragmatism.
“The whole aim is to get people thinking for themselves,” says Ken. “So we’re going to tell them about promoting themselves, and also challenge them - ask the people who want to play hard house where exactly they plan on getting gigs. We’re covering a lot of really important, but ignored ground. There aren’t too many people in Ireland making money at the moment, it’s dead competitive. What we’re doing is letting people know this and, hopefully, helping them to put themselves in the best position to make a career from it.”
Coming at the end of a year when dance music has been the subject of more obituaries than Johnny Cash, the rationale behind setting up this venture may seem misguided. However, Kev remains bullish about the Academy’s value (“Saying that dance music is dead is stupid. The old, cynical club scene may be dead but hopefully that just means there’ll be more room for people with passion”) and claims that the support the venture has received from long-established members of the dance fraternity points to a surviving sense of collectivism.
“There’s a fair bit of politics with a small p that goes on in clubland. I’ve experienced that – people posting over your posters, things like that. But as far as the Academy has been concerned, people have been fantastic about it. Jay Kay from Milk will be one of the instructors, Chris Cargo, who has been playing for years, will be helping us out, Paul Hamill, Lyndon Stephens and a lot more.
“We’ve been getting support from Radio Ulster; Simmsy has been in touch from Shine, Col Hamilton from Lush. It’s been great. I think most people who really care about the well being of dance music here know that it has the potential to be a great thing for the scene. I can’t wait to get started.”

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