While Spin Master J—the nom de scratch for 22-year-old South Bay DJ Jerry Huizar—was in Fahrenheit’s Wheels of Steel battle last year, he told me he saw his sets as 20 minutes to tell the audience a story.
He came in third in that DJ battle, after having won Beezo up in San Francisco the year before. But it turns out that storytelling philosophy might be even more important to his turntable career than his technical skills.
Huizar won the first Music Palooza last year at Evergreen Valley College, where he goes to school, doing a short set centered around the theme of what makes a good DJ.
“This year, I wanted to do something more over the top,” he says. So last month at the second Music Palooza, he did a six-minute piece about his last semester at Evergreen Valley. He has transferred to San Francisco State, where he’ll start in the fall, after moving north this summer. In some ways, his set in April was as much a farewell to DJing in the South Bay as it was to his school. Using everything from LMFAO and Kid Cuti bits to Simpsons and Family Guy samples, along with some Kanye, Sam Cooke and Trey Songz, it’s a sound collage, with not just a few story elements, but an actual plot.
Huizar says he got inspired to take the narrative to the next level when he saw what DJs were doing at the Threestyle competition in SF.
“A lot of DJs were doing so many tracks and tricks, I thought if you could slow it down to tell a story, that would be amazing,” he says.
He wasn’t the only one who thought so. After Huizar posted a video of the performance to YouTube, it was reposted by DJ Inbetween. That’s apparently how legendary Bay Area DJ Jazzy Jim, best known for his long stint on Wild 94.9, apparently found it. He, too, reposted it, which suddenly gave it a level of fame Huizar hadn’t been expecting.
“It got around on Facebook,” he says.
He realizes most people won’t be used to seeing a DJ do this kind of project, but he figures that just makes him stand out a little more in the crowded world of turntablism.
“There’s tons of DJs in the world,” he says. “But there’s only a handful who get famous.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozXBLktTJVE&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
.Jazzy Jim Takes South Bay DJ Spin Master J’s Video Viral
