Dreamville DJ workshop blends art of DJing with library science

Sick drops, cool blends and jubilant exclamations — these are products of the Fishbowl Forum at D.H. Hill Jr. Library during a DJ workshop that was put on in conjunction with the Dreamville Festival. Employees of the Digital Media Lab used the festival to highlight how to bring a variety of music to the ears of the people.

The Fishbowl Forum is usually dedicated as a calm spot for students to study, but it often holds workshops and events to show what the library has to offer. During the workshop, there were stations of mixers and laptops, as well as studio monitors and headphones. 

All kinds of people attended the workshop, and established DJs were there to demonstrate the art of everything from scratching to transitioning to blending on the library-provided turntables.

Alexander Valencia is a Student Success Librarian at D.H. Hill Jr. Library, but he has also been a professional DJ for most of his adult life. He talked about how the library opens up a space for people to explore their musical side.

“We don’t have a distinct music major at NC State, but we found through a lot of programs that students have music as a hobby where they’re interested in getting to a side hustle with music,” Valencia said. “And so the library’s like a cool community center where people of different colleges can come in and take a workshop like this.” 

Valencia and other library staff came around to each station to demonstrate different techniques on the turntables and then let people play around with the devices. Valencia said they used the Dreamville Festival as an opportunity to showcase what the library has to offer, and the DJs that helped out are affiliated with Dreamville.

“It’s mostly in name and in time, but some of the DJs that came to help out with the students, they are Dreamville affiliates,” Valencia said. “They help me put up the pop-up shop; they’ll be DJing at some of the community events tomorrow.”

Tim Mensa, a University Library Specialist, worked with Valencia to put it together. He discussed how Valencia’s experience as a DJ informed the event and his work as a librarian generally.

“Since pivoting into librarianship and going to library school and stuff like that, he’s been able to find a really cool intersection of like showing how to use archival media like vinyl, you know, and these old audio production formats and turn that into a cool learning opportunity for students and faculty,” Mensa said. “And since I work in digital media production, it’s just like a very easy way for me to support as well and kind of get the students and faculty interested in older forms of audio formatting, vinyl collecting, vinyl sampling, music archival history, that kind of stuff.”

Maurika Smutherman, a doctoral candidate in communication and rhetoric in digital audio, works as a graduate extension assistant in the Digital Media Lab. She was also a leader in the organization of the event. 

“I think it’s important to show how music can be more accessible to people, especially given the fact that we’re at NC State, a predominantly white institution,” Smutherman said. “Sometimes, marginalized cultures like hip-hop may not be as present on a campus like this. So I just think this is an important event to highlight the culture of hip-hop, to bring people together no matter the background they’re coming from, and to show them that DJing is accessible.”

Smutherman said the equipment is available for checkout if someone missed the event that would like to get into DJing, and the library offers tech consultations to help get you started. 

“It’s not as complicated as it may seem, and this is something we offer to people at any time,” Smutherman said. “If they want to learn, if they want to practice, they can check this equipment out on their own. They can learn in a more intimate setting, or they can come do this with a community of people, and maybe even be friends through this.”

The room was full of clashing noise as people played around with the dropping songs and blending together different textures. People played around using the essentials — songs like “BREAK MY SOUL” by Beyoncé, “Antigua” by Channel Tres and oldies like “N.Y.S.O.M #20” by DJ Premier and “It was a Good Day” by Ice Cube.