Baby, You're a Firework

Everyone loves fireworks. On Saturday night I went to the huge display at Alexandra Palace, an annual event that is prompted by the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ attack on British parliament, albeit that Fawkes and politics are curiously absent from the celebrations these days. There were thousands of people there. It was one of those rare occasions where you see a true cross-section of London’s population: all ages, all sexes, all sexualities, all nationalities, all races and all faiths. There’s a problem with fireworks displays, though. The first explosions are always astonishing, but how do you sustain attention over a 20-minute set? It can all start to seem a bit tedious and wasteful. At worst you feel like Aimee Mann in her song '4th of July', which commemorates America's fireworks night: ‘Today's the fourth of July / Another June has gone by / And when they light up our town I just think / What a waste of gunpowder and sky’. You know that there will be a climax at some point, but climaxing is about the only thing that fireworks know how to do.

            There is an answer to this fireworks conundrum. Why not try dancing to them? Dancing is always interesting. It can be enhanced, further still, by visual effects. The Alexandra Palace festival was sound-tracked by DJ Yoda. He was brilliant, weaving together short bursts of music from a large array of genres. He was also thoroughly modern with his faith in the past. Yoda knows the musical state of play. After 15 years of downloading services and a decade of Spotify, there is an audience that knows a huge amount of music and is open to all types. You can play anything from any era as long as it’s good and it’s right. And so we had songs drawn from the 1950s to the present day, and from styles as diverse as hip-hop, folk music, trance, post-punk, jazz-funk, soul, movie soundtracks and mainstream pop. We danced to Deodato’s version of Also Sprach Zarathustra and we danced to the Beastie Boys’ ‘Intergalactic’. The biggest hits of the night were a remix of the Weavers’ ‘Wimoweh’ from 1952 (a song, it seems, that we have all grown up with) and a brilliant segue of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ (from 1983) into Rihanna’s 2011 hit ‘We Found Love’ (the trance clichés of this track are irresistible). Of course the whole thing ended with Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’. Except it didn’t. There was an encore sequenced to ‘Feelin’ Good’, Nina Simone’s classic from 1964. These are great times to be a DJ. And they are great times for explosive dance.  

Europe ... end ... less

Every now and again I DJ at the National Portrait Gallery in London. There is only one song that I always play: Kraftwerk’s ‘Europe Endless’. Each time I play it the song takes on a different hue. I have played it in support of the Greek fight against the austerity programme, and last year I played at as the refugee crisis reached one of its peaks. It is a song that resonates with people. The melody is uplifting and it contains all the promise of a European union. The song is nine minutes long, but aside from the repeated title there are only a dozen or so words. They nevertheless say all you need to know about Europe’s grandeur and its facade: ‘parks, hotels and palaces, promenades and avenues, real life and postcard views, elegance and decadence’. Usually someone will come up to me and say ‘what is this?’, or they will probe me with their Shazam. The last time I played 'Europe Endless' things were different, however. It was only two weeks ago. For once, the song was ignored. People talked all over it and it couldn’t get itself heard. I guess this was a sign.

The Song Inside the Tune

Last night I did one of my occasional jobs, which is to DJ for the National Portrait Gallery’s Late Shift. I love doing this. One thing that attracts me is the complexity of the place itself. Grayson Perry has recently infiltrated the National Portrait Gallery with his TV series and exhibition ‘Who Are You?’, which highlight and contradict the institution’s predominant focus on powerful, white, middle class, heterosexual males. And yet, while the gallery has this focus, it also attracts one of the most democratic art audiences. The crowds that come and go as I play my tunes are truly diverse. Last night, for example, I spent the end of the evening talking to a nightclub bouncer who is giving up bouncing and taking up drawing.

            From a DJ's perspective, this diverse crowd has to be approached with caution. Some genres work (jazz, soul, fifties rock ‘n’ roll), some don’t (punk, understandably; disco, perhaps less so). It is also the case, as with all music performances, that different songs cut through at different times. This doesn’t just apply to the crowd; it also applies to me.

            This brings me to the real focus of this piece. The record that affected me most last night was Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’. It’s an incredible song: a perfect lyric, matched to the perfect tune, matched to the perfect singer. It has a universal message and it nails it. Who hasn’t felt in need of reassurance that they are beautiful? And who hasn't wanted it to be known and understood that they are more beautiful on the inside? It’s also brilliantly contradictory, a song that says ‘words will never hurt me’, but is in need of words in order to feel strong again.

            What really excites me about this song, though, is not hearing its message but instead thinking of other people hearing its message. Its one of those songs that you know will have helped people though ordeals in their lives. It is a tonic and it is deeply moving. There’s another thing that excites me as well: what on earth must it feel like to create a piece of music like this? Hearing the playback of the final mix, the singer and the writer must have known they had a hit on their hands. More than that, they would have known that this would be a song with a life force. When songs like ‘Beautiful’ enter the wider public consciousness they help to make pop the most powerful art form that we have. They conjure deep emotions and they give us a way of sharing those emotions. To be able to play them in public is a privilege.