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<\/a><\/p>\nI wasn\u2019t all that excited to return to snowy Cambridge, but my first week back was amazing.\u00a0 Harvard has a new initiative called January Arts Intensives, held during the week before school starts. \u00a0The classes are small (about ten people each), and we receive intensive instruction in a special art technique. \u00a0The week-long class wasn\u2019t graded, which makes it feel less like school and more like recreation.<\/em><\/p>\n I signed up for the coolest class: “<\/em>How to Deejay.” \u00a0I’m not your typical-lookin’ deejay, but I\u2019ve always been in love with music \u2013 I religiously read Rolling Stone, SPIN and Pitchfork, and I spend any extra money I have on new tunes. \u00a0I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t play an instrument of any kind (not even the recorder! and everyone <\/em>learned the recorder in grade school), so this deejay class seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn how to \u201cmake music\u201d without actually playing an instrument.\u00a0 Each class is taught by an expert in the field, and mine was led by the phenomenal Boston DJ and ethnomusicologist, DJ Super Squirrel.<\/a><\/p>\n Over the course of the week, we learned about mashups and remixing\u00a0as an ideology that extends into an infinite number of fields (not just music!) \u00a0Remixing can happen in films, in visual art, in performance, in poetry and lyrics — and even in fields beyond the arts, like science, where major solutions are often found in the intersections of very different projects & studies. \u00a0Remixing appeals to me on a really fundamental level, because I’ve always felt like I come from a mashup of cultures. \u00a0Sometimes I don’t even know where my loyalties lie — I feel so invested in each community and place that shaped me. \u00a0At the end of our deejay class, I made a sweet mixtape that blended some of my favorite Kenyan pop songs with US dance music. \u00a0The result sounded as muddled as my own identity, but at least it was danceable.<\/p>\n For most of the week, we used this mashup software called Ableton, which is apparently what all the eminent DJs use (even artists like Girl Talk and Skrillex!).\u00a0 But, in the interest of authenticity, we also learned how to scratch using records and turntables \u2013 the old-skool way.\u00a0 \u00a0I discovered that I have no natural skills in the scratching department. \u00a0You gotta use your left hand to push the record while you flick the fader back and forth with your right hand.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I can\u2019t make my hands do different things at the same time \u2013 but it was still fun spinning Nastymix records like I knew what I was doing.\u00a0 In my daydreams, I’m just as amazing as these guys:<\/p>\n