Originally Posted By: jazzmammal
What really matters is what does the audience think. We've all said that for years, we play for the audience and if they want to hear Marguerittaville or the Chicken Dance I'll do it even though I hate it if that's what the gig calls for.

Well, all you have to do is listen to or watch some of the shows concerning modern music and they all refer to these people as musicians. It's definitely part of the language now, all these DJ's, EDM types, and other people doing these shows are referred to as musicians. To me that's the end of the story. For us as old timers discussing amongst ourselves oh no they're not, is nice but completely irrelevant.

That train has left the station, the people who count say they're musicians so they're musicians. Like you just said Notes, the language changes. We're going to be the Lone Stranger standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon screaming into the void all by ourselves "No they're not, dammit!!"

Bob

Agree 100% with you Bob! At the end of the day those DJs you described are getting good paying gigs and delighting their audiences. They could care less whether folks in a forum dedicated to computer-generated backing tracks think they are musicians or not! laugh I personally see a lot of similarities in people here using backing tracks to make "music" and a DJ using CDs to make "music"!