I'm a little late to this party, and I have an early gig today so I haven't read all the posts, so excuse me if this has been said already.

IMO a DJ is not a musician. He/she may make music, but isn't a musician.

Let me make a comparison.

A person who makes art by pasting cut out images is not a painter, he/she is collagist. The collage may be beautiful and sell to collectors for big bucks, but that's beside the point.

In order for someone to be a musician, they have to play a musical instrument that is capable of reading any piece of at least single part music notation. That doesn't mean everyone has to read music to be a musician, but the instrument you play has to be one that in the hands of some musicians can do that.

If I write an original melody, notate it on a piece of sheet music, and put it in front of every DJ in the world, none of them can read it with their DJ equipment.

If I write 3 new melodic variations on a theme from Mozart and notate it, can a DJ play that?

Millions and millions of musicians can, even millions of bad ones. But the best DJ in the world can not.

Therefore DJs are not musicians but instead musical collagists.

That's not to say they aren't talented, that doesn't mean they don't create music, it just means they aren't musicians.

If we call DJs musicians, then we need to call people who create collages painters, and people who can write simple web pages (like myself) computer programmers.

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Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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