On a Wednesday in late February the sound of four-on-the-floor beats and hypnotic basslines wafted through the halls of learning. This siren song led back to room 2024, where a DJ was mixing, looping and scratching bouncing tracks in the middle of a school day.
A DJ was nestled in the right corner, with headphones held to one ear, towering speakers on either side of him, pumping out old school Chicago house music. Emanating from his location were at least a dozen smaller sound systems with desks for students, each one equipped with a shiny four-channel DJ controller, and an electronic mixing device, including two jog wheels to simulate the motion of spinning records.
This is Truman’s Sound Asylum audio lab, and the DJ is Grammy-award winning producer Maurice Joshua, new to Truman as of last year when he came aboard as Manager of the Sound Asylum.
The workshop of the day was “Roots & Rhythms – Foundations of DJing,” an opportunity for Joshua to share the craft but also to make his argument about black history: “[House music] was created here by young black teens on the south side of Chicago … I think it should be mandatory, everybody should know the history of it.”
Joshua, a veteran of Trax Records, has worked with Beyonce, Blu Cantrell, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.
Joshua says he came to Truman to educate young people about the music he helped invent: “I have to get this out to the younger generation so they can keep this alive still.”
Some skills covered in the workshop included beatmatching, blending, cueing, scratching, recognizing beat drops and changing the speed of the song or BPM.
After the hands-on training participants watched part one of the 2023 docuseries, “In Our DNA: Hip House,” featuring Joshua and other house-music legends sharing their firsthand experience. “We took the disco records and redid them,” said Joshua. “We put our spin on it by changing the bassline and putting different drums on them.”
For those who missed the workshop, Sound Asylum offers classes on music production and DJing, and the Associate Dean of Student Services Micheal Johns says this summer the school is bringing back last year’s successful Light of Day Symposium: “Dr Jackson’s gonna be DJing, so hopefully we get some kids that can go.”
Joshua says he’s excited to share more about what he knows with students: “I just want to show them that this is something that was homegrown here in Chicago, that you can still reach and touch people that made it and pioneered it. That’s still living.”