The job of a disc jockey (DJ) may seem a simple matter of selecting a few music tracks and making sure that they play correctly. The truth is that in addition to having an extensive knowledge of music in a wide variety of genres including music from past decades, a DJ ‘worth his or her weight in gold’ knows how to draw a crowd in and keep them entertained. Equipment must be maintained to avoid problems arising during play, and new music tracks must be assessed and added to their collection so that when requested a track can be easily located and played within seconds. Top DJs are in high demand and often find themselves spending most of their time traveling from one gig to another.
The following are DJs recognized as being some of the best in Canada (in no particular order):
Richie Hawtin
Richie Hawtin has worked hard to perfect his skills and it has paid off as he is now one of Canada’s DJs in high demand. He spends a lot of the time traveling between gigs and in between is kept busy with other musical pursuits. Richie has reached legend status and is widely recognized in the electronic music world both in Canada and internationally.
Joel Zimmerman
Better known as deadmau5 Zimmerman was born in 1981 and has been nominated for a Grammy Award six times during his career. Zimmerman is not only a top DJ but also a composer, musician and record producer, with a large number of collaborations to his credit including joining forces with Steve Duda using the alias of BSOD. Zimmerman is one of the world’s highest earning producers of electronic music and spent much of 2017 touring the world beginning with North America and Canada. He is currently working on a new album and though no release date has been confirmed fans are hoping for it to become available in 2018.
DVBBS
Consisting of two brothers, DVBBS embarked on their musical career in 2012 quickly rocketing to success after their ‘Initio’ debuted. The pair soon followed up with ‘Tsunami’ which Peter Tong played on his radio show BBC’s Radio 1, bringing DVBBS (pronounced dubbs) further recognition. The brothers have appeared with other DJ greats such as Martin Garrix and Steve Aoki. Despite the duo being relatively new on the electronic music scene they have established a name for themselves and are set to have a great future.