The DJ has shifted from impassive shaman serving the crowd to performative showman flaunting personal pleasure

Reynolds observes a change in DJ etiquette visible in social-media clips: the traditional DJ was a still, professional figure — ‘impassive and grave’, a shaman whose sobriety contrasted with the crowd’s abandon, implicitly asserting ‘this is serious work’. Contemporary DJs instead flaunt their own pleasure — dancing while mixing, whooping, working the mixer frenziedly — erasing the professional distance between jock and punter. Reynolds frames this as an ‘influencerization’ of deejaying: the craft has become a performance style in which the DJ’s physicality is spectacle. He argues the actual mixing moves are often minimal, making the gestural repertoire (he compares it to a rock guitarist’s ‘guitarface’) extraneous to the real technical work.

Examples

A home DJ in a dressing gown jigging while mixing; a club DJ flourishing an arm dramatically after tweaking an EQ knob — versus the older model of the DJ tucked invisibly in an alcove, never dancing. Reynolds’ ‘guitarface’ analogy: devastating sounds made with tiny movements, the drama pure pantomime.

Assessment

What does Reynolds mean by ‘showman not shaman’? What is ‘guitarface’ and what analogy does it draw to modern deejaying?