In an oversight that is sure to leave DJ Mag red-faced it has emerged that voters of the yearly poll have once again made the error of not including a representative number of black or female DJs.
The poll, supposedly an annual recognition of the top DJs in the world, is dominated by white males in spite of the number of black and female DJs hard at work killing dance floors across the world.
This year however, only three black people and two female duos have appeared in the poll, indicating that in the consciousness of the mainstream EDM world, only 5% of DJs aren’t white men.
Compare this to the DJ Mag poll of 1999 where almost a quarter of the DJs featured were black and four of the places were occupied by women including legends like Frankie Knuckles, Derrick Carter and Derrick May.
DJ Mag have insisted that the poll is conducted on the popular vote of their readers and that the absence of black or female faces can only mean that their readers are “either racist or sexist or, more likely, that the management companies promoting DJs for the poll are eager to push white, inoffensive, posterboy DJs like Martin Garrix and Nicky Romero as opposed to pioneers like Kerri Chandler or Robert Hood”.
“No black DJs in the list? Sure there is, Afrojack is in there, so’s Carl Cox, so’s em, em…..,” claimed one defender of the poll. “Hmmmm, I guess if there’s no other black DJs in there then there mustn’t be very many black DJs, or they must not be very good?”
“Maybe if the female DJs marketed themselves a bit better and dressed a little more sexily then they’d place high on the top 100 too,” he added. “Look at Nervo or Krewella, they’re both quite highly placed and who knows, maybe they’ll lesbian kiss each other at some point and win the whole thing.”
“I was going to vote for a black DJ,” chimed one American EDM teen, “but then I realised there weren’t any, so I don’t think that makes me a racist.”
Most observers have agreed that the absence of black or female faces in the top 100 poll doesn’t suggest that the poll itself or EDM in general is racist but points to a worrying trend of making white, male trance or electro house DJs the norm in commercial dance music to the detriment of having different voices, something which will inevitably cause the scene to stagnate and implode.
“It’s almost as if there’s some kind of marketing bias towards white European-looking, electro-house DJs that gives no support for the black techno artists that helped to forge the sound of electronic music,” lamented one observer.
“When a white DJ/moron dressing in blackface, Jay Styles, gets more voting coverage than former RA Best Artist winner, Seth Troxler, then you know you’ve got a DJ marketing structure that is systemically racist and, worse, has forgotten its inclusive underground roots.”
“I think, as far as the current EDM manifestation of commercial dance music contends to have come, there’s still a viewpoint among music marketing companies that dark techno made by black faces is too fringe for the white, middle class mainstream,” he continued. “To find the true spirit of club music where people from all creeds and genders come together to create a legitimate culture then you’ve got to go back to the underground.”
“This just shows how irrelevant that poll is to what’s happening in dance music,” he concluded. “It’s an arbitrary list, composed of predominantly white people at the whim of marketing companies who saturate social media with pleas for votes and in doing so stifle any attempt of mainstream dance music having a true representation of the different types of people involved in making club culture so special.”
