Abstract

Although MCing and ‘scratching’ are highly popular amongst school children, very few music departments invest in DJing decks. It has been suggested that school music teachers, in general, are far from comfortable with such equipment. While being no expert with ‘dex’, however, I have found DJing and MCing to be extremely valuable for classroom music teaching, especially when working with under-achieving and/or highly disaffected pupils. In this presentation, I explain how I began to integrate such music making into his lessons, some pitfalls I discovered thereby and the many benefits which DJ decks have brought to music classes.

Pete Dale has been Head of Music for many years at a highly challenging inner-city school in the North East of England. Before taking up teaching, he performed in numerous punk underground bands, gaining generous support from several of the most significant ‘alternative rock’ groups of the 1990s (Sonic Youth, At the Drive-In, Fugazi and others). He also ran the influential DIY record label Slampt during the same period. He has an MA currently near completion of a PhD. Pete Dale’s principal research interest is the politics of music making.