The Secret World of Kory Schaff

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Author: Richie DeMaria and Emily Jensen

All professors have their hobbies. Some garden. Others join a bowling league or go fly fishing. But look for Philosophy Professor Kory Schaff after classes are over and the sun goes down, and you’re likely to find him behind a set of turntables, spreading the gospel of dance music.

When he’s not educating students on the episteme or existentialism, Schaff can be found spinning dark and progressive house music on dimly-lit dance floors. Under the alias DJ Darkbeat, the professor moonlights as a music maker when the school day’s done — at least, when he can find the time.

“I find it hard to pursue my DJing while I’m a professor. Being a professor at Oxy is more than a full time job, and while I do DJ a little bit at parties or clubs…it’s hard to consistently do it,” he said.

On top of working as a professor, Schaff serves as a member of the faculty counsel, a job which has increased his already hefty workload. “Speaking your mind publicly is good, but it has detrimental effects,” he said.

Still, though, he finds the time to fit music into his life, mixing and scratching in the comfort of his home.

“I DJ every day at home,” he said. “Now that I’m older I’m just not out as much, so the number of times I’ve played in the past year has probably been four. Not a lot. It’d be nice to have a club — lots of DJs have a residency where they can play once a week, but it’s hard to do.”

A hard thing to do, he notes, as a result of the boom of DJs in recent years. He blames the rise of the Internet for the surplus, which is especially prevalent in LA.

Schaff’s interest in electronic dance music began while completing graduate work in Chicago, where he discovered house music. Then, while researching at the Wissenschaftzentrum fur Sozialforschung in Berlin, he found himself drawn into the thriving Berlin techno scene, led by heavily influential artists like Paul Van Dyk. These formative years led to the beginning of his DJ career in 2001.

“I bought my first turntable in the spring of 2001, and I just started buying records and playing them and putting them together,” he said.

Schaff, a self-described “house fanatic,” is particularly partial to house, a style characterized by a 4/4 beat and a reliance on bass, though he also likes progressive trance and techno. He points to house duo Deep Dish and British DJ John Digweed as key influences.

“Obviously, in terms of people who have really influenced me, Deep Dish [are one of the biggest,]” he said. “They really brought house back into its global presence. Trance had been ruling the rave scene throughout the nineties. Now house, and progressive house, is the norm.”

He also cites DJ Sander Kleinenberg as an influence for his interactive style.

“There are two types of DJs. One is the DJ who starts and never looks up. The other kind of DJ is the interactive DJ. This is why my favorite DJs are people like Sander Kleinenberg. They jump up and down, they throw records into the audience, all while they’re spinning excellent music,” he said. “I’m kind of a combination of the two because I do find myself having to concentrate a lot of the time, but I do go and dance. I love dancing, dancing all night long.”

Schaff enjoys dancing to house, which he appreciates not only for its 4/4 beat, but more importantly, for its ideological and political significance.

“House music is an act of insurrection. It developed in the late seventies and early eighties in urban centers along with hip hop, with African Americans who were finding a way to express themselves despite the obvious segregation and exploitation of African American community,” he said. “It’s about togetherness.”

That message, Schaff says, has stayed strong in the face of changing political climates. He cites the nineties as a period of expansion for the genre, when the positive political and social ethos allowed for a flourishing rave scene. “People went out to be with other people,” Schaff explains. “The music now is darker. It’s a lot darker. The blend of electro especially, borrows from the electro in the early eighties when Reagan was around. People were alienated. It’s darker and more brooding. But the message I still think predominately is to get together and dance.”

Schaff sees this as a contrast with hip-hop, which has become disenfranchised from its politicized origins.

“What’s really sad today is hip hop has become so commercial and so white bread and mainstream that people have really lost track of the common roots or shared sorts of ideas that house music and hip hop have. House music is by far the superior form of music. There is good hip hop and I do like those more old school artists who have something substantive to say, like Digable Planets and A Tribe Called Quest, but increasingly it tends to echo what I call the juvenilia of consumer culture — you know, excess, get whatever you want,” he said.

This pervasive commercialization of hip-hop has made DJing an occasionally unpleasant experience for Schaff, who faced it first hand at Sycamore Glen during last month’s Glow Back to School dance.

“There were lots of people who were expecting hip hop and they were very aggressive about it. They were harassing me. I thought it was totally inappropriate and not a cool atmosphere for a party or dance,” he said. “Why listen to commercial hip hop that is popular right now when you could do it at home on your iPod? People would have had a lot of fun if they just chilled out and danced and not worried about whether they were going to hear their favorite Akon song.”

The problem with young crowds, he says, is twofold: the shortage of clubs for the under-21 set, and their shortage of dance moves.

“A friend made an interesting observation. First is: one thing about kids is that they didn’t get to experience the rave scene. They’re too young to get into clubs, and they don’t have access to that kind of music anymore, so what do they have access to? They have access to that which society tells them is good music. And the other thing is that because of that, they don’t know how to dance, and they feel uncomfortable dancing, but grinding on one another is really easy, and that’s sort of the whole hip hop mentality of what to do,” he said.

The answer to better dances, he says, lies in having an open-mind.

“A lot of people like hip hop, but it’s kind of routine. There’s need for a new sound. People need to realize diversity is the spice of life. I don’t understand the idea of going to a party or dance and listening to commercial pop,” he said. “People should be more open-minded.”

He suggests that students hungry for something other than hip-hop should start a club that would facilitate house music parties on Branca Patio, whose cement floors are sonically destined to host techno raves. And as for the club scene, Schaff offers this advice for the ID challenged: research to find out when good clubs (his favorites are Vanguard and Avalon) offer 18 and over nights.

Due to the negative experience at Sycamore Glen (worsened by a recurring power outage), Schaff isn’t sure when he’ll play at Oxy again. But if students showed more interest, it could be sooner rather than later.

“I’ll play again if somebody wants me to,” he said.

If you’re ready to break out of the “juvenilia of consumer culture”, and the unifying 4/4 throb of house music sounds like just the thing for your next Oxy function, then maybe this musically-inclined philosopher is your man. After all, it is his job — one of them, at least.

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