Paper short abstract:

This paper shall attempt to look at the figure of the neighbourhood DJs of Delhi. This figure is one that is embedded within the structures of aspiration that 'pirate culture' participates in.

Paper long abstract:

This paper shall attempt to look at the figure of the neighbourhood DJs of Delhi, a figure inaugurated by the puzzling arrival of the remix as a digital musical practice. This exploration, both discursive and ethnographic, begins by looking at the DJ as participating in a non-legal/extra-legal world, a liminal space filled with multifarious technological objects, as theorised by Bagchi (2006). In the context of Bhopal, Rai (2009) constructs the various assemblages that these DJs form with various objects (trucks, sound equipment, new orders of capital movement etc). Both critics along with the theoretical premises of the Sarai group about pirate cultures (Liang 2009; Sundaram 2010) form the entry-point for me to look at the figure of the DJ.

The story of a lower-middle class, 'neighbourhood/ mohalla DJ' and his studio (or lack thereof) is one that is embedded within the structures of aspiration that this pirate culture participates in. This aspiration carries both a desire for upward mobility and for an urban/e sensibility. Furthermore, it may perhaps be suggested that this aspiration is imbricated upon and entwines with a love for and knowledge of music itself. This places before us, for consideration, the affective and the emotional as well as knowledge structures that these DJs participate in while being 'pirates'. This paper, shall attempt to reconstruct some of these knowledge structures as well as emotional structures, so as to see how these may possibly lie 'outside' the domain of intellectual property that the Law demarcates.