Most individuals who find themselves inspired by an artistic piece or performance are usually inspired more specifically by a great artistic piece or performance. However, it was a particularly horrible DJ at a party his senior year of high school that inspired current UCLA student Edward Danielyan to become a DJ and, more specifically, a much better DJ.
“He seemed so legitimate, but he turned out to be horrible. He mixed classical music with techno and other genres that didn’t make sense,” Danielyan said. “Then it was straight out of a cartoon. I thought “˜This guy sucks. I can do better. Wait a minute … I can do better!'”
After years of classes and performances, second-year economics and Russian student Danielyan has found a balance between his love of classical music from childhood and his constantly growing passion for DJing and has far surpassed the individual that put his career on the fast track.
With a culturally heterogenic background and a taste for diverse music, Danielyan fuses the best elements of opposing genres on the turntables as DJ Eklectiq.
Danielyan found the universality of music to be the stability he needed while growing up in three different countries.
Born in Soviet Armenia, Danielyan and his family moved to Russia when he was five to increase their financial opportunities. Danielyan found home in Moscow only to have to move once again, this time to Los Angeles, just seven years later due to the rise of neo-Nazis in the area.
“We moved here right at the crack of the new millennium,” Danielyan said. “It was for our safety.”
His exposure to different cultures also resulted in diverse musical taste. Growing up in the former Soviet Union, he was immersed in the Eastern European culture of regularly attending plays, operas and ballets as a form of commonplace entertainment. In addition, Danielyan’s aunt is a piano teacher and taught him how to play, enforcing musical education from the beginning.
“I was exposed to a lot of classical music growing up,” Danielyan said. “I loved going to ballets and operas. I still go.”
While classical music stayed with Danielyan, moving to America exposed him to new genres of music through popular media. The first couple of months were a shock of new knowledge of hip-hop, rap and other types of music apart from the typical classical rock and pop genres prominent in Russia at the time. Danielyan recalls his first experiences with rap music with humor.
“I heard Tupac for the first time while in Moscow and had no idea who he was or that he had died,” he said. “Music travels so slowly around the world. This hard-core rap reached (Russia) in 1998 but I thought it was a brand new song.”
Danielyan never stopped learning about music in his new environment, and soon MTV became his second education. Besides regularly tuning into the music channel after school, it was that high school party that would jump-start his disc jockey career.
The party was one of the first for Danielyan who, as typical of first-generation Soviets in America, grew up fairly sheltered. Danielyan saw the DJ arrive, complete with his crew, customized T-shirts, high-tech turntables and an air of confidence if not conceit for being the most popular person in the room. As the DJ started to spin records, Danielyan expected to be in awe of this larger-than-life persona, but things turned out differently.
He realized right away that the music the DJ was mixing did not sound right because its beats per minute did not match from song to song, which made the rhythm incompatible as it jumped from quick to painfully slow. Recognizing this problem with the way the music was mixed, Danielyan decided to put his prior musical knowledge to the test and give spinning a try.
First he played at his own graduation party and then moved on to other venues around Los Angeles. He worked toward the goal of being better than the DJ that inspired him by enrolling in classes at the Scratch DJ Academy, founded by Run DMC’s Jam Master Jay.
The academy supplies amateur DJs with turntables during classes and teaches everything a beginner needs to learn before expanding on the DJ trade. Some topics include how to loop songs together, the synchronization of beats per minute, how to time the rhythm and other general ways to make sure the party atmosphere never subsides because of poor music choice or song incompatibility.
“I took the class after I had been DJing for a year,” Danielyan said. “Some things taught were common sense, but the class opened my eyes to things I had no clue about. It summarized everything I knew, added much more (knowledge) and organized it neatly.”
Scratch DJ Academy fine-tuned Danielyan’s spinning skills and employed his prior classical music knowledge to truly get a feeling for his work ahead. The impact is impressive, with Danielyan able to instantly recall the BPM of any given popular song and its relation to other songs it’s commonly mixed with.
Scratch DJ Academy also helped Danielyan come up with his DJ name and alter ego. Playing on his diverse background Danielyan was struck by the term “eclectic” and connected to its meaning of heterogeny and fusion of the best elements of varying cultures and styles.
The spelling was changed to distinguish himself from another DJ who had the same name, and Danielyan became known as DJ Eklectiq.
Danielyan’s instructor at DJ Academy told him that being DJ Eklectiq is not simply an alter ego or an identity for gigs, but something to become wholeheartedly as he immersed himself in his craft. Danielyan was told that when he meets people he should introduce himself as Eklectiq because he is not Edward anymore. Though Danielyan embraces his passion for DJing, this advice is not one he follows.
“To my teacher, a DJ is a DJ and nothing more. It is his whole persona,” Danielyan said. “That’s impossible for me to believe. I came to the U.S. to increase my opportunities, and was brought up to believe that education is the only concrete thing. If you meet me, I’m Eddie.”
Danielyan’s passion lies not only in DJing but in school and learning. His double major in Russian and economics as well as his career plans in international business keep him occupied as he learns more tricks of the trade and adds constant parties to his part-time DJ resume.
Having spun multiple sweet-16 parties and a string of various fraternity events including Saturday’s Delta Tau Delta party, and looking forward to his gig at the upcoming Masquerade Ball at Covel Grand Horizon Ballroom, Danielyan reaffirms that DJing is more than being a human iPod designed to keep a frat party going. He compares being a DJ to being a composer.
“DJs decompose a song and recompose it into something else, tearing songs apart and putting them back together,” Danielyan said. “DJs are composers and don’t get enough credit. The flow of different songs mixed together but sounding like you’re playing one continuous song while feeling the crowd’s reaction is the art of turntable-ism.”
Fusing the best elements of songs together, Danielyan isn’t afraid to mix Weezer with Common or old-school Michael Jackson with modern hip-hop or even throw in international songs in other languages ranging from Russian to French and Chinese. The commonality and universality of music is something that he finds comforting, intriguing and relatable to his eclectic background.
Unwilling to squeeze himself into just one cultural categorization, whether Armenian, Russian or American, Danielyan also refuses to separate music by genre. Themes and emotions found in music are common to every genre, country and time period. This brings the diversity to the music Danielyan mixes because it is not restrained by labels or expectations of certain hits remixed.
“My motto is “˜open your mind,'” Danielyan said. “Don’t categorize songs by genres, and see how they work together.”