DJing is all the rage. Modern software means everyone from bedroom DJs to laptop whizzes are having a spin. You can now add to that growing list of superstar wannabes… babies.
A school teaching infants to DJ has recently opened in New York’s hipster Brooklyn. At the fledgling DJ school, Brooklyn resident and DJ Natalie Elizabeth Weiss is hoping to teach infants the basics for creating and mixing electronic music.
“The difference between listening to Mozart and listening to electronic music is that you can’t pick up a cello when you’re three months old but you can push play,” said Weiss, 31.
The eight week course costs $200 and accepts newborns through to the age of 3. The DJ insists that the point of the course is to introduce babies to the genre and not to add another hipster string to their parents already very hip, or depending on how you look at it, tragic bow.
“The people who are interested are not interested in coolness,” she said. “They say, ‘my baby loves music and they are already playing with my laptop.’ ”
Jessica Childs, co-owner of an all-natural tea company called Kombucha in Brooklyn, said her 2-year-old son Rider has already started working with Weiss, who sometimes babysits him.
“It’s a wonderful tool for children to use because it doesn’t require fine motor skill as opposed to playing the flute,” said Childs, 36. “He can’t really draw a perfect circle but he can mix some slicing beats together.”
What remains to be seen is how the adult DJ community will respond to the arrival of the baby DJ on the scene.
By Georgina Burks
