Dance DJ Boards?

[Jmatthew]

I've been DJ'ing a swing dance every week for a few months, and I'm pretty conversant with swing music and I've got access to a great board for swing dj's, but I haven't had any luck finding ballroom DJ boards, or Salsa DJ boards or West Coast, hustle or Nightclub 2 step DJ boards.... anyone happen to know of any? the swingdj's board has been INCREDIBLY helpful in expanding my swing dance collection from a few CDs to over 100 great CDs, but I'm afraid to buy much in the way of other dances because I'm "out of hte loop" as far as new music goes. anyone have any ideas?

I'm asking because in about 6 weeks I take over DJ'ing a weekly "all-dance" dance night that's been playing a lot of west coast and Lindy, with a little bit of latin and ballroom thrown in.

 

[jon]

I've been looking for a WCS DJ board w/o success as well. ISTR there used to be Yahoo group but I can't find it now.

Presumably you already know about swingdjs.com for Lindy. There are a couple of sites aimed more at the R&B/Carolina Shag DJs, and since there's a good deal of crossover between Shag and WCS music, that might be of interest.

I doubt you'll find a NC2S-specific site. The dance doesn't have an independent identity as a dance form AFAIK, it's just a feature of ballroom, WCS, Hustle, and more recently country dances.

 

[Chris Stratton]

I did a shift as DJ at our team's ballroom/latin dance last night... don't have quite the experience of our regulars yet (and ended up asking the other guy to pick most of the latin selections) but it's a subject I'd be interested in talking about. Did you have any specific ballroom music questions?

 

[Jmatthew]

Not really. Was just hoping there were online communities like swingdj's where DJ's got together and talked about what CDs were good, what CDs sucked, tips for DJing their style of music etc.

 

[Chris Stratton]

My feeling with ballroom is that with occasional lucky exceptions, you are mostly safest with CD's from the dance publishers. Even then you have to pick the 2-4 tracks from a disc that are actually worth using from the rest of the cruft that, while perhaps technically suitable you probably won't care to hear a second time. Quality varies a lot between labels - it wasn't that long ago that there were people daring to market crudely synthesized 'orchestras' as dance music, and you still find dance-tempo covers of classics by people who can't sing or pronounce the language of the lyrics.

For starters, Casa Musica's house labels, and the Ultimate Ballroom seriers from WRH both seem to be worth the money, with several playable tracks per disc.

There's also some degree of requirement to grade the music for the abilities of the audience. Some songs are just easier to hear than others - my current favorite waltz, "Flying" off of Casa part 10, is just too subtle to be fair for socials or syllabus competition, but seems to be a hit with more experienced dancers (I actually bought the disc to get used to the track after encountering it a a comp)