Headphone-Headset-Jetset DJ Culture, Mobility and Science Fictions of Listening

Abstract

This article explores the practice of DJ performance through the use of headphones as opposed to the preferred instruments of analysis: vinyl, turntables and mixers. It focuses on the DJ as a performer who uses headphones on stage, which complicates the traditional construction of “headphone culture” as tending toward exclusively private listening. The experience of the public and private tension of headphones on stage leads to a larger examination of the post-World War II dialectic of mobility, radio communications and recorded music, which is expressed in the constellation “headphone-headset-jetset”. In this history, headphones intersect with cultures of command-and-control, aviation and broadcasting. These intersections help to trace the history of the cyborg figure.