By Christina Horsten
The music sounds through the small back room and Natalie Weiss’ brown ponytail bobs in time with it.
“This will be the best day of our lives,” the 32-year-old calls out. “Put your hands up!”
Eight pairs of children’s hands stretch up into the air, most with the help of mum or dad.
“Baby DJ, put your hands up, you got to get up, if you want to get down,” sings Weiss, as she dances through the room in knee-high socks and short dungarees before producing her laptop.
“DJ Violet Sky, sit in the middle and press play! We press play and we are on our way to be a Baby DJ.”
With eyes as big as saucers, Violet Sky, who has just put on a new song with the help of her mother, gazes at Weiss.
Seven other small children aged between just a few months and two years stand and lie around her with their parents. It’s Saturday morning and the Baby DJ course has just begun in trendy Brooklyn borough of New York City.
”Can you feel the energy building up?” calls Weiss, as 1-year-old DJ Dana, who has recently learnt to walk, rattles the doorknob. “Dance the Harlem Shake, shake it out!”
Weiss is a professional DJ. The night before she was teaching another deejaying course for adults, though she isn’t showing any signs of tiredness.
“I am from Orlando, Disneyworld. I am all smiles,” she says. A few years ago the small son of a friend discovered her DJ equipment and began playing around with it.
“He was fascinated and I was surprised how fast he figured it all out,” she says.
Weiss read up about music teaching and began offering courses for babies and young children in late 2013 - complete with musical instruments, headphones, record players, laptops and mixing programmes.
She believes it’s the only course of its kind currently on offer.
Eight lessons cost around 225 dollars and Weiss can also be booked for children’s birthday parties.
“Parents love it. They go crazy. They all want to bring their friends,” says Weiss.
The courses are “really creative and fun” was the verdict of ABC television, though the Wall Street Journal decided they were “an example of Brooklyn being almost too cool for itself.”
But it’s important to Weiss that her classes are taken seriously.
“I have read everything about early childhood music education,” she says. “The kids learn about melodies, they learn new words, how to share and to wait for their turn. I know exactly how loud is too loud for them. And I came up with all our songs.”
DJ Uma always wanted to play with his record player at home even though she wasn’t allowed to, explains her father. “So this is great.”
German primary school teacher David is dancing next to him, he lives with his wife and son in New York and discovered the classes via a poster.
”My son loves it here. When we play him the songs at home he starts making the moves he’s learnt here.”
Meanwhile, Weiss is opening and shutting her laptop lid to draw the attention of the infants.
“I am the laptop,” she says, pretending to speak from inside it. “Who has one at home? Raise your hands!” DJ Uma begins crawling towards it.
“The software (on my laptop) is called Traktor Pro. Now you have to choose: Deck A or Deck B. And then we will mix them like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” coos Weiss.
The baby DJ smacks the keyboard. “You chose Deck B. Great! Blow kisses to DJ Uma.”
Weiss entertains the children, who squeal with pleasure, for 45 minutes — with jungle dances (“DJ Damian, help me show them what a monkey does!”), the twist, a robot dance, examples of different pitches, records which she turns into steering wheels and head phones.
“We put the headphones on and we are ready to party,” she calls as she affixes the head phones to the ears of DJ Hanson.
”The volume is very low,” she assures the adults.
The children are then allowed to touch a switched-on record player. “Just to get the concept. These record players are very robust,” says Weiss.
She asks the parents of the smaller babies to begin tapping out the rhythms gently on their bodies.
“You all did great!” says Weiss as the lesson comes to an end. She switches off the main ceiling light, switches on a strobe light and announces “one last song for all the wonderful daddies.”
As her own composition That’s Why Daddy Loves Disco plays over the loudspeakers, eight tired-looking baby DJs dance around the room in their fathers’ arms. —DPA
FUN CLASS: Natalie, left, demonstrates deejaying to babies in New York City.
