Concert in the Park

He pounded the crowd for four hours with thunderous bass drum beats. One man. Three thousand people. Electronic violin harmonies hummed behind a façade of bassy thumps, buzzing, and echoey beeps and bleeps that blasted through the speakers as Paul straddled the helm with his turntables and disc players.

Central Park, New York City, was the site of Paul Van Dyk’s Politics of Dancing concert. That August evening the audience of men, women, and teenagers filled the football field to see this dance music maestro and hear his beats which garnered him the best DJ in the world title.

The stage flashed with red and orange strobe lights. The big-nosed thirty-something-year-old must have had the sense of hearing of a microbat. Paul stood behind an array of sound equipment: two laptops, two vinyl turntables, two compact disc tables. His hands hovered over the devices: one switched records on a table while the other adjusted the tempo on his laptop. Electronic bass drum beats BOOM BOOMed, forcing the audience to jump up and down and scream P.V.D., P.V.D.!

Clusters of the audience swarmed the stage’s front perimeter as the bass intensified. Paul bobbed his head and pumped his shoulders with the rhythm – BoomBoomBoomBoom ch*ch*ch*ch BoomBoomBoomBoom ­– while he held one earphone to his lobe and spun a record with the other hand.

Everyone raised their hands in the air in sync with the bass drums that beat like bombs through the speakers. Fog machines spewed grey clouds in the air. Stage lights shot green laser beams above our heads.

At several points, Paul paused the beats so there was no sound except for audience clatter. Then a drum roll grew, grew, and BoomBoomBoomBoomBoom! Airy echoes of electronic-induced wind instruments fluttered between the beats. Somnolent violin-synths glided over it all. The pause between the bludgeoning beats sent me jumping in the air, pounding my finger-pointed fist with the audience. Each time he paused the music, we knew what was coming next. We anticipated it like riders on a rollercoaster bracing for the gut-twisting fall to the bottom.

Around me, the audience jumped up and down, waved their hands in the air. They danced in the humid heat, kicking their legs up and down and bending their arms back and forth like some crazy aerobics routine; others held their arms out in a defense-like stance while their hips moved as though they were playing with invisible hula-hoops. And I could feel their ninety-eight degree body heat. As I joined in the dancing, I felt an adrenaline rush like I was running laps.

I could smell the audience’s body odor as I danced and elbowed between them, their faces smiling, oranged by a rainbow of stage lights. I jumped up and down, beat my hand in the air with everyone else Paul-van-Dyk, Paul-van-Dyk. I could feel the bass beats in my chest and the harmonized synths hum between my ears.

Everyone danced, everyone cheered for their DJ. Everyone enjoyed the same sounds, the same space.