Under the flashing lights of Providence clubs and at bustling campus orientation events, a community of Brown students thrive behind speakers instead of on the dance floor. Whether engaging a crowd, highlighting sounds from their home countries or finding fun in their passion for music, each student DJ at Brown approaches their art in a unique way.
The Herald spoke to a few of these student artists.
Tristen Ventura ’26 — known as DJ Tristen Cole — said his desire to perform stemmed from an early love for music.
Tristen Ventura ’26 — known as DJ Tristen Cole — said his desire to perform stemmed from an early love for music.
With “horrible speakers” and “really small, basic equipment,” his first gig was in a Brown fraternity basement, but it ultimately served as a catalyst for the future of his DJing career, he said. Since then, Ventura has gone on to book bigger, more prestigious venues, including the Colosseum’s “Prov Nights” series.
To Ventura, DJing can be something “as simple as playing a Spotify playlist in front of all your friends” or trying to “engage the crowd like a performance, get people excited.”
For Nini Pharsenadze ’25, DJing is a “conversation between the crowd and the music you select.” The majority of the art stems from “selecting music and curating the playlist” in the hopes of crafting “some sort of narrative to resonate with the audience,” Pharsenadze told The Herald.
For Pharsenadze, who grew up in the country of Georgia, DJing represents a “soundtrack of resistance.” In fifth grade, after experimenting with her uncle’s mixer — the control hub for DJs to manipulate audio — Pharsenadze soon brought her passion to the stage.
In her sophomore year at Brown, Pharsenadze booked her first Providence gig opening for a fellow student artist.
Since then, Pharsenadze has explored the campus DJing community through friends and courses on DJing. This same community also introduced her to various RISD students studying music and light design, some of whom have gone on to design animations for DJ sets.
In the week leading up to a gig, Pharsenadze prepares by listening to a diverse range of music. She aims to craft a narrative throughout her sets, often gaining inspiration from recent events either at home in Georgia or at Brown. In addition to Providence’s Symposium Records and other local venues, she has performed at Book Club Radio in New York City. She has also taken her craft global, performing in venues from Georgia to South Korea.
For Noah Lindsay ’27, DJing serves as a unique blend of both campus and home. Having grown up in Brazil, Lindsay’s signature style combines elements of Brazilian and funk music with more well known American lyrics.
Lindsay became interested in house music during his first year at Brown. “I was kind of tired of the music here,” Lindsay said, joking that “people always play ‘Party in the USA’ ... I can’t take it anymore.”
To him, DJing is “knowing what sounds good and what doesn’t.” But gigs often boil down to the “people he’s with,” he said.
While the DJing community at Brown is mainly composed of what Ventura calls “loose fragments,” both students and staff members have been trying to bridge that gap.
madison moore, a DJ and an assistant professor of modern culture and media, hopes to share the diverse history and theory of electronic music. This semester, moore introduced MCM 0700E: “Introduction to DJ Culture.”
The course aims to offer a history of the art, as well as a chance for students to immerse themselves in the craft. moore noted that many students often experience a “barrier to entry” due to a lack of DJing equipment. But through the course, moore hopes that students will ultimately feel confident enough in their abilities to participate in a collaborative performance at the end of the semester.
To moore, DJing is “a kind of curation,” often involving “taking bits and pieces of things that already exist and making them into a new whole — manipulating that on the fly, creating a new sonic texture.”
DJing, moore said, is unique to each creator by “your specific taste, your personal archive of sounds and what you bring to it.”
