Students Create New DJ Club

A new electronic music club has found a home in a room high atop Eliot House that holds a piano on which famed composer Leonard Bernstein ’39 once practiced. The newly formed student group called The Final Dubs hopes to create a community of music lovers and music makers on campus whose preferred tunes sound quite different from the ones Bernstein once made—since they are produced using tools that did not exist in Bernstein’s days at Harvard.

The electronic music group was founded by DJs Laura A. Evans ’13 and J. Andre Mauri ’13 and producer Matthias C. Wickenburg ’13.

Using the Leonard Bernstein ’39 room as their home base, the group can take advantage of Eliot House’s newly outfitted recording studio and keyboard.

“Every time I walk in [the studio] I feel like I’m entering a shrine,” Wickenburg said.

The club members said they hope to share music and ideas while creating a streamlined database of DJs for student groups on campus. They also plan to host lessons on DJing and music production and perhaps release a compilation album.

“Right now the DJ scene is really all word-of-mouth,” Mauri said. “We think it’s important to have a centralized source where people can compare and contrast different DJs’ skill sets.”

Mauri started DJing in Jan. 2011. Since then, he has signed 22 gigs on campus, ranging from House formals to this Saturday’s Eleganza.

Many in the club said that The Final Dubs aims to foster an open environment for musical experimentation. In a medium that lifts musical elements from many sources, club members say that they want to encourage that sort of inherent artistic collaboration among members of the Harvard community.

“We’re mostly trying to promote unity and the free flow of thought,” Evans said.

In the process, Evans said, the club will unite a cohort of talented musicians who can reliably play at planned gigs.

“The best resource everyone has is each other,” Mauri said.