DJ Z-TRIP
w/ Degree, Sweetz, Battery. The Starlite Room (10030-102 St). Fri, July 3 (9pm). Tickets: $25, available at Foosh, Blackbyrd, FS, Ticketmaster.

The hip hop DJ style known as the “mashup” is, at the best of times, divisive. Typically composed by layering the vocal track of one song over the music track of another, “serious” music fans often dismiss it as a vapid overextension of the longer samples and instrument loops made popular by late-’80s DJs. More ardent supporters will defend the mashup as an elaborate postmodern comment on the songs it contains, and less ardent ones will shrug their shoulders while hopefully having enough joy left in their hearts to appreciate the fun qualities of a good mashup.

The issues surrounding the mashup go well beyond lofty discussion of “artistic merit” and “esthetics.” Many disagree on what even constitutes a mashup as compared to an ordinary DJ mix — chief among them being Zach Saccia, a.k.a. DJ Z-Trip, the man often credited with producing the very first mashup, 1997’s “Rockstar” off of Bomb Hip Hop’s Return of the DJ, Vol. II.

“It wasn’t like I set out to be the ‘godfather of mashups’ or whatever,” says Saccia. “These are things people have called me, but all the titles came after the fact. My whole angle was just mixing records. The term ‘mashup,’ to me, is kind of redundant. DJs mix up records, and I was just taking the idea of DJing and mixing things up as far out there as I could.... Calling someone a mashup DJ is sort of like calling them a DJ DJ.”

Going back and listening to “Rockstar” now is a curious experience. At once unmistakably a mashup and also unmistakably its own piece, Z-Trip goes heavy on the fader and throws in some scratching for flavour, but otherwise lets the long samples of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” and “War Pigs” run unaltered beneath a repeated single line of Run DMC’s “King of Rock.” Though progressive and risky for its time, “Rockstar” stands in stark contrast to the YouTube-empowered mashups of today, which often consist of little more than two songs from disparate genres and a clever title that pokes fun at the connection.

“You got to understand, I’ve been doing this kind of mixing for years,” says Saccia. “The Internet helped to spread this kind of thing around, and it helps to fan the flames, but at the time, you had to have done it on records.... We had to have paid our dues to mix this stuff and make it work. When the barriers come down and the market is flooded, then you’ve got all these people who have never put in the work. Some of these people have access to all this stuff, but never had the chance to really learn it.... It makes it really hard to find the people who put the knowledge and the history and the work of being a DJ into it. That has been the hardest thing for the [mashup], is that the really good stuff gets unnoticed because the really funny thing gets pushed to the top. And sometimes the really funny thing is also really disposable.”

Saccia’s mixing ethos has always been the promotion of tunes that he loves. He doesn’t resent the USB turntable crowd for their tireless efforts to blend “99 Problems” with every other song ever written — far from it. Though he acknowledges the problems it creates, he celebrates the hands-on approach to popular culture created by the internet.

“Every time someone records a song and puts it out there, it’s no longer completely theirs,” says Saccia. “‘Yesterday’ by The Beatles, for instance — one of those major, heavy tunes everyone is connected with — if that song becomes a theme song for someone, everything about that song becomes a part of them. That song is so important to them, they have a piece of the ownership. On paper, this guy wrote it, this is where the money goes, sure — but really, trying to enforce and corral the song negates its purpose. You’re putting this stuff out there for people to enjoy. If that wasn’t the way things were, you wouldn’t have gotten a lot of hip hop progressions over the years.”

For readers curious about what the “godfather of mashups” is doing today, Saccia offers free mixes on his website djztrip.com.