To many children and students, a teacher is like a second parent who plays a major role in a child’s education to mould them into the world’s future movers and shakers. As such children usually build a special bond with their teachers, especially the “cool” ones they can relate to.
For many students at the Government Technical Institute (GTI), that teacher is 21-year-old Denzil Gordon, who is strict in the classroom but loosens up when he’s spinning records in the evening as DJ Exclusive.

Acknowledging that his career choices don’t exactly coincide with social norms, he stated that he has always had a knack for music and always wanted to have a seat in the music arena in Guyana, so having a traditional job alone just didn’t suit him.

Gordon noted that he entered into the world of mixing music and spinning records when he was still in high school and would many times use his lunch money to buy CDs to make a playlist and promote his work.

Soon after leaving high school, he enrolled at GTI where he studied to be an electrician. Soon after, he began installing security cameras for a well-known company but later a received a call from his old institution about a job in teaching some of the new students.

While he was hesitant to take up the offer, he did the interview and was successful and has since been teaching at GTI since 2018. “My passion really is for music but teaching came along and I began to love that too,” he said.

Gordon who graduated at the top of his class in 2018 leading him to land the job of a teacher disclosed that he became quite famous with his DJ career on campus since he would always showcase his talents at almost every school event, however, he makes sure that the fun, chill side of him never overlaps with his classroom work.
He added that his DJ career has even managed to make his classroom work with his students easier, as they can relate to him and sometimes even approach him for issues they might be facing outside of the classroom, which to his to delight is one of the best things about his two jobs.

A stigma that needs to end
Gordon noted that society, especially the older folks, have this notion that men who are in the DJ business are not very respectable since, at most events, you’d find them promoting violence or sometimes degrading women which oftentimes gives them a bad name.

He noted that he is living proof that not everyone is the same and the art of spinning and mixing records is beyond just playing and promoting music, it is a career and a culture and one that must be respected despite what many may think or say.

“When you say you’re a DJ, there like ‘he’s not a good boy’. Some people just see DJs as ‘low lives’, they don’t have that respect for DJs and [I want] to change that,” Gordon told the Buzz.