11-year-old DJ Dell drops the beat

MAKE some noise! DJ Dell is in the building.

Following in his father's footsteps, 11-year-old Andell "DJ Dell" Edwards is turning up the bass and dropping the beat.

Edwards, a standard-four student, attends St Margaret's Boys' Anglican Primary School. When it comes to academics, he told Newsday Kids he enjoys maths and creative writing.

In 2020, during the height of the covid19 pandemic, he said he asked his father, Irving Edwards, "Daddy, could you teach me how to (DJ)?"

"And he said 'yes!'" he recalled, smiling.

"So he began teaching me and during the years (after that), I just got better and better."

The system he uses is called a Pioneer DDJ-SR Serato DJ Controller, and he uses the computer software Virtual DJ.

"It's very easy once you could learn fast," he said, proudly.

Edwards said sometimes when he accompanies his father to gigs, "If he goes to talk, I play while he's not by the equipment.

"When people realise it is a child (using the equipment), everybody does just be in shock and be saying, 'Wow.' And that makes me feel like I'm getting better."

He loves music and his favourite genre is R&B.

When he uses the equipment, he said, he just "goes with the flow.

"I like getting it right and not messing up and having everything mixing and flowing good.

"It feels good to play good."

He said he feels "very confident" whenever he is behind the controls.

Asked what it is like collaborating with his father, he said they share a very close relationship so he has a lot of fun.

"I don't want to say the teacher is becoming the student, but..."

He even told his school's principal if they ever need a DJ for school events, they should ask his father, so that way, he too, can get a chance to play there.

His love for music presents itself in other ways, as he also sings and plays the steelpan. His school won the 2024 Junior Panorama Primary School competition.

He started singing in 2018 and playing the steelpan in 2019. He mainly plays the bass but can also play guitar, cello and tenor pans.

He told Newsday Kids he also enjoys cooking, and while he is "not really sure" what career field he wants to enter when he gets older, he hopes it is related to cooking.

He also hopes to continue all music-related things.