Know What You See: Brian Lowery in conversation with Colleen

In the latest episode of the KWYS show, Brian Lowery talks with Colleen about her career and how she shares Music on the dancefloor.

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About this interview. – Colleen met Professor of Organizational Behavior and social psychologist by training Brian Lowery (he received his doctorate from UCLA in 2001 with a minor in statistical methods) for a great interview, which stands out from the other ones she did in the past as she dvelves into What music brings to her and How she shares it on the dancefloor. We also learn here that our dear Captain is working on a Memoir 😊

LIstening to this nice and relatively short interview, you'll discover how, with her 35-year Career, Colleen works her way through her sets and the philosophy which allows her to take the dancers onto a real musical journey where music is able to transmit pure feelings.

The interview is transcribed below and you can listen to it here: Music, Movement, and Meaning: Hanging Out with DJ Cosmo - Know What You See with Brian Lowery

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PS: Coming back from the USA, where she played the Horse Meat Disco Party, Colleen shared this on her socials on Sunday, 16th February: "Heading back to London after a wonderful trip to the USA and after a night of very little sleep after playing Horse Meat Disco at Knockdown Centre last night. I just love playing there not only because I love Luke, Severino, James and Jim but also because of the on-point staff and the amazing crowd - they are just so much fun and I absolutely adore playing there. And the night before I also had a blast playing in Washington DC for the first time at For Your Pleasure - a fabulous party hosted by Martin and Chelle and a great, eclectic mix of dancers.

I have only been to DC less than a handful of times (half of which were for marches) and it was definitely a bit strange to be in the same vicinity as you-know-who but I managed to have a spectacular time. One of the highlights of my trip was reconnecting with a dear old friend from high school, Michele. We went to so many shows together - slam dancing at Black Flag, dancing on stage at The Smiths, witnessing a riot at New Order and staying up all night in a parking lot to snag tickets for the Purple Rain tour. Now she is a curator at The National Museum of African American History and Culture and I got to see her for the first time in over 3 decades. It is so life-affirming to reconnect with old friends and to be able to pick up just where you left off.

I also caught up with my old WNYU friend Jocelyn Gonzales. She and I have worked together on podcasts and she is one of the best in her field. She and host Brian Lowery, PhD recently invited me up to their program ‘Know What You See’ for ‘Music, Movement, and Meaning with DJ Cosmo’ (link in comments) and I finally had the chance to listen. Somehow I seemed to make some sense (LOL!). And through Jocelyn I also reconnected with my first woman mentor - Lynne McVeigh. She was the Radio Advisor for WNYU and the Head of the Sound Department when I was in university in the 80’s and she had my back. She even got me a broadcasting scholarship which was very much needed at the time."

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Music, Movement, and Meaning: Hanging Out with DJ Cosmo

Part I

[Brian]

I'm Brian Lowry, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Know What You See. In this season of the podcast, I'm diving into a big question. What's the point? In conversations with people who have committed themselves to a range of pursuits, we'll learn answers to that question that might surprise and inspire us all.

Music has always been one of my biggest passions. Certain songs and albums are like mile markers in my life, and I'm sure the same is probably true for you. For me, Funkadelic, One Nation Under Groove, is my earliest music memory. And growing up in Chicago, arguably the birthplace of house music, with iconic spots like The Warehouse, I spent many hours tuned into WBMX.

With Friday Night Jams, we are now into the mix with Frankie Knuckles.

[Brian]

The station that played and still plays house music today. And in college, house music lived alongside rap as the soundtrack of my life. The DJs I listened to on the radio and at house parties, they weren't just playing music. They were curators of an experience. They knew more, obsessed more, and introduced me to sounds I didn't know I needed. But back then, I didn't think much about the experience of being behind the turntables.

  What does it mean to bring people together through music like that? That's where DJ Colleen Cosmo Murphy comes in. She's been called the audio connoisseur you want in charge of your party. Colleen has been decades mastering the art of sharing music. She's a broadcaster, a club DJ, a festival performer, and the creator of Classic Album Sundays, a global listening series for music lovers and audiophiles. With thousands of records in her personal collection, and a deep knowledge of vinyl and sound systems, Colleen has built her career and life around sharing music.

 [Brian]

Colleen, first of all, can I start with the name, the story behind your name? Sure, yeah. I hosted radio shows on my 10 Watt High School radio station from 1982 to 1986.

[Colleen]

And I did a show called Punk, Funk and Junk. And that included early hip hop and electro and also punk. And there was a band named Nucleus and their DJ's name was Cosmo. And that's how I got the name Cosmo and I started to use it. And my friend, who was the other DJ, she called herself Remix. And we made these sweatshirts and have our names on the back and walk around our high school like we were really cool.

  And that's how I got the name Cosmo. So when I started DJing in the 1990s, people knew my name is Colleen Murphy. But then I started to get into dance music. And I was really changing the format of what I was playing. And I thought it'd be too confusing for people to hear Colleen Murphy not playing 60s psychedelic music or post punk, but now playing dance classics, disco, house. So I just took the name Cosmo back, having no idea it was going to be part of my career.

[Brian]

  So what about music attracted you to it? I mean, that's kind of a funny question, because I think if you're a normal human being, you love music, but not many people do it as their career. So how did that happen for you?

[Colleen]

Well, it's interesting you ask this, because this is something I'm trying to research in a memoir, trying to figure out what it is that drew me to music, because I grew up in a small New England town. None of my family had any connections with people in the music business. And nobody was as obsessed as I was.

But I think it came initially from the radio. The radio in Boston was really quite good. And when I was growing up in the 1970s, I was given a transistor radio for my seventh Christmas when I was seven years old. And I remember running upstairs and turning it on and hearing Fly Robin Fly by Silver Convention. And I was really hooked. I listened to the radio all the time. And I think there were a few reasons. One, I just naturally gravitate towards music. I can sing on pitch. I started playing piano when I was five years old. It's something that's always been able to get under my skin and really move me in a very deep way. And that's just my personality. And I can't explain why that is. But the experience of having these great radio stations around me and exposing me to all different kinds of music, we had so many college radio stations, we had black radio stations, we had gray AOR radio stations like WBCN, some of the most progressive in the country, and a really varied radio format. I was very lucky to be raised where I was in the 1970s. I had access to all different kinds of music. And I think that's really one of the things that made me gravitate towards a career in it. Because I started doing radio when I was 14 years old.

  Then I started collecting records when I was 15. And my first job was in a record shop when I was 16.

[Brian]

What was your first record?

[Colleen]

Well, the first record that was given to me was by my very cool aunt, who was only eight years older than me. And I think I was about eight years old when she gave it to me. It was Elton John's Greatest Hits.

[Brian]

You said you started on radio at 14. How did that happen?

[Colleen]

I had another cousin who was doing a radio show on our high school radio station. And then she and her friend Eric invited me up because they knew I loved music. And so I went along to their radio show, brought some records with me. And I remember they turned the microphone on. And I literally ran out of the room and across the library. And it took me a while to start talking. So you ran out, they turned on the microphone.

[Brian]

Did you come back?

[Colleen]

I did come back, but I don't think I really spoke. I think I stayed away from the microphone. I was a bit intimidated by that. I wanted to sort of be a silent DJ. And even when I have one radio show on cassette, and I don't talk that much in high school.

It was really when I went to NYU and started working on WNYU and had a lot of people who actually trained me where I became more comfortable. It took some time. And so how did you end up going from radio to live events?

[Brian]

How did that happen? And when did that happen?

[Colleen]

At WNYU, we did host some live events as well. And we also had connections with different venues throughout the city. So the first time I really started DJing in public was in the 1980s for CBGB's record canteen, their record shop, because they had a bunch of WNYU DJs there. And we would host different WNYU nights. I remember playing on the roof of Mars in the late 1980s. Which was a really cool club in New York. I started going out to a lot of clubs in about 1991, in the early days of house in New York City. And I went to one party in particular that really changed my life. And that party was called The Loft. And it was hosted by a man named David Mancuso, who became a very good friend of mine afterwards. And a friend of mine brought me to this party. And I didn't know anything about it. It was on East Third Street between Avenues B and C. There's no sign out outside the door. You just walk through these doors. And there was somebody there collecting money to get in.

And when I went through the next set of doors, it was this beautiful big space that had these huge clip-shorn loudspeakers dotted around the dance floor. And it looked like somebody's home because it was somebody's home, even though it was a converted former theater. And there was a very enigmatic, mysterious man behind the turntables playing music that I hadn't really heard before. And the music sounded incredible. It was on a beautiful sound system. And it just gave so much more emotion and nuance to the music. I had never heard a playback system like that before. I just fell in love. And I started going back week after week.

And I had to seek out what records he was playing. I was asked to come back to WNYU around that time, because I had already graduated. And I came back and I said, but I want to do a different kind of show. I want to do a show that plays dance music as opposed to the other stuff I've been known for. And I started a show called Soul School. And from there, people started tuning in. I started to build a really great community. And from there is when I started to be asked to play out in different places.

[Brian]

So what's the difference between radio and live events for you?

[Colleen]

Well, radio, you have a connection with your audience, but you can't see them. A lot of the times, you're not necessarily responding to what they're doing at that moment in time, because your radio shows can be pre-programmed. You know what you're going to play, usually, not all the time, but usually.

Whereas on a dance floor, you are responding to the moment, to everything that is happening, whether it's the mood of the room, the temperature, the acoustics, where you are, who is there, how they're feeling at that point in time, what the sound system is like, what's sounding good on that sound system, what's not sounding good on that sound system. There's so many different outside elements to process. And if you are what I call a proper DJ, you aren't going and rocking up with a playlist and just playing a set one to 20 or whatever. That to me isn't a DJ set. A DJ set, you are actually interacting in real-time with the people on the dance floor and everything going on around you.

[Brian]

So I grew up in Chicago in the 80s. As you know, there was a big house scene.

[Colleen]

Yeah, the warehouse. Yeah.

[Brian]

The best DJs are taking the crowd on like a journey. That was my experience of it, right? There's a kind of a ebb and flow, like you move up, there's like a crescendo, and then there's a moment of kind of bringing it back down and just kind of the DJ is making sense of where the crowd is and kind of moving them in different directions.

And the best experiences I've had, it was almost meditative or trance-like when it was like, you're just in there dancing, there's very little light, everybody is kind of moving. It's just a very communal, almost ritualistic kind of experience. And I'm curious, as a DJ, what that feels like? Like when you're the person managing that experience?

[Colleen]

Well, it's interesting. I started on the dance floor, like many DJs do. So that is something that you're trying to tap into when you're actually on the other side of the turntables. It's like a call and response. That's the way I would describe it.

  It's a lot of responsibility. You have this sense of experience that obviously comes into play. And knowing how to move people or when they're getting, when it's time to bring it back down, and when it's time to bring it back up, and when it's time to play that peak song. And as you said, I also do play in an arc. I played for seven hours on Sunday. And the first two hours, I mean, I start with ambient, built it up, built up the tempo, built up the tempo, get everybody kind of moving and then bring them down and up and down and up and down and up and then bring them down for kind of a re-entry into the world.

It works best when you don't think about it too much and you use your intuition. The experience comes into play when you're observing the room and you're seeing what's going on and you're starting to feel what they're needing at that time. And it's a silent conversation. I mean, there might be whoops and cheers and whatever, but it feels like you're helming a ship. You're responding to all the outside elements as well. And you have your crew with you or the sound system and all the other things that are really important to make this experience really crystallize and to really move people.

But the best times when I know it's all working is when I'm not even really thinking. And it almost, without trying to sound silly, it's almost like channeling. So the experience comes through when you know your music, you've played for dance floors as I have for 35 years, that all comes into play. But it's almost, I guess, like being a concert pianist. You practice and you practice and you practice, but when the moment actually comes, it should be somewhat effortless. You should not be overthinking it. And it really becomes quite an instinctual process. So you're really opening yourself up to what is coming back at you.

[Brian]

What does that bring up for you? How does it feel for you?

[Colleen]

And it feels very cathartic. I mean, music is a way that I've been able to connect with my own feelings. It can bring up incredible joy and also incredible sadness. In fact, on Sunday, when I was doing my seven-hour set, some of it was in tribute to a friend who recently passed away. And a lot of friends that were in attendance were a friend of this person as well. Of course, I would play songs that we shared together and I'd be crying. It just comes out. Music tends to allow me to not retreat from my own feelings, but confront and process them.

So it's quite emotional going through this. There's moments of euphoria. There's moments of oneness. And at the end, it just feels cathartic. Like I've been on a whole journey with a whole group of people. We've gone from A to B and share this incredible experience together. I feel a sense of solidarity with the dance floor. I feel that music and movement brings us together. It makes us feel part of something that's bigger than us.

And I also wonder if that really taps into some kind of primordial need to connect with others through movement that may even predate language. I'm not an anthropological biologist, but I wouldn't be surprised if Homo sapiens were communicating through movement first before language and finding ways to connect through movement. I also just feel that while it allows me to process feelings, it also allows me to tap into something that's bigger than myself. It could be that sense of unity, that sense of oneness, that sense of communal euphoria when you actually drop your own personality and you drop your own ego and you're able to kind of be part of something bigger.

[Brian]

Yeah, I really like that. It makes me think about the kind of tension between being you, like the individual, and being a part of something larger, like losing yourself in something larger. And I guess I wonder how much of you is retained when you're doing this. I'm curious how you think about that tension between you, the individual, and being part of and losing yourself in the larger experience in the group.

[Colleen]

I guess being the individual is all in the preparation and the experience and everything I bring to the table. So, for instance, before I do a seven-hour set, I'm putting together records for over two days, really understanding what I'm bringing with me. I know that music inside and out, especially then there's some newer songs, of course. So that's the part of being an individual.

But that's the part I want to let go of once the party's in play. I don't want to be thinking about me as an individual. And really, it all becomes about being part of this kind of process and becoming part of the whole spirit of the dance floor. And I've done all that work, but in the moment, I just want to be in the moment. I just want to be in the moment of the music and the dance.

[Brian]

I'm with Colleen that music and the collective vibration of all those bodies on the dance floor is a way of drawing me into something bigger, something more mysterious. When I'm lost in the sound, it's not just about me anymore. It's about the connection, the release, and the sense of being a part of something greater. We feel that kinship with other listeners. Isn't music a universal way of reaching out for something transcendent or even divine? We'll get into that next on Know What You See.

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Part II

[Brian]

We're back with DJ Khalil Cosmo Murphy. This is a random question. Have you ever been to the church of Coltrane?

[Colleen]

I'd like to go. That's in San Francisco, isn't it? Yeah, I need to go. I haven't been to California in like 25 years. So I'm hoping to go back at some point soon. But no, I haven't. And I'd like to go to his home in Long Island, because that's where he wrote A Love Supreme. So I just want to go and be there, you know, just feel it.

[Brian]

I wonder how you connect a religious experience or spiritual experience in music, because Coltrane was very explicit in making that connection. I just wonder if you think about that as a point of connection, religion or it doesn't have to be organized religion, but a religious spiritual experience in music. How do you think about those two things?

[Colleen]

Well, I do. I had a double major at NYU. One was film, radio and sound, and the other one was comparative religions. And so it's something that really, really does interest me. And every religion has music and dance associated with it. It allows us to free ourselves from our own brain, our own personality, our own ego, our own individuality, and to connect with a greater spirit and something that is bigger than ourselves.

And that allows us to transcend our everyday lives. And it's how people thought they could communicate with the gods. And I still think you can, whether it's gods or the universal being or whatever you want to call it. I do feel that music is the way that I've been able to tap into spirituality.

[Brian]

I think of music maybe as kind of a proto storytelling, right? So it's a way to create a communal understanding, right? And we think once you have literature and language, you can write those stories down, or you can tell oral stories, you can tell your histories, but there's something maybe about music that connects us all in a story that maybe strips away the individual and lets us see the reality of our communal existence, or it lets us experience maybe the reality of our communal existence. And I mean, I hear that in the way you're describing like music, maybe.

[Colleen]

Yeah, also dancing too. I don't think we've spoken specifically about dancing, but really dancing and sinking into your own body and into movement. It allows yourself to free yourself from your brain. And it allows you to let go of the embarrassment of movement or your body and lets you let go of pride. You become vulnerable and you give yourself over to something bigger. And it can also unite you with everybody else around you on a dance floor.

There's a certain sense of solidarity. There's a unity of feeling. There's a unity of movement. And I felt that a lot with house music when house music first started. I think because house music is kind of easy to dance to, you know, this four to the floor, it's easier to say than dancing to salsa or Brazilian music where there's so many different intricate rhythms. House music, anybody can dance to it.

And I think it let down a lot of people's guards and united them in that way where they just felt they could let loose and just be themselves and be part of something bigger. Also, dancing releases endorphins as well. So it enhances your mood. And that can be whether you're watching other people on a dance floor or it's you yourself dancing. It's incredible, like how good you feel dancing. And I remember during the pandemic, and I'm a DJ, you know, people don't necessarily think of me as a dancer. They see me behind the turntables. And what I missed more than DJing out was dancing. I missed the communal sense of dancing with other people on the dance floor way more than I miss playing records in front of people.

[Brian]

And you were nervous about going back to DJing in front of people. Why the nervousness?

[Colleen]

I was so nervous. I felt so vulnerable. I wasn't sure if I could still do it. I didn't know how people would respond. And I think a lot of DJs are actually a lot shyer than people think. There's some people that gravitate towards DJing because they want to be a performer. They want to be the focal point or the old rock and roll reasons, drugs and partners and, you know, whatever, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

That could be one motivation for people to become DJs. But for a lot of us, it's because we're actually more introverted. We'd be the ones going to a party and everyone's talking and socializing and we'd be looking through the record collection and maybe popping a record on.

I'm not very good at huge crowds and being the focal point of attention, although I've learned to do so because of what I do. But it's not that I'm very talkative in that way either. I tend to express myself best through music rather than words. And when you're DJing, you're kind of in this isolated area that sort of protects you as well. And you're able to communicate through music rather than through your own words. Going back after the pandemic, it was just really nerve wracking. Your insecurities rise up and you don't know how people respond and you get stage fright. Whereas in my own record room, it was a lot different. I couldn't see everybody.

[Brian]

So people can't see your record room. I'm curious to estimate, how many records do you think you have?

[Colleen]

About 10,000.

[Brian]

And by the way, I'm surprised it hasn't collapsed your home.

[Colleen]

I know.

[Brian]

It's quite heavy.

[Colleen]

We're on a ground floor. I have had friends that had to move records from their second, third floors because the floors started to sag.

[Brian]

All right, so here's a hard question. You ready?

[Colleen]

Yeah.

[Brian]

You're on a desert island. You only get one album. Which album is it?

[Colleen]

Ooooooh. I can't answer that. But it changes all the time.

[Brian]

Today.

[Colleen]

Today. Okay. I know what I'd pick today. John Coltrane, A Love Supreme. And I think for me, I'd have to pick music that taps into some kind of spirituality if I'm going to be listening to it over and over again. Plus he did so much in terms of technique and exploring the lexicon of music and the language of music. And so that type of music is something I can listen to over and over and over again because I can always hear something new. I don't think I could... There's so many great albums.

I could say Songs in the Key of Life, of course. And it's a double album. So that'd be more fun than bringing a single album on a desert island because it's longer and there's more variety. But I think sometimes instrumental music can free your mind even more because there isn't a lyric to dictate what the narrative is.

[Brian]

In 2010, Colleen figured out a way to combine the communal energy of her club events with the more personal experience of listening to a favorite record. At her Classic Album Sunday events, crowds gather at a live venue to listen to a full album all the way through on a very sophisticated sound system. At these listening sessions, the story behind the making of the music is as important as the song sequence itself.

[Colleen]

I felt Classic Album Sundays really hearkened back more to my teenage years. Like in the 1980s, when I would get a new album, I'd go home and invite friends over and we would listen to it. And what I noticed in the 21st century, at least the early part of the 21st century, is that our listening habits had changed.

And people were listening to music in very isolated situations, usually on their own, you know, personal stereos, on headphones. And that's all great. I still do that too. But it seemed we had lost the art of listening to music together in terms of pre-recorded music. I'm not talking about in a club or a live venue, but just listening to an album together. I also felt people had stopped listening to albums, that they were listening to this single there and not sitting down with a whole body of work and listening to it in the way in which the artist intended, from like A to Z, every single chapter of the book as opposed to a single chapter.

People really come out transformed after they've been to a Classic Album Sunday session, especially people that have been there for the first time, that don't know what to expect. And some people thought they wouldn't like it because they had to turn their phones off and they couldn't talk throughout the album and they just had to sit there and they weren't sure what to do with themselves. Because we're not used to turning ourselves off. We're not used to turning our devices off. So it took them maybe a song or two to let down their guard. But once they did, they felt transformed. Some people cry, some people laugh at certain parts of songs they hadn't heard before. But they all came out probably with lower blood pressure levels, number one, more relaxed, just less frantic, less pulled in every different direction.

[Brian]

You know, I remember I read the liner notes to Gil Scott Heron's album, I'll Take Care of You. And in those liner notes, he's very explicit like this, the album was designed for you to sit down, turn off everything and just listen to it from beginning to end. And then listen to it again. And he's just almost adamant that is the way the music was designed and what it was designed for. And he talked about it as respecting the intention of the artist. Like the work I've put into this experience for you deserves attention and you will get the most out of it.

You leave something on the table if you don't experience it in this way.

[Colleen]

I agree. I agree. And also in the order that they put it together. And, you know, it'd be like me picking up a book and say, I'm just going to read chapter three.

[Brian]

And then maybe chapter eight, maybe chapter eight two.

[Colleen]

I'll go back to two. And then maybe I won't even listen to chapter... When I said people sometimes laugh, I mean, Gil Scott Heron is a perfect example because he had such a turn of phrase. It was so freaking funny. When you're really just sitting there listening, you know, a lyric, he'll say something and you just start laughing out loud. And it just brings people together.

In a sense, Classic Album Sundays probably brought a lot of different aspects of my career together. We have had a few people dance at Classic Album Sundays, I have to say. I did one with Sister Sledge and I was dancing with two of the sisters in the back while the album was playing and then everyone got up and started dancing. So it does happen every now and then.

[Brian]

Yeah, well, I really appreciate it. I really appreciate the time and it's fun to talk to you. I hope I get a chance to see you DJ live.

[Colleen]

Yes, I hope we get to meet. If I'm ever out on the West Coast, I'll let you know. Yeah.

[Brian]

Music isn't just sound or the words of a song. It's connection, it's emotion and energy. For DJ Cosmo, it's about creating moments where people let go and come together, whether through epic DJ sets or kicking back to enjoy a classic album. Sharing music can heal, inspire and unite. In a world that feels more divided than ever, isn't that what we all need? Know What You See is produced by PRX in collaboration with the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Our production team is Jocelyn Gonzalez, Emi Chan, Jonathan Cabral and Emmanuel Desarme from PRX Productions. For more about me or the show, go to knowwhatyousee.com, created and masterminded by Will Danger Robinson. Follow me on socials at knowwhatyouseepod or drop me a line on my website, brianlowryphd.com.

Follow the show on your favorite podcast app and if you like what you hear, leave us a positive review. It really helps to get the word out. Thanks for listening.