The Story of the Selector: Finding Music Beyond Yourself
The Story We Carry
By Rafi Mercer
Every record has a story. Sometimes it is the one etched into the sleeve notes, sometimes it is the one we write ourselves as the music becomes stitched into memory. A song played at the wrong time can vanish into the background, unnoticed. The same song, played in the right company, in the right space, can feel like revelation. Music is never only music. It is the story that wraps around it.
There is music to be close with, the kind you put on when the world is too loud and you need something to hold you steady. There is music that gives time, expanding the minutes like light through a window. And there is music that holds time back, slowing it, stretching it, making the present feel endless. We spend our lives hunting these songs, these albums, the ones that act as hinges in our story. And more often than not, they are not waiting in full view. You need someone to show you.
This is where the selector steps in. Not quite DJ, not quite archivist. Something else. A person who can listen on your behalf and then offer you the record you didn’t know you were waiting for. In the West we often elevate DJs as figures of spectacle—festival stages, lasers, hands raised to the sky. But selectors are different. They do not perform for you. They guide you. Their art is less about mixing seamlessly than about choosing bravely.
Take Gilles Peterson. For decades he has been a bridge, carrying rare jazz from Brazil, broken beats from London, deep funk from Detroit, folding them all into a continuum that feels inevitable once you’ve heard it. He is not only a DJ. He is a teacher, showing paths between sounds you might never have connected yourself. Or think of Carl Cox, whose status in techno is more than that of a DJ hammering beats into a crowd. He is a selector of energy, someone who can feel what a room needs, when to lift, when to release. The purpose is not different, but the scale and the focus shift.
And then there are the anonymous ones. The men and women in Japanese listening bars, seated behind walls of vinyl, who may not speak a word to you all night. They let the records tell the story. Hours pass, whisky drains, and then they drop the one track that stops you. The one that feels like it was meant for you. They call it “gear for you” in Japan. That moment when the selector reaches into the stacks and reveals the record that fits your mood, your silence, your need, even if you never asked.
The story you carry away from that night is no longer just yours. It belongs to the room, to the selector, to the record itself. You remember not only the sound but the context—the faces around you, the low light, the feel of the glass in your hand. Later, when you play the same record at home, it comes with an echo of that night. Listening alone, you are never truly alone.
In a way, selectors remind us that music is not a fixed object but a conversation. They are the ones who have spent years, sometimes decades, listening widely so they can listen closely for others. Their skill is not only in taste but in timing. To play the unexpected track at the precise moment it will land, to hold back the obvious choice until it feels new again, to weave a night that feels like a single long sentence. That is what separates a selector from a playlist.
At home, you can borrow the principle. Ask a friend to bring one record you’ve never heard before, and play it without preview. Give them the power of selection. Let someone else’s story fold into your own. You’ll be surprised at how the room changes, how the night deepens. The record becomes more than sound. It becomes a marker of connection.
I often think of selectors as curators of hidden stories. They don’t create the music, but they give it context. They reveal its time. They remind us that listening is not always solitary, even when the headphones are on. Somewhere, someone guided you to that sound, long before you pressed play.
The story of the record, the story of the selector, the story you add by listening. That is how music grows. Layer by layer, moment by moment. And sometimes the most important story is the one you didn’t choose for yourself.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe here, or click here to read more.
