(News Nation) —DJ Cassidy, the musical maestro behind the unconventional performance at the Democratic National Convention Roll callsaid “NewsNation's The HillWe discuss the process behind curating the playlist of 57 songs representing American states and regions.
The traditional roll call turned into a raucous dance party, with each delegation announcing their vote for presidential candidate Kamala Harris to the tune of an appropriate song.
“I knew right away that I wanted this to be a collaborative process. I didn't want to be in a vacuum curating the roll call soundtrack. I really wanted to work not just with the convention producers and the DNC, but with the states,” Cassidy said.
This included working with representatives and delegates from each state to ultimately decide what would have the most impact on audiences, rather than just sticking to songs created exclusively in their region.
“Ultimately, the soundtrack was based on emotion. Every song had to exude the emotion of the games, so naturally we wanted the artist to be maybe from that state or have lyrics that reference that state,” Cassidy explained.
“But ultimately, the key to the soundtrack was to appeal to the emotions of not just the audience in the arena, but of course the whole country and, in this case, the whole world,” he added.
DJ Cassidy's musical choices were pretty obvious: Massachusetts picked a punk song about Boston; Kansas picked a song by the band Kansas.
But there were some odd choices, such as American Samoa performing to Lady Gaga's “Edge of Glory,” and some delegates said they had no say in the matter.
Harris' home state of California closed the set with a medley of West Coast hip-hop anthems (both classic and more recent), including Dr. Dre's “The Next Episode,” Tupac Shakur's “California Love” and Kendrick Lamar's “Alright” and “Not Like Us.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
