DJs and DJ Culture
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50 free DJs and DJ Culture trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The disc jockey started out as a voice on the radio, talking between records. Within a few decades DJs had become the main attraction: inventing new ways to play vinyl at block parties, building whole genres in nightclubs, and eventually headlining festivals for hundreds of thousands of people. This quiz follows that story from start to finish. It covers the radio personalities who shaped rock and roll, the hip hop originators who turned the turntable into an instrument, the clubs and residencies behind house and techno, and the gear that made it all possible. It also tests where famous DJs come from, since a star's home town or home country is one of the things fans most often look up. It is pitched for music fans, clubbers and pub quiz regulars alike. Most questions are ones a casual listener can reason out, with a handful of deep cuts for crate diggers, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Grand Wizzard Theodore discovered scratching when which relative told him to turn the music down?
His mother
His mother was scolding him from the doorway while he held the record still with his hand, and rubbing it back and forth made a sound he liked enough to build into his sets.
Q 02DJ Steve Aoki's father Rocky, a former wrestler, made his fortune founding which restaurant chain?
Benihana
Benihana brought teppanyaki, cooked at the table, to the United States when Rocky Aoki opened his first New York restaurant in 1964. Steve was born in Miami and raised in California.
Q 03Which former NBA centre tours dance festivals playing bass-heavy sets under the name DJ Diesel?
Shaquille O'Neal
Shaquille O'Neal was already nicknamed Diesel as a player, and his 1993 rap album Shaq Diesel went platinum decades before he started touring the world as a DJ.
Q 04Masked DJ Marshmello played a 2019 virtual concert to millions of players inside which video game?
Fortnite
Fortnite drew over 10 million players to the in-game show, the first of the virtual concerts that later brought far bigger pop stars into the game.
Q 05Which Cleveland radio DJ popularised the phrase 'rock and roll' for the rhythm and blues he played?
Alan Freed
Alan Freed also organised the 1952 Moondog Coronation Ball, generally accepted as the first major rock concert, which police ended early when thousands of ticketless fans stormed the arena.
Q 06Which American Top 40 countdown host was also the original voice of Shaggy in Scooby-Doo?
Casey Kasem
Casey Kasem began voicing Shaggy in 1969 and launched American Top 40 a year later, on the Fourth of July weekend of 1970.
Q 07Which star of Luther and The Wire began DJing as a teenager at his uncle's wedding business?
Idris Elba
Idris Elba started his own DJ company within a year and worked nightclubs as Big Driis, a name he still performs under, before he began auditioning for television roles.
Q 08Chart-topping DJs Tiësto, Armin van Buuren and Martin Garrix all come from which European country?
Netherlands
Netherlands towns raised all three: Tiësto was born in Breda, Armin van Buuren in Leiden and Martin Garrix in Amstelveen.
Q 09In 2004, Tiësto became the first DJ to perform live on stage during which global sporting event?
Olympic Games
Olympic Games organisers in Athens approached him after seeing his concert DVD, and he played for 90 minutes during the opening ceremony.
Q 10Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips was the first to play which future superstar's debut record on the radio?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was 19, and Phillips asked him on air which high school he had attended, a question that told listeners in segregated Memphis that the singer was white.
Q 11Frankie Knuckles, called the godfather of house music, was resident DJ at the Warehouse in which US city?
Chicago
Chicago clubbers shortened the Warehouse's name to describe the records Knuckles played there, which is one account of how house music came to be called house.
Q 12Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, the Belleville Three, created the techno sound of which US city?
Detroit
Detroit lies about 30 miles from Belleville, the small Michigan town where the three friends met at high school, which is how the trio got their nickname.
Q 13Which DJ's 1973 party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx is celebrated as the birth of hip hop?
DJ Kool Herc
Q 21Avicii, Alesso and Eric Prydz are all star DJs who come from which Nordic country?
Sweden
Sweden renamed Stockholm's globe-shaped arena the Avicii Arena in 2021, three years after the DJ's death.
Q 22David Guetta and DJ Snake are both chart-topping DJs who were born in which European country?
France
France's capital shaped both careers: Guetta began as a disc jockey in Parisian nightclubs, and DJ Snake grew up in the suburb of Ermont just outside the city.
Q 23Calvin Harris, the hitmaking DJ born Adam Wiles, grew up in the town of Dumfries in which country?
Scotland
Scotland's Dumfries is where he stocked supermarket shelves and worked in a fish processing factory after leaving school to pay for his first DJ gear.
DJ Kool Herc played the party in the recreation room of his own apartment building, with his younger sister Cindy as co-host and promoter.
Q 14Sound system parties, with a selector playing records and a deejay toasting over them, began on which island?
Jamaica
Jamaica's sound systems took off in 1940s Kingston, and by the mid-1950s they were more popular at parties than live musicians.
Q 15Which Mediterranean island's superclubs inspired British DJs to launch acid house nights in 1987?
Ibiza
Ibiza was where acid house first became popular in Europe, and the DJs who holidayed there that summer went home to start the club nights behind Britain's Second Summer of Love.
Q 16Which comedian played real-life Armed Forces Radio DJ Adrian Cronauer in the film Good Morning, Vietnam?
Robin Williams
Robin Williams improvised most of the radio broadcasts, in a story only loosely based on Cronauer's time on air in Saigon.
Q 17Which gravel-voiced DJ, who broadcast from Mexican border stations, played himself in American Graffiti?
Wolfman Jack
Wolfman Jack's border station was powerful enough to be heard across much of the United States, and George Lucas gave him a share of the film's profits that paid him for life.
Q 18Which gossip columnist is said to have coined 'disc jockey' in 1935 to describe announcer Martin Block?
Walter Winchell
Walter Winchell was describing Block's Make Believe Ballroom, a show that played records while creating the illusion of a live broadcast from a ballroom full of top dance bands.
Q 19Which brand made the SL-1200, the direct-drive turntable that became the club standard for DJs?
Technics
Technics gave it a motor that kept spinning at the correct speed even when a DJ wiggled the record back and forth, which opened the door to scratching. More than 3 million were sold.
Q 20Which helmeted duo behind Around the World and One More Time announced their split in 2021?
Daft Punk
Daft Punk disguised themselves as robots from 1999, one in a silver helmet and one in gold, and parted amicably after 28 years as a duo.
Q 24Deadmau5, the DJ who performs in a giant mouse-head helmet, comes from which country?
Canada
Canada's Niagara Falls is his home town, and his name comes from the dead mouse he found inside his computer when it began to smell.
Q 25Black Coffee, the house DJ whose album Subconsciously won a Grammy, comes from which African country?
South Africa
South Africa's Black Coffee lost the use of his left arm in 1990, when a car drove into a crowd celebrating Nelson Mandela's release, years before he made his name as a DJ.
Q 26Peggy Gou, a Berlin-based DJ who studied fashion in London, was born in Incheon in which country?
South Korea
South Korea was home until she was 14, when her parents sent her to London to study English, and she later built her DJ career in Europe.
Q 27Alok, the DJ who broke through worldwide with the 2016 single Hear Me Now, comes from which country?
Brazil
Brazil's psychedelic trance scene is the family business: both of Alok's parents are DJs, and he started out in a trance duo with his twin brother.
Q 28DJ Khaled made his name as a Miami radio personality, but he was born in which other US city?
New Orleans
New Orleans is where he was born, to Palestinian parents who had immigrated to the United States.
Q 29DJ Screw created the slowed-down 'chopped and screwed' style of hip hop in which Texas city?
Houston
Houston was where DJ Screw began his trademark slowed-down mixes in 1990, and he went on to release more than 350 mixtapes before his death in 2000.
Q 30The Haçienda, the acid house nightclub run by Factory Records, stood in which English city?
Manchester
Manchester's most famous club lost money for years, partly because its ecstasy-taking dancers bought so little alcohol, and New Order's record sales helped keep it open.