Disco Lines is set to perform at Exposition Park South Lawn on May 2, plunging the USC area headfirst into the world of house music. Alongside artists TOBEHONEST b2b MAESIC and Wes Mills, students and faculty are eager to experience what the electronic dance music, or EDM, artists will bring to South Central.
Disco Lines’ performance follows a series of house shows across USC’s Greek Row last semester. Artists Acraze and Loud Luxury played DJ sets at two fraternity houses, getting rave reviews from party-goers.
The Trojan connection with house music is far from new. In 2013, professor Sean Nye pioneered the class “Electronic Dance Music Culture,” the first of its kind at USC, which is still in session today.
When Nye became a postdoctoral scholar in 2013, EDM was “exploding” in popularity. After earning his PhD in EDM and returning from researching the techno scene in Germany, Nye said the USC administration supported his idea for a class in electronic music.
“There was actually encouragement at the initial moment, because EDM was just so popular. Everyone was trying to figure out what was happening with this music that the community was listening to,” Nye said.
Perhaps Nye’s most famous former student, DJ it’s murph, whose off-stage name is Garrett Murphy, now boasts over 2.9 million Spotify listeners. Multiple videos of Murphy and Nye have gone viral, with Murphy posting his trips to USC on Instagram, including a presentation of an unreleased track and dancing at the Shrine Auditorium.
Nye said bringing guest speakers is his favorite part of teaching the course.
“Speakers are usually a highlight,” Nye said. “Just bringing back the curriculum to what’s happening in Los Angeles at the moment is such an opportunity for students.”
Sophomore public relations major Miles Katz took Nye’s class in 2024 and called it “fascinating.”
“Prior to going into the course, I didn’t really know much about electronic music at all,” Katz said. “We learned about the eras that EDM has gone through, and the different sub-genres within electronic music, just how that’s transformed over time.”
The highlight of the class for Katz was also the guest speakers, such as Australian DJ Hayden James, who presented on their work in the space.
“It was just cool to be able to learn about such a broad genre of music, especially because I didn’t really realize going into it how diverse it really was,” said Katz.
Many alumni have thrived post-grad in the EDM space. Josh Legg, who graduated from USC in 2010, found success under the name Goldroom. Performing at Coachella in 2016 and currently boasting over 200,000 Spotify listeners, Legg found a certain “fraternity” among other USC DJ alumni.
“If I go to a festival and see Dr. Fresch, Justin Jay or the Louis the Child guys, there’s definitely a bit of a fraternity between all of these guys that went to ‘SC,” he said. “Everybody’s kind of looking out for each other a little bit, and there’s an immediate friendship there.”
Alumni DJ Joseph Nguyen, who goes by the stage name Potion, founded the USC student organization House & Techno with friends from his Marshall School of Business cohort. Over his tenure, the group grew to over 300 members regularly attending events.
“I saw that a lot of students were interested in new electronic music, but there wasn’t any structured space to explore it in a meaningful way,” he said. “So I wanted to build something that connected people, not just socially, but also creatively and professionally.”
Potion’s organization, in partnership with the Electronic Dance Music Association (EDMASC) at USC, now hosts music industry workshops, open decks and DJ competitions.
This venture, Potion says, created a sense of community around electronic music at USC; students who might have otherwise just attended EDM concerts are now pursuing professional opportunities within the industry.
Both Potion and Legg pointed to Zulan, Jackie Hollander, and its murph as examples of artists who “leveraged” USC parties to get into the professional space.
“The pipeline starts all the way at the social events, but then once people leave USC, they start to turn their production DJ projects into real artist projects,” Legg said. “There’s also a pipeline of industry professionals ready to take them in and elevate them.”
Nye points to USC’s proximity to the Shrine Auditorium as another reason why students and faculty formed a connection to the music scene.
“There’s this festival Stranger Than Fiction, which was the first massive rave in 1990 that took place in the shrine right across the street from USC,” Nye said. “So I imagine people might have been taking notice.”
No matter where it originated from, the presence of EDM remains ingrained in USC’s culture.
“[USC] is one of the few spaces where music, community and identity all intersect, especially in a hot spot like Los Angeles, where arts and culture thrive,” Potion said. “There’s a strong emphasis on shared experience, and that creates a level of connection that’s much different from any other university campus.”