KRAZY.(Scratch DJ Academy )

"Grand Wizzard Theodore was a guy up in the Bronx who was in his bedroom in 1975, playing around on his turntable, when his mother came in. Instead of hitting the start/stop button, he stopped it with his hand. He didn't want to hear what she had to say so he just kind of rubbed the record back and forth and created this scratching sound that drowned out whatever she was saying. And that was the invention of scratching."

Grandmaster Lester was a guy down in Lower Manhattan, who was playing around on his turntable the other day while listening to this lecture on the history of hip-hop. Lester and seventeen other members of his crew--the Krazy Klub, from Wantagh, Long Island--were gathered at the Scratch DJ Academy, the "world's only fully functioning DJ school with a copyrighted curriculum,"for a lesson in scratching records. They ranged in age from sixty-nine to eighty-six, and in hair color from dyed-red to white.

Scratch Academy, which was founded last year by a group that included the late Jam Master Jay, of Run-DMC, and Reg E. Gaines, the author of "Bring In 'Da Noise, Bring In 'Da Funk,"offers courses such as DJ101, DJ151, DJ303, and DJ Intensive; among its faculty are Mista Sinista, DJ Evil Dee, and Daddy Dog. Lester's class--call it DJ101 (Geezer Edition)--was taught by I. Emerge, or Merge, the reigning ITF World Scratch champion.

At the beginning of the class, the school's director of operations said, "We promise we'll keep the volume up or down as you need it."

"What did he say?"Lester asked, from the back of the room.

"We're not deaf,"a woman shouted.

First came a brief lesson in hip-hop history--from spoken-word "toasting"in Jamaica during the nineteen-fifties and sixties ("At a party or a special occasion, someone would make a toast and the music would still be playing in the background"), to Grand Wizzard's Bronx bedroom, and on through Funkmaster Flex and Chuck Chillout.