92 Rebekka Kill
me ‘cause if I was a guy, and I hate saying this, I hate bringing in this
if-I-was-a-guy statement, but it’s true. If I was a guy setting up all my
gear and I went to go to the bathroom and came back I doubt he would
have stolen my power strip you know.
(Farrugia and Swiss 2008: 79)
4. Promoters
Promoters are a very complex group. They can be the best thing about
a DJing career: wonderful, supportive, nurturing, flexible, and cre-
ative. Promoters can also be the worst part of the DJing experience:
rude, arrogant, and sexist. One notable commonality amongst the DJs
I interviewed was that they had worked with a disproportionate num-
ber of female promoters. It is a fairly small sample to draw any con-
clusion from, but I’m tempted to say that women book women, and
men often don’t. Several of the DJs referred to an “old boys club” of
promoters and DJs, who rarely booked anyone outside of their spe-
cific, very male, community.
Cockburn, Rose, and Baker believe that the condence of women
grows when men are removed from the scene (Cockburn 1985; Rose
1994; Baker 2008). In other words, women nd the presence of other
women more motivating than the presence of men
(Farrugia and Swiss 2008: 91–92).
This means that the women who book women create a minority commu-
nity in which women and non-binary DJs thrive, whereas the rest of the
industry seems not to have made progress in terms of diversity in hiring.
This is in part due to the informal, often underground, nature of these
opportunities. However, there is significant evidence of the need for train-
ing, and awareness raising, across all aspects of the industry.
THE NEXT GENERATION
The final set of questions in my interviews were around the issue that there
are still so few women DJs. I asked the DJs what they thought the barriers
were now, and also what they knew about any projects or activities that
were happening that attempted to redress this issue.
In the section of this chapter on Becoming, I explored my own expe-
rience and also that of the DJs I interviewed. Key issues in this were
firstly being interested, or maybe even obsessed with music, acquiring
knowledge about music, usually with someone older supporting this
knowledge acquisition. Several of them talked about being a music geek
or nerdy about music. Other key issues in becoming a DJ were finding
the right community, context and environment, access to equipment, and
overcoming anxiety. Being nerdy, or being perceived as a nerd, has been
described as a potential barrier to girls and young women getting inter-
ested in DJing.
93 “Hey boy, hey girl, superstar DJ, here we go . . .”
In many music scenes – as Simon Frith (1981), Sarah Thornton (1996),
and others have found in their own research – people gain access to
“insider” knowledge and become “in the know” by networking, hang-
ing out in record stores, clubs, cyberspace, and studios. But as we
mention above, the social spaces and conversations that may encour-
age women to produce are often o limits to them.
(Farrugia and Swiss 2008: 91)
Gadir also challenges what she calls “claims about the lack of interest of
women in the obsessive pursuit of recorded music”; she states that this
attitude is pervasive across genres. This has been “identified by Will Straw
as a marker of masculinity – reinforced by understandings of record col-
lecting as a mode of expertise” (1997: 4–5), and in Sarah Thornton’s ter-
minology, of subcultural capital (1996: 60–61). This “mastery” excludes
women due to a process of male “homosociality” – realms of socialization
where men are the sole bearers and sharers of their “nerdish” obsessions”
(Straw in 1997: Gadir 2017: 59).
When I asked the DJs what they thought were the barriers to teenage
girls getting involved in music and aspiring to be DJs, they all had similar
insights but with difference emphases. Lucy Lockett described the process
of beatmatching (aligning the beat of two records in order to seamlessly
move from one to the next) as intrinsically patriarchal. All of the DJs
talked about role models, communities of practice, the cost of equipment
and records, and confidence issues. For most of the DJs the focus was on
what young women can do to get into DJing, and the projects that were
available to support them in this endeavor. The DJs that I interviewed were
involved in several projects that aimed to redress the gender balance in
DJing. For example, Miss Melodie’s DJ academy was established to help
encourage more females to become DJs.
Her website states that Miss Melodie set up the academy after,
Having struggled to promote herself in a time when DJing was a much
more male dominated business, something like the one-to-one tuition
oered here at the academy would have been very benecial. (www.
melodiesdjacademy)
The academy now runs courses for all genders and includes working with
people referred as part of an occupational therapy program. They also run
a very successful junior DJs group for children from the age of nine. One
of the essential things for Miss Melodie is that all of the tuition packages
include an opportunity to perform. She has set up a club night specifically
to showcase her students, and also arranges opportunities at festivals and
events. She sees this as an essential element missing from many other
forms of support and training. In other words, Miss Melodie’s academy
addresses the need for a safe space for new DJs, with a supportive pro-
moter and audience.
Equaliser is an organization that two of my DJs have worked with. They
run DJing workshops and events for “cis-women, trans women, non-binary
94 Rebekka Kill
and trans people”. They encourage collaboration, and they share music
events and are building a community to encourage and advise each other.
Their Facebook group says:
Equaliser is a Leeds-based DJ collective that aims to nurture and pro-
mote the talent of cis-women, trans women, non-binary and trans peo-
ple. They host monthly, free-to-access DJ workshops for non-cis men,
helping to highlight new talent and oering access to an intimate,
safer space to practice and learn. They also put on parties for every-
one, celebrating the talent and artistry of DJs and performers who are
underrepresented in the music industry. All prots from their parties
go into funding the workshops.
Equaliser create a space where subcultural capital and music knowledge
can be shared; where mentors and role models can be found. This space is
also one where gendered ideas about being nerdy about knowledge acqui-
sition or technology are challenged and debated. And like Miss Melodie’s
academy, performance opportunities are also part of the package.
These two projects, and many other similar ones across the country, are
focusing on the ‘becoming’ issue. The issues around sexism and misogyny
in the workplace are far more complex to address. In my interviews, there
was one notable point of difference in our discussion of the issue of pro-
moters and bookers. Sayang, the youngest of the group and non-binary,
clearly placed the responsibility for change with promoters and bookers.
In her Dancecult article, ‘Forty-Seven DJs, Four Women: Meritocracy,
Talent and Postfeminist Politics’, Tami Gadir describes how in 2016, only
four of forty-seven DJs booked for Musikkfest, a festival in Oslo, Norway,
were women. She goes on to describe how employment law or other mea-
sures are often not in place in these contexts and how in clubs “a prevalent
postfeminist sensibility’ is unchallenged and leads to the “persistence of dis-
crimination”. This echoes my own, and other DJs’, experiences where either
behavior went unchallenged, or when we or other colleagues highlighted
discriminatory behavior club owners were often surprised that we did.
The Keychange program is an international program designed to high-
light the under-representation of women in the music industry, both on
stage and behind the scenes. They ask music festivals to pledge a 50/50
gender balance on their line-ups by 2022. The program calls for targeted
investment to address under-representation, research, and education, but
most importantly for initiatives aimed at improving working conditions
and the lack of senior role models. These need to address ‘recruitment,
remuneration, career development and sexual harassment policies in a
male dominated workforce’ (Keychange website). Vanessa Reed is the
CEO of the PRS Foundation and a major investor in the Keychange pro-
gram. Reed stated that the program was interested in “solutions not statis-
tics”, and believes there’s “no excuse” for not working towards equality
(Cafola 2018).
In spite of mixed experiences with other (male) DJs, promoters, club-
goers and venue staff, all of the DJs including myself have found the
95 “Hey boy, hey girl, superstar DJ, here we go . . .”
experience of DJing liberating, confidence-building, and above all a
huge amount of fun. All of the conversations that we had were predomi-
nantly focused on the positives of working as a DJ, and most of the DJs
notably had a genuine and generous commitment to developing other
young or inexperienced DJs. Another common theme was that the DJs
had a sense of disappointment that the instances of misogyny were still
a feature of working as a female, or non-binary, DJ. They had all hoped
that by 2019 these behaviors would be a thing of the past. However,
I was struck by the growing numbers of development opportunities and
networks that it is possible to get involved with as a new or young DJ;
I certainly would’ve got involved with these initiatives had they been
available to me 25 years ago. There are far more opportunities to start
out in a safe space as an aspiring DJ now. Also, there are people, like
Reed, working at the level of policy, and people working at grass roots
to redress the gender imbalance in the music industry. This is going to
take time, but with organizations like Equaliser striving to “create open
conversations, challenge and teach perceptions of gender within music,
with an aim to create safer music spaces that everyone can be equal in”,
there is hope for the future. Equaliser’s strap line is a good one: “Party
for everyone, party for equality”.
REFERENCES
Baker, S. (2008) From Snuggling and Snogging to Sampling and Scratching:
Girls’ Nonparticipation in Community-Based Music Activities. Youth and
Society 39 (3): 316–339.
Cafola, A. (2018) New Manifesto Details Steps the Music Industry Can Take for Gender
Equality. www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/42294/1/music-industry-gender-
inequality-manifesto-keychange-europe. Accessed 21 May 2019.
Cockburn, C. (1985) Machinery of Dominance: Women, Men, and Technical
Know-how. Dover, NH: Pluto.
Farrugia, R. and Swiss, T. (2008) Producing Producers: Women and Electronic/
Dance Music, Current Musicology, No. 86, 79–99. New York: Columbia
University.
Fikentscher, K. (2000) “You Better Work!” Underground Dance Music in New
York City. Hanover, NH and London: Wesleyan University Press.
Frith, S. (1981) Sound Effects. New York: Pantheon.
Gadir, T. (2016) Resistance or Reiteration: Rethinking Gender in DJ Cultures.
Contemporary Music Review 35 (1): 115–129.
Gadir, T. (2017) Forty-Seven DJs, Four Women: Meritocracy, Talent and
Postfeminist Politics, Dancecult. Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture
9 (1): 50–72.
Gavanas, A. and Reitsamer, R. (2013) DJ Technologies, Social Networks and
Gendered Trajectories in European DJ Cultures. In DJ Culture in the Mix:
Power, Technology and Social Change in Electronic Dance Music, edited
by Bernardo Alexander Attias, Anna Gavanas, and Hillegonda C. Rietveld,
51–78. New York: Bloomsbury.
96 Rebekka Kill
Guervara, N. (1996) Women Writin’ Rappin’ Breakin’. In Droppin’ Science:
Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture, edited by William Eric
Perkins, 49–62. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Keychange website https://keychange.eu/. Accessed 20 May 2019.
Kruse, H. (1993) Subcultural Identity in Alternative Music. Popular Music 12
(1): 33–41.
Leonard, M. (2006) Gender in the Music Industry. Aldershot, UK and Burlington,
VT: Ashgate Publishing.
McRobbie, A. (1994) Postmodern and Popular Culture. London and New York:
Routledge.
Melodie’s DJ Academy website. www.melodiesdjacademy.co.uk/. Accessed 18
May 2019.
Puwar, N. (2004) Space Invaders. Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Oxford:
Berg
Pough, G. (2004) Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip Hop Culture,
and the Public Sphere. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Reddington, H. (2003) “Lady” Punks in Bands: A Subculturette? In The Post
Subcultures Reader, edited by David Muggleton and Scott Weinzierl, 239–
251. New York: Berg.
Reynolds, S. (1999) Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave
Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Rose, T. (1994) Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary
America. Hanover, NH and London: Wesleyan University Press.
Straw, W. (1997) Sizing Up Record Collections: Gender and Connoisseurship
in Rock Music Culture. In Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender,
edited by Sheila Whiteley, 3–16. London and New York: Routledge.
Thornton, S. (1996) Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Wahl, A, Holgersson, C., Hook, P., & Linghag, S. (2011) Det ordnar sig. Teorier
om Organisation och kon. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.