Influential female DJs from around the world

To mark the 46th International Women’s Day, I have selected five of the world’s most influential female DJs (no mean feat!) and tried to cram their incredible journeys into just a few hundred words. I could have said so much more about each of these wonderful women, but hopefully the snippets below will be enough to fill you with inspiration. Read on to learn more about Juba, Julianna, Sama’ Abdulhadi, The Blessed Madonna and Annie Mac.

Juba

British-Nigerian Juba, who now resides in Berlin, has established a reputation as one of the more adventurous DJs, bold enough to to blend African sounds such as Afrobeats, Kuduro, Gqom and Amapiano with darker, more bass-heavy styles of the UK and Berlin, and elements of Acid thrown in for luck. In a feature that DJ Mag wrote on Juba, she talks about how excited she felt when Nigerian artists like D’Banj and P Square began to gain recognition and people outside of Africa started listening to Afrobeats. “The impact of the rise of Afrobeats for a generation of African kids in diaspora shouldn’t be underestimated,” she said. “Hearing music principally out of Ghana and Nigeria being celebrated instilled a sense of pride in us kids, who had grown up in a country where being African had never been cool. This had a big impact on my musical trajectory; I became engrossed.”

A real performer behind the decks, watching Juba DJ is a special treat, her effervescent energy rubbing off on all those around her. By her own admission, she can’t help but dance as she spins the tunes and wants others to “dance very hard” when they listen to her play. However, being a kickass DJ is just one of Juba’s many strings to her bow; back in 2015, she met DJ Mina, who was starting a collective called Boko! Boko!, which enabled women to learn to DJ and produce, and became the third member of the collective. In 2020, she began hosting DJ-Kicks radio shows to mark the 25th anniversary of the legendary mix series and released Assurance, a documentary she had filmed about women in Lagos’ nightlife scene. In the documentary, Juba explores why it is still uncommon to see women behind the decks and how assumptions about female DJs impact not only their careers but their lives. “Going to Lagos and immersing myself in conversation with the three DJs exposed me to a different set of narratives in a totally new, often ignored context,” she told Crack Magazine. “Stories like theirs are necessary for enriching and broadening the conversation around women in music and prove the importance of wider representation when discussing issues that are relevant to people all over the world.”

Juliana Cuervo, simply known as Julianna, is one of the most prominent figures in Colombia’s Techno scene. Hailing from Medellin, she got into rave culture during her teens, an interest that developed when she moved to Buenos Aires and discovered music she had not been exposed to in Colombia. Her style soon progressed from Chicago House to Techno upon being introduced to artists like Mike Parker and Rrose. After facing difficulties playing in clubs, however, she made the decision to return to her hometown. In a feature with The Vinyl Factory, Julianna spoke about the difficulties of being a woman in such a closed circle: “I didn’t have the right connections to start playing there, so I decided to move back to Colombia and start my own parties with some other friends.” That was the beginning of Move, a collective that put on underground events in warehouses and bunkers. “We opened a door to different music in our city. We brought DJ Stingray, DVS1. It became like a family.” In 2019, the collective started a record label, with the first EP consisting of tracks by its residents.

As if being a DJ, producer and promoter was not enough, Julianna is also a feminist activist at NÓTT, another collective that she founded alongside DJs Marea Arango and Andrea Arias in response to their personal encounters with sexism in the music scene. The idea behind NÓTT was to create a database of women and transwomen in the community from across Latin America, build connections with them and bring them to the forefront through workshops, showcases, a podcast series and radio residency. “We try to make women in electronic music more visible — not only DJs,” Julianna told The Vinyl Factory. “We realised that a lot of women wanted to be DJs, but were afraid to learn the techniques. This is part of a social behaviour in Latin America; the idea of the “macho” and women staying at home.” The trio contacted women from their database to compile material for the first NÓTT compilation, Austral, which features fourteen tracks by women from Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and of course Colombia.

Sama’ Abdulhadi

A true pioneer in the world of Techno, Sama’ Abdulhadi is Palestine’s first female DJ and producer. A keen interest in the technical side of making music led Sama’ to take a course on analogue synthesizers in Beirut, where she discovered the genre “by mistake” and soon fell in love with it. Upon her return to Palestine, Sama’ began organising underground nights in Ramallah, a city in the central West Bank, though it appeared its residents were not quite ready to be introduced to Techno. “No one got the music or the vibe it was supposed to create,” she told Wonderland Magazine. Things took a turn for the better when she met promoter Fidaa Kiwan, who connected her with Jazar Crew, a culture and art collective in Haifa, and they began putting on events together. Their efforts inspired a local community of artists, leading to the development of a flourishing underground scene within Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Since then, Sama’ has gained international recognition, playing at festivals such as Fusion and Sziget, completing a DJ rite of passage by compiling her Essential Mix for Radio 1 and playing a killer Boiler Room set, which has had over six million views. She remains fiercely loyal to her hometown, using her status to support DJs back home and continually endeavouring to put Palestine on the electronic music map. She set up Union, an artistic community in Ramallah that serves as a platform for DJs and producers, and featured in Boiler Room’s 2018 mini-documentary, Palestine Underground.

Lockdown may have been a shock to the system for most people, but for Sama’, it was an all-too-familiar situation. In a feature with Mixmag, she said, “This was literally my teenage life … we were more or less in lockdown and under curfews in and out because it was war back home in Palestine. But the difference was if you go out, you get shot.” She has been making use of her time developing her technical abilities and making mixes such as Downtime, her lockdown releases mix for Mixmag. In December last year, Sama’ was unfortunately arrested and jailed for eight days after playing at Maqam Nabi Musa, a holy shrine in the West Bank. Despite locals insisting the party did not actually take place inside the shrine, but in a part of the building that was used for weddings, birthdays and other events, she now faces a second court hearing. “I’m hoping that the investigation and all this process will lead to a fair conclusion,” she told the BBC. “Techno is not a devil-worshipping thing. It’s a universal music.”

Marea Stamper, aka The Blessed Madonna (formerly known as The Black Madonna), was born into a Christian family out in the sticks in Kentucky. Her blue hair and stocky build made her a prime target for bullies, resulting in her dropping out of high school after six months and seeking solace through the Midwest rave scene. She began selling rave gear, including mixtapes of DJ sets, and working for one of the area’s key promoters organising enormous illegal raves. At some point though, the costs started to outweigh the benefits and she decided to take a break to study at the University of Louisville, where she taught herself to DJ using rare Funk records from a barn. Marea soon landed a show on the college radio station and once her studies came to an end, she received a message from an old acquaintance who offered her a role at his record label, marking the beginning of her DJ’ing career. She went on to become the resident DJ at the USA’s oldest independent venue, Smartbar in Chicago, and began producing her own music. Marea soon caught the attention of major artists like Frankie Knuckles and Derrick Carter, as well as European promoters who flew her over to Berlin for her first ever gig on the continent at the city’s famous Panorama Bar. In her biography on Resident Advisor, she confessed that she was “utterly terrified” that night, as she had barely played outside of the Midwest in America. “My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I didn’t even have a passport,” she admitted. “But then whatever that thing is, that magic, it took over. I was riding on a wave of love. Only House music can do that. That’s the House ghost.”

The Blessed Madonna has not ceased to add notches to her belt; she became the first woman to be named Mixmag’s DJ of the year in 2016 and that same year, made the list of top 10 DJs on the planet in a poll carried out by Resident Advisor; she became the resident at XOYO, selling out the venue for thirteen weeks straight; she was offered a spot on Radio 1 and contributed three Essential Mixes, and the list goes on. Her commitment to social justice is as strong as her commitment to music and she has always endeavoured to create more diversity in the scene through projects like Daphne Festival, which aimed to put female-identifying and non-binary artists in the spotlight. Fighting for women, particularly in the LGBTQ+ community, has always been important to Marea. “I know what it is like to be hated because you’re a woman, I know what it is like to be raped, I know what it is like to fear violence from men,” she said in a revealing interview with The Guardian. “No matter how nebulous or complex or shifting the inside of my mind and my spirit is, I live in sisterhood with half of the planet.”

Last but not least is the legend that is Annie Mac, a true tastemaker who has helped change the status quo of dance music. Annie’s first introduction to clubbing was through one of her English lecturers at Queens University in Belfast, who worked at Shine, the city’s hottest Techno club. Her enthusiasm for music became apparent and she was soon offered a job promoting their club nights, which featured the likes of Andrew Weatherall, Laurent Garnier and Green Velvet; with influences such as these, it is hardly surprising that Annie’s sound is so diverse. What began as DJ’ing at house parties for a bit of fun gradually led to her showcasing ‘Annie Mac Presents’, which Mixmag have called “one of the biggest brands in clubland.” Annie was also the first female DJ to secure a prime-time slot on Radio 1 back in 2004 and has hosted various shows on the radio station ever since, with her current Friday night show attracting over a million listeners each week. Known for being a true crowd pleaser, she has been booked to play at festivals around the world for over fifteen years, but finds it frustrating that on countless occasions, she has been the only female on the lineup. “I want to see equal gender lineups as the absolute normal,” Annie told Forbes. “The more this conversation is being pushed forward, the more chances the next generation of music lovers have in being able to work in an industry that is open to everyone. I’m excited for what that will look like.” This desire for gender equality in dance music spurred Annie on to partner with Smirnoff Equalising Music and PRS Foundation’s Keychange in 2015 to head up the Equalising Music campaign, which challenged each person in the music industry to do one significant thing for gender equality that year.

Annie also teamed up with festival stalwarts Drop The Mustard and The Warehouse Project to launch AMP Lost & Found Festival, a four-day event taking place at multiple venues across St. Paul’s Bay in Malta. With beach raves, boat parties, and the chance to stomp the night away in a Maltese castle, it sounds like pure hedonism, but she made it clear that one of her main aims was to support the tourism economy in Malta by encouraging younger people to visit the island. Annie does not want the festival to get too big for its boots and it is essential to her that it maintains a “feeling of personality and humanity.” She told Clash Magazine, “I don’t want it to become a big corporate, generic vibe — that’s my worst nightmare.” To top it all off, Annie has just completed her first novel, Mother Mother, which is available to pre-order now. Talk about being a jack of all trades…

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Originally published at http://bestbudco.wordpress.com on March 8, 2021.