Electronic DJs and producers often conceal their identities under vague monikers, even elaborate headgear if you’re Deadmau5. But by adopting genderless aliases such as Skrillex, Kaskade, Zedd and several others, it becomes all too easy to ignore, even if unwittingly, that the electronic dance music acts who dominate charts, festival lineups and media headlines are overwhelmingly male.
Most major music festivals in Chicago highlight this disparity. This year’s lineups for Spring Awakening, Pitchfork, North Coast and Lollapalooza all echo similar statistics as female DJs and producers account for less than 10 percent of each lineup, with Lollapalooza looking the most lopsided.
“The lack of female DJs? I think I can name one,” said Perry Farrell, the Lollapalooza co-founder for whom the Perry’s Stage of electronic acts and DJs is named.
He isn’t far off. There is only one female DJ and producer slated to perform on Perry’s Stage this year: Mija. As for the other seven stages (not including Kidzapalooza), only a handful of female DJs and/or producers will perform.
Chicago born and bred DJ Dani Deahl, who performed at Spring Awakening, said the ratio of female to male acts on festival lineups is comparable to the statistic that 91 percent of music on EDM (electronic dance music) labels is produced by men, which she cited in a Chicago TED Talk she gave in January 2015.
“That’s not a gender gap,” she said, “that’s a canyon.”
Considering only 9 percent of music on EDM labels is produced by females, “is it really fair to ask festivals to have their lineups be a 50/50 split, or even a 40/60 split? I don’t think that’s an appropriate answer,” she said.
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But the problem extends beyond gender-balanced festival lineups.
“The lack of diversity is a problem,” Farrell said. “House music used to be about outsiders, but EDM is not about outsiders (including women).”
A genre’s audience often mirrors that of its creators, as evidenced in EDM as its voice is primarily that of white, male DJs and producers making music that has in turn drawn a mostly white audience, and its movement toward the mainstream largely diverges from its roots in house music — a genre made for and by outsiders of sexual and racial minorities. House music’s 40-year history started in Chicago, where its name derived from the Warehouse nightclub, a cultural hub for the genre.
Michael Serafini, Chicago-based DJ and owner of Gramaphone Records, a Chicago staple for dance and house music since 1969, has seen much of Chicago’s history with such music unfold. He said the early days of house were male dominated, and that a woman’s position in a nightclub used to be more of a door host, dancer, or bartender — not necessarily a DJ. He said while many female DJs were around, they just did not receive as much recognition as men.
He spoke of two female DJs in particular though who paved a path through Chicago’s landscape of electronic, dance and house music, DJs he said were very influential in the club scene on the North Side and downtown: Teri Bristol and DJ Psycho B—-.
“They were famous DJs through three generations of nightclubbing,” Serafini said, beginning with house music’s inception. He said they frequently played at the famous dance spots and nightclubs in Chicago such as Medusa, The Shelter, Crobar and Cairo, where they started an industry night called GLEE Club — which stood for gays, lesbians, everyone’s equal.
Bristol and DJ Psycho B—, more commonly known as Valerie, opened doors not only for female DJs but for all DJs to explore new sounds and styles, Serafini said. And while they now receive recognition and respect, that was not always the case. Valerie said when she first started DJing it was so hard to get a spot anywhere, mainly because there were about 10 clubs and each booked just one DJ a night, always from the same pool of about 10.
“So it was so hard to get your foot in the door,” she said. “And then being a girl on top of that when there were no females, except for Teri who I helped, but once I started DJing it was so hard and nobody would give you a chance and once you got a chance they wouldn’t put your name on a flier and when they did they spelled it wrong.”
The misspelling of Val to Van, which really did happen once, led Valerie to the idea of performing under a moniker. She was toying with names like “Crazy Girl” or “Mad Woman” — she wanted people to know she was a woman — but ultimately decided upon the upfront name of DJ Psycho B— when Bristol told her she was nothing less than that.
While Bristol and Valerie had one another as a source of support, ensuring that young girls and women feel this same sense of empowerment is a concern everywhere from DJing to the realm of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) related fields, which Deahl believes are connected. Deahl said there is a direct correlation between DJing and STEM, and if more females were involved in such fields there would inevitably be more female DJs and producers.
According to the National Girls Collaborative Project, which encourages girls to pursue careers in STEM, “Women remain underrepresented in the science and engineering workforce, although to a lesser degree than in the past, with the greatest disparities occurring in engineering, computer science, and the physical sciences.” Skills in engineering and computer science are required when producing and editing music.
Deahl said in order for female DJs and producers to be more equally represented in the industry, “We need to figure out how to get more women involved from the get-go,” which she said requires a shift in the cultural environment in which we are raised.
The cultural environment Valerie found herself in was not always a welcoming one. As a member of a very small group of female DJs in Chicago in the ’80s, she encountered a lot of sexism. When asked how people responded to her being a female in the industry at the time, she said, “It was a big deal. … It was big deal. Oh yeah, I heard it all … and you know, I didn’t care.”
She recalled one time when Bristol auditioned for a bar in Boystown in the late ’80s. She said they knew one of the guys that DJed there, so Bristol used his records for her audition. When she was done, she was told she was “too progressive” even though she was using records that were being played in the bar.
“It was pretty amazing,” Valerie said. “They had such a closed mind. We couldn’t even argue, we were like, ‘Seriously, we used your DJ’s records.’ It’s just so ridiculous.”
She said she has noticed a change though, and that, “There are actually a lot of females (in the industry) now.” She said when she started out she knew of two women aside from Bristol: Teri Hemmert of WXRT and Kasey Crabtree, who used to do video at Berlin when the nightclub opened in the early ’80s.
“Other than that I knew no women (in the industry), literally no women. None. Zero,” she said. “Now, there’s so many here in Chicago that I don’t even know. They’re everywhere, they really are.”
Along with the growing participation of females in the industry, general acceptance is growing as well.
“People now actually are more receptive and are more willing to embrace the idea (of female DJs and producers) and to check themselves when they find that they are exercising their privilege without meaning to, because they’ve been doing it their entire lives,” Deahl said. “It’s becoming a lot easier for women to speak up and raise their voice and not be shamed for it.”
Though some still have reservations. Alison Wonderland, one of the female DJs who played Spring Awakening, chose not to comment on the subject when asked. Her publicist said via email, “Alison doesn’t usually comment on gender ever and passes on everything having to do with the subject.”
Early in Deahl’s career, she too dismissed questions that addressed her as a female DJ, though has since realized the importance of speaking out. Because as she said, “Unfortunately, if you don’t shove an issue in people’s face, they don’t really understand that there’s an issue to begin with.”
The issue largely being that emphasis is placed less on equality and more on profitability.
The growing popularity of large American music festivals, both genre-specific (Spring Awakening) and genre-spanning (Lollapalooza), reflect just that — a financially thriving scene. Dance music festival Spring Awakening celebrated its fifth anniversary this year. Meanwhile Lollapalooza, which has an approximated $140 million impact on Chicago, will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year with an additional day, making the event a four-day extravaganza.
The International Music Summit, which defines itself as an “educational, inspirational and motivational thought leadership platform dedicated to creating awareness of and appreciation for electronic music and the artistry (of) DJing and all related forms,” tracks such growth within the industry. According to IMS’ 2015 Business Report, such music festivals represent a very small fraction of the entire electronic dance music’s global market, which as of May 2015 hit a $6.9 billion evaluation with the U.S. accounting for nearly $2 billion of that. But female DJs and producers are not sharing in the wealth.
Forbes’ 2015 list of the world’s highest-paid DJs, or “electronic cash kings” as Forbes refers to them, consists solely of men (hint, the term “kings”). The article acknowledges that not one female act made the list, and notes that the sister duos of Nervo and Krewella are the only ones that even come close.
But even as dance and electronic music continue to infiltrate the mainstream, Deahl believes it will always be counterculture.
“Just because something becomes popular enough for the mainstream to adapt it doesn’t mean that the counter-culture aspect of it goes away,” she said. Deahl, who is also a journalist and current editor-at-large for DJ Mag, also said, “A lot of the people I interview that are DJs in Europe view what we have in the U.S. as a very distinct, separate and strange beast. And that’s because there is still, globally, a very strong, thriving underground dance music scene. It’s maybe a little bit less visible in the U.S. right now because of the mainstream popularity of it, but it absolutely still does exist in the U.S. I think it will always exist despite how popular it gets.”
And as for Chicago’s electronic, dance and house music scene, Valerie is not worried either. She said even though “the whole thing now is that it’s hip to be a DJ,” there is such a core group of people in Chicago that have been here, “that eat sleep and breathe (this) music,” and have “for years and years.” So as the demographics of the genres continue to change — in terms of creators and consumers — that history is something that will always remain.
Lyndsey Havens is a freelancer.
Twitter: @chitribent
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