Mehndi Dresses Patiala

Missy Guest Blog: 'Last Night A DJane Saved My Life'


Saturday - the weekend - leaving. The Dreieinigk ince of leisure between Thursday and Sunday. Also in between: reflections on a female DJ - Culture and the absence of a cult.

"Either you can hear his-tory, or history, and the only way you're gonna hear the real historical view on it is by the people who were actually there ... "Grandmaster Flash on a history of DJ culture in Ulf Poschardt 'DJ Culture'.

This is not meant like that but is just as' his-tory 'here drawn style of writing apart. what is that with "her-story' would be if there is something like a female history in pop music enter *, eh? The woman could look like the pop - pop music here is less than in the same direction as a reference space taking place musical mainstream - is primarily the object of male gaze test, an alternative -. female - recorded music history, the British Cultural studies Angela McRobbie 1978 in an essay on 'Rock and Sexuality' made. It examines misogynistic tendencies in rock music and notes: "Some feminists have argued that rock is now Essentially a male form of expression, that for women to make nonsexist music it is Necessary to use sounds, structures, and styles that can not be heard as rock. "

That would speak but definitely ensure that women devote more and the production of electronic music *. Why producing and mixing women are still a rare, a side issue? Music education and socialization to bring women - Even my generation - rarely in direct contact with the technology behind the production of music. Even if they are dancing every weekend for that: with the software and hardware that is behind an ecstatic weekend know the least from. And both in the immediate environment and in the broad field of popular culture, there are few that offer the opportunity to identify and serve as role models could.

Daphne Oram in Radiophonic Workshop the BBC, 1958

But they are there anyway. At the beginning and now. Musique concrète, first synthesizer, composers and producers such as Daphne Oram or Pauline Oliveros, the tinkering in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to create new sound worlds. Today the names of the coordinates Berghain and Dubsteb: Ellen Allien , label boss, DJ and producer and Cooly G , published in the seminal British label Hyperdub and enjoys the respect of label boss code 9th

Ellen Allien in Osaka, 2010 (c) bpitchcontrol

To return to the preserves and back to the hardware: a promise by the entry of the machine in the pop at power plant was the alignment of human and machine - and, consequently, also a form of asexuality. Today is electronic music - especially techno, as one of its most popular variations - in fact no sex? dancing all the same? Those questions, Christine Brown and Marcus Maida Reuther in a contribution to the gender issue of the test card anthologies. They ask actors electronic music - producers, DJs, musicians - their experiences, requirements, and with their work. And note that these women "have to do even more than men, must have more ideas and more power" to achieve similar. That these women and their music even exists, is for Braunreuther Maida and the progressive moment. But will the rest of resignation.

10 years have passed since this assessment. On the surface, not much has changed. Even the revival of electronic music - in Berlin, in particular - has no apparent higher proportion of women behind the turntables and controllers brought with it. And the examples listed above remain just examples, two of a few.

What also left at the end and what is at the end of these considerations: A female DJ culture - what can that be? If so, why? How to design structure - where they exist already?

* The terms pop and electronic music called, of course, one to diverse phenomenon in order to use them as definitive terms. Instead, they should in this text rather as representative of the discourse on the respective term.