2023-12-16 20:00:08
Four international techno stars: the South Korean Peggy Gou, the Italian Stella Bossi, the American The Blessed Madonna and the Russian Nina Kraviz. CAMILLE DURAND/M LE MAGAZINE DU MONDE D’APRESTEN KOALL/DPA/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, DOUG PETERS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, WENN RIGHTS LTD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO. ABACA PRESS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
First, the good side of the coin: for a decade, the number of female musicians scheduled at festivals around the world has continued to increase. Between 2012 and 2019, the proportion of events where women were on the bill almost tripled, from 9.2% to 24.6% (according to a 2020 study from the specialized database female: pressure). Then, the other side of the coin, recently illustrated by a post on Instagram from French DJ Paloma Colombe.
On June 20, the artist listed the mishaps that happened to her during a concert in a club in the 19th arrondissement of Paris: the security guard at the entrance who didn’t believe she was a DJ and brutally beat her repressed, crossing the crowded dancefloor – fifteen hundred excited partygoers, the majority of whom were men – to reach the DJ booth, without anyone to accompany him, or even the harassment of the public from the start of the set. “A man constantly yells at me to tell me what to play and what to do. (…) He begins to physically intrude into my work space,” she writes.
There are numerous testimonies from female DJs describing such violence. There is the one who is treated like “whore” by a spectator because she did not wear a bra during her set, the one who hears sexual comments, the one whose facial expressions we make fun of or the one whose technique we openly criticize. There is also the one who is recommended to play Afro or R’n’B music because she is black or the one who is advised to lose weight… According to the IMS 2023 report on the music industry dance music, 67% of female DJs feel obliged to appear attractive to have a career, compared to only 14% of men.
A slow recognition
Do women have no place in the world of electronic music? The history of the genre shows the opposite. When techno spread around the world, in the 1970s and 1980s, its big names were Kraftwerk, Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin… but also Ellen Allien. During the 2000s, it was at Pulp, a lesbian club on Boulevard Poissonnière in Paris, a veritable hotbed of talent, that some of the big names in French female “DJing” emerged, including Sextoy, Jennifer Cardini and Chloé. .
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The beginning of the 2010s will see the advent of international female stars, such as the Russian Nina Kraviz, an unstoppable headliner at the biggest techno festivals in the world, rewarded with several awards, such as that of DJ of the year 2017 awarded by the specialist magazine mixed taste, and at the head of his own label.
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