Tammy La Gorce and Sam Cannon

And plenty of female DJs, deep in the zone, setting the mood.

But these women didn’t appear out of nowhere. Many of them have been part of a grassroots movement based on collaboration and empowerment that has helped elevate the stature (and pay) of female DJs.

Perhaps the most successful performance collective is Working Women. When its founders — Tanya Lyon, Kristin Malossi, Nina BC and Ashlyn Behrndt — started working together in 2016, they were committed to learning from scratch in a male-free space.

“When we started practicing, we were able to work through our insecurities and be really vulnerable around each other,” Nina BC said. Now the eclectic and moody music of the trio ( Behrndt recently left the group) cultivates a sense of intimacy at shows.

Clubgoers are intensely drawn to it, if the group’s July residency at Nowadays, which often has lines around the block, is any indication.

“Maybe this is stereotyping, but with male DJs, as I see it, the act of DJing is more of an ego-driven process,” said Tao Goffe, who writes about gender and DJ culture and is an assistant professor at Cornell University. “Like there’s a Svengali, and one person is the genius,” she continued. “Women have a different approach. They’re more collaborative.”

Working Women’s success has helped shine a light on other female-identified DJs, some of whom are clients of the Brooklyn-based collective Discwoman.

The results can be seen all over Bushwick. On July 26, Sara Skolnick (who spins as Riobamba) will showcase her high-energy, urban mixes of styles like reggaeton and hip-hop at Elsewhere. That same night, Jessica Gentile (Jubilee) will present her Brooklyn-by-way-of-Miami style of electronic music at the Sultan Room.

When Discwoman was founded, in 2014, by Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, Christine McCharen-Tran and Emma Burgess-Olsen (Umfang), it had a single goal in mind: Change.

“We decided we wanted to find a way to get women paid,” Decaiza Hutchinson said.

Discwoman represents 19 DJs, who perform all over the world, from New York to Tokyo. It has negotiated rates that currently go up to about $2,000 an hour, Decaiza Hutchinson said.

Now some clubs “magically double” their number when Decaiza Hutchinson complains about a skimpy fee, she said.

“Discwoman has been a huge presence for us,” said Nina BC, of Working Women. “We’re indebted to them for paving the way for women in Brooklyn in particular.”

For Riobamba, hitching to a collective has opened doors. “I’m super grateful,” she said. “When I was starting out, I was chasing down money a lot of the time.” Now Discwoman does that, and she can focus on her music.

“Our whole vision is about amplifying each other, so we don’t really talk about who the hottest DJ is,” Burgess-Olsen said. “We’re more into cultivating individuality, and ushering what you have out into the world.”

Collectives weren’t around when Jubilee started spinning in clubs, which may contribute to her suspicions about whether her income is where it should be.

“I’m going to go ahead and say that I am probably being underpaid,” Jubilee said. “I have a lot of men I work with, and I’ll straight-up ask them, ‘What was your offer for this, because mine was this.’”

She is not always happy with the answer.

The move away from analog equipment has also helped even the playing field.

When Mia Moretti (Club Soda), now a hot commodity on fashion runways, moved to New York from California 12 years ago, she was still hauling crates of vinyl and her own turntables to gigs.

These days, a laptop or an iPad will do — sometimes even a cellphone.

“Now that music is digital, we take advantage,” said Moretti, who counts Katy Perry and Chelsea Clinton among her clients. “Some people show up with just a USB stick.

“But when you go to DJ reunion nights, where they bring back old-school DJs from like 20 years ago, you see all these big dudes, and you’re kind of like, Of course it was all dudes. It was so hard to lug all those records and two turntables and a mixer, and you’d have to put it all in a taxi. God bless you if you were taking the subway.”

Belinda Becker put in her share of equipment lugging. She started spinning reggae, funk and soul in Manhattan clubs in 1987, when female DJs were a novelty. “I actually prefer women DJs because I feel they play more emotionally,” she said.

From her nights at Nell’s in Manhattan in the ’80s, where she once left the DJ booth to dance with Prince, to her current residency at the Standard, Becker, 56, has witnessed what she thinks may be the democratization of DJing.

“It’s nice to see women finding their place and being recognized,” she said during a Sunday brunch gig in Williamsburg.

For Working Women, the recognition can sometimes come with public expectations that feel limiting creatively, so much so that the group has toyed with changing its name, Lyon said.

“It’s fascinating the kinds of gigs that are offered to us because we have the word ‘women’ in our name,” Nina BC added. “You still see a lot of articles about women DJs as if we’re this separate genre,” Malossi said.

Riobamba takes it a step further: “The future is nonbinary and inclusive.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/nyregion/emotional-funky-fierce-rowdy-female.html" id="a06081ef-a2b2-38b8-ac53-1de6f6de1c09">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — Bushwick, Brooklyn, has emerged as the center of New York’s club scene. From the casual-chic string lights and tarps of Nowadays to industrial art spaces like Elsewhere and the new, kitsch-fabulous Sultan Room, there is plenty of music-inspired euphoria to choose from.

Emotional. Funky. Fierce. Rowdy. Female.

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Tammy La Gorce and Sam Cannon

Articles written by the author

Emotional. Funky. Fierce. Rowdy. Female.