My master’s thesis adviser recently informed me that Tara Rodgers (Analog Tara to you) wrote a book on female electronic artists called Pink Noises that Duke University Press is releasing early next year. Oh, how I can’t wait! If you can’t either, Rodgers’ promotional Web site might tide you over.
News of this book/site couldn’t come at a better time for me, as I’m currently working on short essays surveying American female composers and deejays for another project. Rodgers reprints some of her interviews on the site, and I’d encourage readers to look at her correspondence with electronic musicians and composers like Ikue Mori (former drummer of DNA), Anne La Berge, and Pauline Oliveros, as well as poem producer Antye Greie, who grew up in East Germany.
However, I thought I’d specifically hail the deejay today. And while the distinctions between electronic composer and musician can get blurry for the deejay (who I think technically is both), I thought I’d focus on them. I’m also doing it in honor of Lady Kier, former singer of Deee-Lite, who has since been made a career for herself deejaying all over the world. She’s revamped her Web site, and I’m just waiting for her to start posting her sets on Lickerish Radio like she used to.
And just to make myself clearer, I’m specifically highlighting club deejays and not on-air personalities, though I obviously have a lot of love for them as well. I will be folding hip hop deejays into the term ”club deejay” here, which admittedly is kinda sloppy and reductionist. What I’m stressing here, in addition to the importance of women mastering technology for musical purposes, is liveness and performance in a dance space. Still with me? Okay.
So, in honor of Rodgers’s upcoming book and her subjects’ contributions to popular music, I’m spotlight some female steel wheel riders, whose interviews with Rodgers can be accessed by clicking on their names. Make sure you watch the videos too!
BTW, fuck Craig Kilborn. Remember how smug and not funny he was? I’m so glad Jon Stewart and Craig Ferguson have replaced him.
Beth Coleman (M. Singe)
Note: It was hard to find live performances of Mutamassik, so I’ll direct your attention toward Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber and Rough America, musical groups of which she participates.
Thank you, ladies! I look forward to reading your conversations with one another next year. In the mean time, I’ve got some crate-digging to do.
