By Olivier Meijs (Founder of DJ School Amsterdam)
In the 8 years of doing Club Nights with Dj School Amsterdam, we gave over 200 DJ’s their first moment to shine. 47 Of them are women, so that’s about 25%. Not enough yet, but much better than the average in the scene. At the 7 events we did in 2017, we even reach 33%, so things are improving! Being used to train men ánd women, our team of coaches doesn’t notice ány difference in talent between sexes.
Even better: as DJ’ing is a profession that is best done with a strong social sense and sensitive character, women could even be better suited for the job than men. As we all know, ‘breaking though’ in the scene doesn’t have as much to do with DJ-skills, as it has with attitude and entrepeneurship. So, our focus whilst developing our female talents is more and more to empower them to actually ‘get to work’ and shake off any possible hesitation or doubt.
We see that many women, more than guys, want to be secure about what they offer, rather than just jump in and have a try. Knowing this, we adjust our lessons to that attitude. We focus a lot on spontaneous gigs for women, saving them from over-preparing a DJ-set. A quotum, as suggested in this video, will not work. In any form of art, craftsmanship and quality will always decide if there is an audience for someone. Not gender. But female DJ’s dó have to make more of an effort to get to that stage than guys. And eventually, the extra effort pays off.
We are proud to have trained now-prominent female DJ’s such as Nafthaly Ramona, Maj Ulbrand, Sirena, Dina van Diest, Grace Dahl and many others who are currently proving it’s possible to reach the big-boys’ stages when starting from zero.
