Ireland’s women DJs: ‘I don’t need your approval, mate. I’ve been at this a long time’

For a new generation of women, DJing has become an exciting hobby, side-hustle or even career path. Whether it’s in clubs, at festivals or in foreign climes, more and more Irish DJs are arriving on to the scene and kicking impostor syndrome to the curb while they’re at it.

While festival line-ups may still be dominated by male acts this summer, the situation is slowly improving, helped in no small part by the likes of free courses for beginner DJs, a welcoming sense of community and cheaper, more easily available equipment. Still, there are times when misogyny and sexism rear their head, and women DJs struggle, for reasons beyond their control, to have their voices – and music – heard.

Here six DJs – JWY, Yasmin Gardezi, Saz, Sleepless Beauty, Shauna Dee and Kaycee – share their experiences with The Irish Times Magazine.

‘They maybe just want you because of you being a woman’

Originally from Amsterdam, Jo-Ann Ahia, 27, has lived in Dublin for six years. She works full-time as a quality analyst for TikTok and part-time as a DJ playing under the moniker JWY at venues in the capital. She also organises events through her collective Foxgluv. She got into DJing, she says, in 2021, when she started attending free workshops run by Skin & Blister, a platform that aims to nurture and encourage creatives in the realm of music and the arts. Starting off wasn’t easy, but she found the community in Dublin supportive.

“When you’re new to something, you’re in your own head and you want it to be perfect,” she says. “Especially if you compare yourself to DJs online – you just see obviously the best of the best clips. The amount of times I thought to myself, ‘Okay I should just stop. This is not for me.’ Then I would speak to another DJ or friends in the industry and they were all like, ‘No, keep going, just keep practising’.”

There have been times when JWY has felt a sense of tokenism in the industry, most frequently when she has been asked to join a line-up even though the curators might not know her blend of music: Ahia specialises in bass-heavy beats, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and grime.

“They just want you because of maybe you being a woman or maybe being a black woman,” she says. “It’s hard to pinpoint. I’ve seen situations, for example, where I’ve noticed the guys hanging out before the gig but didn’t invite any of the girls. That happened to me, as well as where the guys get drinking tokens and the girls didn’t.”

The vast majority of her experiences, however, have been positive. “There is more of a sense of community now, where people feel comfortable to speak out and comfortable enough to say, ‘I’m not going to work with [someone disrespectful] again’.”

‘People can’t accept that girls can be good-looking and talented’

Yasmin Gardezi, from Co Kerry, currently lives out of a suitcase. The 26-year-old got into DJing when she joined a college society seven years ago, and has been building her career ever since, playing Irish festivals including Electric Picnic and Life, and venues right across Europe, delivering techno-focused sets, layered with trance and psychedelia.

The scene in Ireland has many more women now than when Gardezi first started, making it harder to get bookings, but, she says, “That’s not a bad thing. It’s better to have way more DJs now than there was.”

Unfortunately, her platform in the industry can occasionally mean unwanted attention. Online sexism and misogyny are visible across big techno pages on Instagram, she’s noticed. Underneath images of women DJs are often comments about what they are wearing or jibes saying they don’t know what they’re doing. The same style of content featuring men, Gardezi says, has mostly positive messages underneath.

“People can’t accept that girls can be good-looking and talented.” Gardezi refuses to allow it to bother her. “I know how to deal with it,” she says. “It doesn’t affect me. I know I’m talented. You have to take people with a pinch of salt. People’s comments are only their opinion and their opinion [stems from] jealousy and that’s it.”

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‘If they’re booking me, I have to hope they’re booking me for the DJ I am, not for my gender’

Sarah Higgins, known professionally as Saz, is a 27-year-old based in Castleknock, Dublin. She works full-time in the Civil Service and DJs in her spare time. She started mixing for fun in 2018 after buying a set of decks from a friend. She began building up her network in the industry, with members of the community offering tips and advice on how she was doing, allowing her to grow as an artist, as well as in confidence.

Like Gardezi, she has been encouraged to see the proliferation of women DJs on the scene in recent years. “It’s had a domino effect,” she says. “There seem to be more and more female DJs coming out and playing. They seem to be linking in with friends as well who support each other.”

In relation to tokenism on line-ups, she tries to stay positive about a booker’s intentions. “If they’re booking me, I have to hope they’re booking me for the DJ I am and not for my gender. That’s not really something that you say – ‘Oh, I’m proud to be on that line-up because I was booked as a female DJ.’ You want to be proud to be on the line-up because you were recognised as a DJ and a good DJ.”

‘I don’t need your approval, mate. I’ve been at this a long time’

Anna Kerslake, known professionally as DJ Sleepless Beauty, is in her early 30s and lives in Clondalkin. She has worked as a photographer as well as in the music industry. During a period of trying out new hobbies, she decided to go along to a DJing course. Looking back now, she never thought it would become such a big part of her life, let alone result in a career change. At first, she felt daunted by the challenge before her, but gradually eased into it. “I remember looking at the decks in the Wigwam basement [a venue in Dublin where the course was held] and thinking, ‘Jesus, this is like a spaceship’.”

When Sleepless Beauty began playing gigs, she says, “it definitely was more of a boys club” and “a little bit cliquey”. Now she feels much more supported in the industry, but she still gets negative reactions from the crowd sometimes – mostly from men. They will lean in too close. “They have that expression on their face of like, ‘What is she standing there looking at?’ Then, they come over really, really close and look down to see what I’m doing. One guy, after he stood there staring, he went off and gave me a thumbs up. I was like, ‘I don’t need your approval, mate. I’ve been at this a long time’.”

Reactions like these can be disheartening, but they haven’t held her back. As a bisexual woman who has at times felt “a bit outside of the community”, in 2023, she set up Fluid Club, for bisexual, pansexual, “the fluid and flexible”, as well as their friends. More recently, she has set up House of Pleasure, a sex-positive club for women, non-binary, queer and gender-fluid people.

‘There’s a fear of judgment’

Shauna Costello is a 25-year-old youth worker from Coolock, Dublin. She DJs in her spare time under the name Shauna Dee. She fell in love with dance music when she started going out to clubs, she says. “I’m always the person that has the playlist ready for pre-drinks. One day, I just said, ‘You know what? I’m going to buy a pair of decks’. “I go out to listen to music. Going out for the sake of going out doesn’t interest me.”

Costello reached out to DJ and promoter Jonathan Kiely and started taking lessons with him. From there, she has gone on to support big names such as Route 94, Hannah Laing and Green Velvet. Starting out, she says confidence is the main issue. “There’s a fear of judgment, I suppose.” Costello’s mixes offer up everything from minimal house to heavy acid techno. When it comes to being added to line-ups, what often happens, she says, is that the woman DJ will be on first, before the men, which means fewer people will see them play.

Like Sleepless Beauty, she has also had experiences with men questioning her ability. “Men will come up and be like, ‘What are you playing on? Do you have these songs recorded?’ They’re not going up to a boy saying that. I picked up my phone at one stage – now, bearing in mind I was playing there for six hours – and they were like, ‘Eh, [I] thought you weren’t able to use your phone to play? [I] thought you weren’t using Spotify?’” Her reaction? “I’m standing up here. You’re not.”

‘Being a girl DJ worked to my advantage’

Kaycee Keating-Brady, known professionally by just her first name, works as a dental nurse for the HSE when she’s not DJing. Daughter of the underground DJ, Ken Brady – who is, she says, “as well known as an underground DJ can be” – the 27-year-old came into her own when she started going to Hangar, a nightclub that once existed on Andrew’s Lane in Dublin, and which was considered to be one of the most important dance spaces in Ireland before its closure in 2018.

“I picked a few bits up from [her dad] but the big, huge taste breaker for me was definitely Hangar nightclub when I discovered my own sounds there,” she says. “Growing up I had listened to a lot of trance and hard house, but I fell into the disco and house side of it from Hangar. That was what made me want to go, ‘Okay, I want to be a DJ now, doing gigs rather than just as a hobby’.”

Looking back at her first events when she was about 19 or 20, Kaycee says that being a girl actually played in her favour. “When I started, there wasn’t as many girl DJs, so being a girl DJ, it had this niche about it. I think that worked to my advantage of getting gigs but, obviously, you have to have some level of talent as well.”

This, she says, created resentment from some of her male counterparts. “They will just pigeonhole you and assume that you can’t play the decks or you can’t do this or that.” To this day, Kaycee feels pressure to not mess up, for fear that some men are waiting for it. Thankfully, she’s built enough of a name for herself now to know she is being booked for the artist she is, rather than for her gender.

JWY is playing at the Beyond the Pale festival on June 21st and Pride for Rathaus on June 29th and her collective Foxgluv is bringing Bianca Oblivion for her Ireland debut on June 8th; Yasmin Gardezi is playing Slither X Research: The One In The Woods on June 8th; Saz’s Local Bytes radio show alongside Shauna Dee on Phever radio airs on June 9th and July 7th; Sleepless Beauty will be at House of Pleasure’s first Pride party on June 22nd. Fluid Club’s Pride Party will take place on June 28th in the Cellar, Temple Bar, Dublin; Shauna Dee is playing in Bow Lane, Dublin, on July 13th; Kaycee is playing at the Sound House on June 21st.