P_ssy Party inspires a new generation of women and queer DJs

The atmosphere in the room is moody and expectant. Sounds of people milling about in the Kitchener’s main bar next door spill through an open door as I take in the room. Built in 1902, the Milner Park Hotel in Braamfontein, as it was known back in the day, is believed to be the second-oldest bar in Johannesburg.

A DJ booth is tucked into the corner. Tired wallpaper and wooden frames adorn the walls and a lone, framed picture of British music producer and DJ Goldie overlooks the room, where live music transforms this space into a riotous vibe, mostly at weekends.

The tracks that effortlessly move my limbs are by US recording artist, songwriter and musician Maya Shipman, aka Suzi Analogue. But the small crowd gathered on this particular Thursday night is not here for a lit DJ set — at least not yet.

They’re here for a P_ssy Party guest workshop organised by Colleen Balchin, who goes by their DJ name Rosie Parade, and Gontse More, known as Phatstoki. The two head up P_ssy Party, an incubator for women and queer DJs.

Rosie Parade met Suzi Analogue at the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda in 2019 and the pair have been planning the American's visit to SA ever since. Her recent trip to Ghana for the US Cultural Embassy was their chance. On this particular night, Rosie Parade and Phatstoki have arranged for her to share some tips.

Lingo — familiar and strange — gets thrown around, the equivalent of a magic trackpad for DJs gets passed around, beats are selected and eventually a track is laid down, a collective effort under Suzi Analogue's expert guidance.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Phatstoki has travelled the world DJing, as far as Dubai and New York. Some of this has been alone, but mostly as Sho Madjozi’s DJ. Getting started, though, was a challenge.

She taught herself to DJ and wanted to play live but struggled to get booked because she lacked experience. When one of Phatstoki’s friends approached Rosie Parade, who works at Kitchener's and had a foot in the door, the idea of creating a space for women and queer people who lack experience and don’t get to play live was sparked.

Phatstoki’s first live set was in 2016 as part of a P_ssy Party event at Kitchener's, which became their base. Since then, they’ve hosted events, workshops and discussions to teach others while creating safer spaces for people to learn, grow and live out their passion.

“Without this experience I don’t know how far I would have got with my idea of being a DJ,” Phatstoki says. “I think that goes for a lot of the honeys who’ve been at our workshops.”

Many of those involved with P_ssy Party are now hosting events and regular radio slots or are DJing at festivals. 

CREATING SAFER SPACES

P_ssy Party has been run informally as a space to share skills. But after six years, its founders have been working on packaging it into an affordable course as part of the P_ssy Party Academy.

They  kicked off P_ssy Party Academy season one for absolute beginners in Joburg this month. Eventually, they hope to reach beyond Joburg, to extend their reach outside urban areas and also to cater for more advanced DJs hoping to enter clubs.

And the plans don’t stop there. Last month they launched an open call for their Accelerator Programme for Women in Club Culture, a special P_ssy Party project funded by Spotify’s Equal Collective, in collaboration with the Lagos-based organisation Femme Africa, to host a six-week accelerator programme for emerging women DJs in SA and Nigeria.

At the same time, they opened the call to be included in The Pink Book, an online directory for African women in the audio technology professions. 

“It’s a very unsafe environment,” Phatstoki says when I ask her about the local DJ environment for women. “P_ssy Party has become a space where people who want to engage with DJing feel safer to be fully themselves and get their confidence up.”

“A lot of DJs we have didn’t know they wanted to be DJs until they were at P_ssy Party,” Rosie Parade adds. “They didn’t know that the club is a place they wanted to be until they had the experience of feeling safer, protected in a club space, and then started to think, maybe I can be the one in charge here, maybe I can be the DJ.”

• P_ssy Party DJs are back on the decks with a new series of events called P_ssy Party Intimates which kicked off this month. Held at 44 Stanley on the first Thursday of the month, it’s a new concept around spaces to connect, talk and listen outside of the club as part of an ongoing collaboration with The Library of Things We Forgot to Remember.

• To find out more about the P_ssy Party Academy, follow or DM them on Instagram using the handle @p_ssyparty or fill out a registration form on linktr.ee/P_ssyParty