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Female turntablists were super rare back in 1995 when I started scratching & beat juggling.
(Still are…but back then they were unicorn-level rare. 🦄)
At that time, I hadn’t yet seen another girl do what I was learning how to do.
When you’re under-repped and you see someone like you doing the thing you want to do, it makes it feel so much more possible that you can do it too.
DJ Symphony was my “it’s possible” person. 😻
Back in the mid-nineties before YouTube existed, DJ Faust & I used to watch VHS tapes of DJ battles to see what other peeps were doing and try to learn new techniques.
DJ Symphony is the 1st female DJ who I ever saw beat juggling & I was SO inspired by her. 🤩
And not just the basics. She was on the level of the dudes battling in the 1995 Vestax USA Finals.
She was the only girl in the Beat Junkies crew and I watched her battle her crewmate, the amazing Melo-D…
…and she WON!!!!! 🏆
Seeing her do her thing was the validation I needed to prove to myself that girls do this too!
And that it was possible for girls to be as dope as the dudes.
Helloooo GIRL POWER!
I’m forever grateful to Symphony…
For being brave and ambitious enough to lead with her skills over playing to a gimmick.
For not relying on being the ‘token girl’ in her DJ crew, even when it would have been easy for her to do so.
And just for being a dope turntablist, gender aside.
Extra love to the rest of the Beat Junkies for believing in her & supporting her talent. Especially when there were so few females in the game!
In my experience, it was rare for the guys to share the craft of turntablism & DJ technology with the girls.
Lucky for me, I also had some amazing dudes in my corner like Faust, Craze, Shotgun, T-Rock, Klever & King James who trained with me and performed alongside me on stage in our crew as EQUALS.
Like Symphony, I wasn’t allowed to become the ‘token girl’ even if I wanted to. (I never wanted to.)
Instead, they held me accountable with tough love and didn’t let me rest on my laurels for one second.
And they always had my back to “cosign” me—because for some reason when a man says a woman is dope, people tend to pay attention more. 🤷🏼♀️
But even with that crucial support from my male counterparts, it was still hard to imagine success as a female turntablist without actually seeing someone who looked like me doing the same thing.
And not just “doing the thing”…but straight up shredding it!! 😎
This is why seeing Symphony do her thing was so integral to my turntablist journey.
Fast forward to filming in the SCRATCH documentary in 1999…
I was the only female DJ featured in the entire film.
Director Doug Pray & Future Primitive promoter Mark Herlihy gave me the opp to be that “it’s possible” person for other sistas who may have been watching and wondering if there’s a place for them in turntablism too.
So yes …
REPRESENTATION MATTERS. ✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿
On that note 🎵…
Check out the video above of an interview I did at the first Ladies of Sound panel in LA where I describe seeing DJ Symphony for the first time, and how much that meant to me as a fellow female turntablist. 💗
And if you feel inspired, I challenge you to make a conscious effort to become someone else’s “it’s possible” person by showing up big to inspire others to do the same.
It’s easy…you just gotta keep doin’ your thing. 💫
Don’t stop reppin’ with the best of ‘em!
xo,
Shortness
ps – 🥁 Need some dope beats to juggle?
