The Women Behind the Decks

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It's a Saturday night on Syracuse University's campus and I, like most other college students, find myself contemplating what I should do that evening. After four years of alternating between fraternity parties, house parties, or the same two bars every weekend, nothing seems very appealing.

The reputation of being a “party school” could not ring less true in my mind at the moment. However, with the looming thought of graduation and pure boredom hanging over me, I decided to attend a fraternity party with my friends. 

When walking in, I am expecting the same music, the same people, and the same environment that I always deal with. A sweaty, dark basement, packed with sticky, smelly, drunk college students. Bearable with enough alcohol in your system, completely insufferable if not.  

I am pleasantly surprised to hear the music when I arrive. It isn't just one song I like, it seems to be flowing from one song to the next, all songs I enjoy and can sing the words to, a rarity at these events.

When I eventually squeeze through the crowd enough to see who is playing the music I am completely shocked to not see a young frat boy up behind the booth, but a girl with frizzy hair, sunglasses on, and a concentrated look on her face. 

Her movements are fairy-like, going from one side of the booth to another, with girls I assume to be her friends crowding up behind her. Her concentration never breaks except to occasionally take a sip of a drink someone offers her or to turn and laugh at a friend's joke. 

She plays music for almost three hours and the crowd never dwindles, not even a little. Usually, these events are over by 1 a.m., with students being too tired or drunk to stay out much longer. Her set goes until 2:30 a.m. and only ends when the boys who live in the house decide it should be over so they can go to bed. 

On my walk home, I find myself deep in thought over something many people may find trivial. 

***
 

You've probably seen a DJ in your life. 

Maybe not headlining a festival, playing to thousands of people. Maybe in a sweaty, cramped nightclub, somewhere in the distance, through the haze of alcohol and blinding lights, you saw someone sitting up on a booth at the front of the dance floor. Maybe in your favorite, dirty dive bar, there's someone in the back on a computer cueing up songs on their board.

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The DJ—short for "disc jockey"—has evolved from radio personality to cultural icon and furthermore, people who have gained celebrity status. Some of the most famous people in the world today are DJs.

 What started in the 1940s with radio hosts spinning records between segments transformed in the 1970s when turntables were made into instruments themselves. 

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By the 1980s and 90s, DJs became the architects of entire musical movements. In Chicago, they birthed house music. In Detroit, techno. In the UK, drum and bass. The DJ booth became a place of creativity and expression, where genres were born and musical boundaries blurred.

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Today, DJs are everywhere. They headline festivals where hundreds of thousands people gather. They're in dive bars and rooftop parties. They soundtrack our workouts, our study sessions, our nights out. The rise of electronic dance music has made DJing more accessible than ever. Just get a laptop, software, controller, and you're ready to go. Some can even make music with just a laptop or their phone. What once required crates of vinyl and years of practice can now be learned in months.

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But there's something magical that remains a mystery. What are they even doing? Is there actually any talent for something like this?

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A great DJ doesn't just play songs. They read a room, build energy, and create a musical journey. They know when to drop that one track that makes everyone lose their minds. In an age of algorithmically-generated playlists, a skilled DJ offers something Spotify never could: human intuition, perfect timing, and the ability to respond to the energy of a living, breathing crowd.

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The problem with DJing is the same problem with so many other things in the world: They're all men.

***

It’s now a Tuesday afternoon and I am now watching the frizzy-haired, fairy-like girl I had seen the previous Saturday night, Syracuse University sophomore Maria Profili, while she is hunched over a three-foot-long DJ board with an extreme look of intensity on her face. We are in the basement of Steele Hall in a small room with a plethora of instruments, makeshift recording booths, and speakers. The sunlight is streaming through the windows on one of the sunniest days in recent weeks. 

Our calm, easy-flowing conversation has changed into an in-depth explanation of what buttons to press at what times and which switches to move when and I am feeling very out of my depth and extremely confused. I am suddenly very concerned about embarrassing myself.

On the board, there are over 20 buttons, 15 knobs, 3 sliders, and a variety of other gadgets, each of which does something different to the music. On the computer screen in front of us, there are so many different colors, squares, waveforms, and even more buttons that I almost find myself getting dizzy if I stare at it for too long. 

Seeing this close-up for the first time, I find it silly to believe I thought this would be easy.

However, when I move the one slider and press the two buttons at the exact times she tells me to, the easiest thing she could have gotten me to do, I am filled with the giddy excitement of a child figuring out how to tie their shoes for the first time. It has been a while since I have learned something new, and something that feels exciting. Hearing the two house music tracks perfectly blend has a huge smile breaking out on my face. 

“See? This is what freedom feels like,” Maria says while bobbing her head to the now wonderfully perfect mix of songs coming through the speakers. Even though she may be joking, I think I know exactly what she means.

***

For Maria, her journey to the DJ booth seemed like a natural choice. As a music industry major and with a father who is a musician, music has always been a consistent fixture in her life. 

When she needed to get a job her freshman year, she found the small space in the Steele Hall basement, the SENSES lab. The SENSES lab is a unique space on Syracuse University's campus where students can use audio production tools for free. It is also a space where Maria could make some money and be around instruments. One day, one of her advisors showed her the DJ board and she became enamored. She was able to easily teach herself how to use it.

“I grew up playing like seven instruments and we learn a lot about music theory in my classes. It all came pretty naturally,” she said.

While the passion and talent seemed to come easily, the recognition did not. Itching for a chance to play in front of people and get the experience of playing her mixes live, hearing the crowd below her singing back, she thought it would be best to start by playing at a fraternity party.

While she expected it to be difficult to get people to take her seriously, she didn't know the amount of effort it would take. Talking to one of her fraternity friends, she explained how badly she just wanted to be given a chance. “I'm begging and I'm like, yes, you don't understand. I am actually good.”

After her first gig, she was immediately invited back. Now being more established to a point where she no longer feels she needs to prove herself to anyone, along with having her name out there, she realizes how insane it was that she had to beg in the first place. 

“Why should I have had to beg for something I know I am good at? It was just stupid.”

Like many professions, and let's be honest, the entire world, the music industry is a boys club. Women comprise a significantly smaller percentage of songwriters, with one study finding that they made up only 12.7% of songwriters over the past decade. The gender gap is even more pronounced in production roles, with women making up only 2.8% of producers in the music industry. Only 13.9% of Grammy nominees in major categories were women.

The DJing world is not any different. 32% of DJs are female and 68% are male, despite women playing over twice as many shows as their male counterparts. Women's contributions have often been overlooked since the beginning. 

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In the late 1960s, pioneers like Cosmo Costin broke into New York's club scene, battling skepticism about whether women could even handle the physical demands of transporting heavy vinyl collections. 

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Jim Tremayne, Editor-in-Chief of DJ Life Magazine, has seen the changes women in the DJ world have adapted to. He started at the magazine in 1990 but it wasn't until 1997 that there was a woman on the cover. 

“We did stories on female DJs on the inside, but it wasn't until the late 90s or early 2000s that female DJs became mainstream,” he said.

The paradox of playing house music in a club environment, both known for their message of unity and inclusivity, while consistent exclusion was running rampant was not lost on Jim. The horror stories he has heard about what some of his friends and interviewees have been through still make him uncomfortable to this day. “I think a lot of it came down to pushing forward, believing in yourself, and knowing if you make music that is better than what else is out there, hopefully, you're gonna win.”

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***

Even with a thriving DJ culture at Syracuse University, it makes sense why young women may feel intimidated to start DJing as anything more than a hobby. Every third person you ask somehow seems to DJ and when the scene feels so oversaturated, it can be hard to take anyone seriously, let alone a woman.

Sophomore Lauren Ervin was recommended to check out DJing by a friend her freshman year and never looked back, despite struggling with internalized self-doubt. 

When she started playing for crowds, first at fraternity parties and then clubs, she had been practicing for months and felt completely confident in her abilities. She knew she was good and there was no reason to question that. After all, she wouldn't have readily agreed to perform in a space where she felt unsure of herself. There was nothing to prove, she was just a girl doing something she loved.

While she felt supported enough to get up in front of people and play, self-doubt began to creep in. Knowing she was good enough to be playing was one thing, getting past the ego trip of fraternity boys was another.

“I’m like, oh my god am I good enough to be representing all girl DJs right now? Well yes, I am, they asked me to be here, to do this, but it’s still a lot of pressure I put on myself,” she said. 

For both Lauren and Maria, knowing they have the support of other women on campus has made overcoming obstacles easier to digest. When they see other girls in the crowd cheering them on, having the support of their best friends crushed behind them at the booth, they are more confident in their abilities. 

The confidence they have in a crowded room oozes into the crowd who may never know the amount of second-guessing, frustration, and extra work it took for them to get there. Their personalities that may seem “headstrong” or “entitled” to some, are half the reason they've gotten their foot in the door in the first place. 

“You have to put yourself out there, a lot of it is about connections. If I didn't ask people for something, I never would have gotten it,” Maria said, focused intently on the computer screen in front of her.

She turns to me, a smile on her face and laughter in her eyes, "But now they're the ones asking for me."