Dijon’s story spans decades and is intertwined with the evolution of house music. She was born in Chicago - the birthplace of the genre - on the South Side, and she found clubs at a young age. “You had all this teenage energy and angst and community, and it was just electric.” When she says “teenage,” she isn’t kidding. She got her start DJing her parents’ house parties as a pre-teen: “My bedtime was like 9 o'clock so I could play from 8 to 9. But then around 11 o'clock, we would start hearing all this laughter and cursing, and we could smell the cigarette smoke and glasses breaking. And it was just like, what is this world?” Soon she began sneaking out to clubs with a fake ID. “I was a 13 year old dressing like I was 25.”
An encounter with Chicago house legend Derrick Carter developed into a mentor-mentee relationship. His fluid approach to the whip crack intensity of Chicago’s sound left an impression on Dijon, pushing her as a DJ and opening up her horizons. “He started inviting me to a lot of underground parties. It was a revelation for me. It felt like home.”Under his guidance, she honed her sense of determination and explored her voice. “Chicago is a working-class city, and when you come from a working-class city, you have time to develop your own thing. You’re not in competition with anyone else. You can create your own world because there isn’t this epicenter of culture right on your doorstep.”
A move to NYC in the late ‘90s pushed Dijon to new heights. “What was happening musically in New York was so different.” In addition to the vibrant legacies of disco and NY house, “there was this whole tribal scene. There’s a huge Latin community based in New York, and a West African community as well.” These cultural crosscurrents brought out rich, percussive quality to the music that Dijon embraced wholeheartedly. On top of that, the city’s cosmopolitan feel brought access to emergent, soon-to-be-seminal European sounds - early minimal, dub techno and more.
Another mentorship, this time with Danny Tenaglia, brought her in close contact with the landmark club Twilo and with a network of DJs who were pushing into fresh territory. Though she was new to the city and basically unknown, Dijon would not be deterred. “I remember going up to Danny, just saying right to his face, ‘I’m going to make a record with you one day.’ Danny looked at me in horror and was like, ‘Who are you?’ Just saying something like that, it broke the ice and we became friends.” He set about helping her establish herself in a crowded and competitive field. “I started playing on a Monday night for 50 bucks. I didn’t have turntables at home. Danny gave me my first mixer – it was a two-channel Radio Shack mixer.”
If New York was defined by its scope and sense of possibilities, there were other issues Dijon soon noticed. She chafed against a sense of overspecialization, with microgenres fragmenting into their own scenes and gentrification tearing communities apart. “I really started DJing [in NY] out of necessity. I wasn’t hearing music presented the way that I heard in Chicago, where there weren’t so many different genres or segregation musically. In Chicago, if it rocked the party or if it was great or if it moved you, you played it.” This sense of genre transcendence and open hearted musicality is exactly what continues to set her apart today.
In over 30 years behind the decks, she’s consistently drawn upon these formative years while continually evolving as an artist. Her approach to house is both timeless and completely current, ever renewed by the genre’s joyful, life-affirming core. You can hear it most recently on her album “Black Girl Magic.”
As a trans, queer Black woman operating at her creative peak, she’s also become a beloved figurehead. “There is so much misunderstanding, and the only way that those politics are going to be heard or those stories are going to be heard is directly from the source,” she told RBMA. Dijon’s artistic flourishing is a marvel to behold, and her sets are a testament to her intuitive flow, technical command and bold creative vision. “I’m at a point where it’s: ‘What are my thoughts? How do I feel about things?’ Deprogramming what box I’m supposed to fit in to make others comfortable about my existence. I’m tired of asking for permission to be.”