Mothers In Music – Jayda G
Whether that’s as tastemakers, DJs and producers, or behind the sound desk, dance music simply couldn’t function in its modern iteration without the involvement of femme genius across the generations.
But those experiences haven’t been without challenges. With International Women’s Day in sight, CLASH and AlphaTheta have aligned to spotlight mothers in music, platforming their lives as they attempt to open up conversations in club culture.
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For once, fans were dumbstruck. When Jayda G held court at her Mixmag Lab last year, she had a point to prove. One of the best DJs around, she’d long since become accustomed to pushing past boundaries – and clearly relished this next hurdle. Appearing behind the decks while heavily pregnant, she consciously pushed back against a taboo in club culture, sparking a colossal online conversation in the process.
“Women are gonna have babies!” she laughs over the phone to CLASH. “We’ve been doing it since the beginning of time. It’s not that deep! I think it’s really important for people to see that, and for it to be normalized.”
“I want it to be visible,” she insists. “A woman who is pregnant can still DJ and be out there… I don’t know – there’s still such a stigma.”
Of course, she’s right. Jayda G joins a growing band of women who are balancing motherhood and their roles in club culture. The latest figures from AlphaTheta suggests that more and more women are investing in DJ tech, and as a result the number of women breaking the glass ceiling in club culture is rapidly increasing.
“Six or seven years ago it became such a thig to get more female DJs on the line-up,” Jayda notes, “but as time passes, if you’re having more female DJs, you’re obviously going to have more women who are pregnant, or who are mothers, on the line-ups. It’s a natural process.”
When CLASH catches the Canadian-born DJ she’s walking in her local park, her young son sleeping in a harness. The rapid life-altering changes wrought by motherhood have changed her daily routine in profound ways, and this includes the way she approaches music.
“When you have a kid, it’s just such a transformative thing to happen to you,” she notes. “It’s OK to do a little soul searching. It’s like: OK, this is the person I am before the baby, and this is the person I am becoming after the baby. And I’m trying to intentionally marry those two people together.”
“It’s interesting, because my head is so full creatively… but my hands are full of a baby! It’s hard to get that creative process out – you have to be smart with your time management.”
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Becoming a mother has shifted the way Jayda G approaches tasks she’s long become familiar with, including the way she absorbs music. “It’s actually been really helpful having the baby,” she laughs, “because you’re just sitting there breastfeeding for so long! So I’ve got time to listen to music. It’s a really great way for me to find songs for my DJ set that I wouldn’t have necessarily allocated as easily before. There are pros and cons!”
On a practical level, becoming a mother – and the disruption to her income as, essentially, a sole trader – creates a number of challenges. “I’m lucky my management was so supportive of me,” she notes. “I know so many women who deal with this who aren’t DJs, who are just working women.”
For a DJ, there is the increased pressure to be visible, to be seen on line-ups, festival posters, and social media. “Most women get to take six to eight months off,” she says, “and I’m very aware I didn’t have that luxury.”
“I mean, I’m lucky that I had my baby at the end of November – a time when most DJs, if they’re going to take time off, take it then. Even then, not everyone gets that chance.”
“The industry needs to understand that some people will need flexibility,” Jayda G observes. “In club culture specifically, there has to be this recognition that some people have kids, so the touring party changes, and you need increased flexibility in terms of set times.”
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Navigating the scene as a pregnant woman brought forward a seemingly never-ending series of challenges – virtually every venue and festival arena had been designed by patriarchal systems. “Oh there’s all kinds of things no one thought of!” she laughs, “purely because the people making the logistics had never been pregnant.”
She recalls one exhausting DJ set, when she was led offstage and told there was a buggy ready to take her off-site… except the buggy was over 500 yards away. “I was like, I’m heavily pregnant! I just can’t walk that far! You want me to walk all the way over there?! And it’s funny, you could tell they felt so bad because it’s just one of those things nobody ever thought of.”
As our conversation comes to a close her son begins wriggling his way out of a nap – he moves continually, something she attributes to her going on the road while pregnant. “He does not stop moving,” Jayda notes. “I wonder if that’s because I toured while he was in my belly!”
As for music, her son is developing a passion for the classics – think the elastic funk of Prince, or the countrified blues-rock of Bonnie Raitt. “I mean, that’s kind of random!” she exclaims, “but it makes me happy.”
Vowing to remain an advocate for mothers in club culture, she notes that “it’s my experience… and it’s always something I’m happy to champion.”
If Jayda G has one piece advice for new mothers – in music or otherwise – then it’s to maintain a charitable mindset with regards to your life. “It’s all about flexibility,” she says, “and giving yourself grace that you’re not necessarily going to be able to go at the same speed that you’re used to. You need to give yourself space, and allow yourself to figure out how you’re going to do that with this new person in your life.”
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CLASH and AlphaTheta are uniting to explore women’s experiences in club culture, centring on motherhood.
International Women’s Day takes place on March 8th. Follow Jayda G on social media HERE.
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