Female DJs find the beat in Beirut

posted on: Mar 28, 2015

Laila Sarkis, aka El Djette, stands on an elevated platform above the packed crowd of Club 27 in Beirut on a Friday night, with turntables at her fingertips and a computer on her right. She moves to the beat of easy listening, remixed from one side to the other, clearly in her element — as she should be, with 15 years of experience spinning tunes in Beirut’s bars and clubs.

Sarkis has female company in the nightlife scene now, but that was not always the case. When she started in 2000, she found herself an anomaly in what was traditionally a man’s world in Lebanon. Since then, the Lebanese DJ, who grew up in Nigeria and only planned to be here for two years and has stayed for 15, has helped push the music scene forward, perpetuating the recent rapid growth of women behind the decks.

“It was not easy. No DJ ever wanted to teach me. I used to really beg them. So I decided to make it a self-made thing. I bought my turntables, CD players and a mixer and I kept on training. Back then, it wasn’t easy to access the Internet or go to YouTube, so I would go to certain clubs and stand behind the DJs, who were my friends by then, and just watch them,” Sarkis told Al-Monitor.

Mohamad Ghebris, founder and manager of music business Per-Vurt, a record label, music store, DJ school and agency, said that he has seen this growth in his classes. “It was booming after 2009 and 2010. This past year, more than 50% of our students were females. This was the first year this happened,” he told Al-Monitor.

He explains that part of this trend is that Beirut thrives on music and nightlife. Opportunities are available more and more because female DJs bring something different to the turntables.

“We have so many DJs, so people started to search for something special. One of those things is being female,” Ghebris said.

Yasmine Sarout, 29, has been DJing for about four years. When she began, she said there were not many other female DJs, but since then, there are more than she can keep track of, if you include the women who do it less frequently or just play in their homes.

Source: www.al-monitor.com