artist:
location: Me Di Deh: The impact of queer and female leadership in Jamaican-Canadian sound culture
In Me Di Deh (I’m here), Stuart meditates on how contemporary queer and female selectors (DJs) and music producers in Toronto, Canada–Jamaica’s third largest diaspora–actively remix Jamaica’s sound heritage by drawing on its traditions while challenging norms from within. Mi Di Deh is part-memoir, part-critical analysis. Stuart retraces her own musical experience oscillating between studios and sound system yards in Jamaica–her father’s home country and sound system’s birthplace–and Canada, where she was born. She interweaves documentary footage from her first-ever trip to Jamaica, frameworks from queer and Black feminist theory, and snippets from the personal narratives of five notable Toronto selectors and soundsystem owners: Heather “Live Wire” Bubb-Clarke, Tasha Rozez, Ace Dillinger, Nino Brown, and Bambii. Together, these ideas and experiences animate the story of Toronto’s local bass music culture, and express how female and queer Jamaican music makers are stretching the bounds of sound system–using technology and care to redraw traditionally male-dominated sonic heritages.
Alanna Stuart (pka PYNE) is Caribbean-Canadian music artist-scholar. In sound and scholarship, she is in the thick of what she dubs a ‘Femmehall’ praxis: exploring the libratory possibilities of a feminine approach to dancehall reggae music production. As producer-vocalist PYNE, Stuart has collaborated with Beverly Glenn Copeland, Bambii, U.S. Girls, Equiknoxx Music, Jeremy Dutcher, and Junior Boys. Outside of the studio, Alanna Stuart is a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow and Gender Studies PhD student at Queen’s University. Her research can be read in Socio-Economic Review, Work, Employment & Society, and the tekhnē journal.