Uplifting BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and Gender-Inclusive EDM Artists | FEMME House | Elevated Frequencies #44

olivia (00:29.225)
FemHouse is developing the future of producers, mixers, engineers, DJs, artists, and executives of the industry by providing education, scholarships, cultivating community, furthering visual representation, and leveraging their platform to amplify the voices of marginalized communities. Lauren and Lo, it is so great to have you. I'm so excited to get into this. I've been following FemHouse for a long time, and I just want to first start off by talking about the fact...

why FemHouse exists is because there is a need, clearly. So let's get into that.

HERMIXALOT (01:05.16)
Yeah, I think that, you know, for us in LP, who's my co -founder, it was a really visceral and tangible need. At the time when she was starting her career as a DJ and producer, she was in an Ableton class with like 250 dudes in San Francisco. And the first time she actually felt safe learning Ableton was because she went to a class facilitated by Mini Bear.

at Girls Rock Camp if I'm, am I remembering that right?

mini bear (01:39.214)
Yeah, well, so actually, it's funny. When I first met LP, that was kind of like the beginning of my journey of getting into teaching. I taught music production at a camp called Girls Rock Camp. And I had been trying to get hired as just a music production teacher. There were like a handful of boutique music production schools in LA. And I was really frustrated at the time because a lot of those schools were kind of like made up in terms of like instructor.

gender makeup, which is like men. And I felt like very intimidated trying to interview for those positions. But it was kind of like a kismet moment where I met LP and she actually she both she and Mary Droppinz I met them at the same time. We're teaching a DJing workshop. And she was, I don't even remember how this conversation came up. But she was like, she's like, yeah, she's like, I work at like with W hotels, and they have these studios, and we want to start, you know, hosting and teaching these like,

music production workshops and it just like blew my brain because at the time I was just, I think so frustrated of trying to kind of get my foot in the door in terms of like teaching production and feeling like it was just hard to get hired basically to teach that. And I, it kind of just like brought me back to when I also, you know, I was in audio engineering classes in school and you know, the gender makeup was predominantly men. And it kind of like brought me back to the feeling like I was the only.

non -dude in the room and you know trying to become a teacher it was like kind of like the same thing so it was kind of like one of those moments where it just like felt like the right time meeting someone who was like trying to create a space that um similar to a space that i wanted to create too.

HERMIXALOT (03:20.696)
Yeah, and you know, in our end, we're meeting a bunch of aspiring songwriters and singers and artists and like these like super talented women who are sort of just like waiting. This is so specific to LA too. Just sort of like waiting for like a male producer to like pluck them out of obscurity and take them to the next level. And LP is experiencing this and Mini Bear is experiencing it from the education side. And it was just like, what if we made something to like...

put all these narratives in one place and fuck them up and just create like a safe space. It felt like really simple and like quite frankly, sort of shocking that it hadn't been done. And at the same time, you know, it was the year that, you know, Emily Lazar was nominated for.

engineering Beggs album and she went on to win the Grammy that year and the Recording Academy had given, they had done a big marketing campaign about that and that's how we learned about the 2 % stat that we're constantly and have been focused on for the last five years since we found it.

olivia (04:23.625)
Can you tell my audience what that stat is?

HERMIXALOT (04:26.84)
Yeah, less than 3 % of producers are non -male. And the actual status is that they're women. So I imagine it gets really much more dire when you layer on other presentations of gender, right? Which is also something that we seek to address. So yeah, we're just, it's unfortunately gone down. We're doing a great job, right? Over the last five years, it's since gone down.

But yeah, there was something really visceral about like having these experiences, excuse me, and then learning about this stat and like sort of seeing, not realizing that the stat is coming to life for us, right? And not realizing that we're living the stat. It was just like, what if we just put some women in a room with Ableton and a teacher? And it's been off to the races ever since.

olivia (05:22.569)
And that stat is particularly jarring when you think about the roots of this genre. Like how did we get here?

HERMIXALOT (05:31.352)
Sure, I mean, that's something that we sort of talk about internally all the time. And it's, you know, it's sort of been the direct line to all of the, I hate this, but like DEI programming that we have, you know, it's why we have scholarships for BIPOC creators specifically. It's why we have scholarships for queer creators specifically. Because when you start to layer on, like the gender thing is a mess. You start to layer on race, when you start to layer on sexuality, when you start to layer on...

socioeconomic status, it gets really, really nasty. And like you said, right, like the roots of dance music are black and brown and queer and female. And you would not know that by looking at the current like landscape, the ultra lineup, for instance.

olivia (06:19.593)
Yeah, I was just there. Something interesting, actually, one of my friends said to me at lunch, I was with the label as Hood Politics, and one of the artists said, Olivia, what do you think it is that makes certain shows you go and it's like 99 %

HERMIXALOT (06:23.32)
Girl, so are we, girl.

mini bear (06:25.006)
Hahaha!

HERMIXALOT (06:32.918)
Thank you.

olivia (06:49.033)
dudes. And that's something that's always been in the back of my mind. But actually when he posed that question, it was like my second day there. And then I spent the rest of my weekend looking at not just the lineups, but the people I was surrounded by. And, you know, I think I'm married to a man. And so I feel like it kind of removes me from I have the privilege of being removed from like feeling unsafe, I think. But I

got into this head space where I'm looking around, I'm like, I don't know if I would feel safe here if I was by myself. And so what do you, talk to me about like how the, the lineups and the fan bases are kind of mirrored in that way because like attracts like, right?

HERMIXALOT (07:39.608)
I think that a big thing that I see is whether or not the mainstream wants to acknowledge it or not, EDM is pop music right now, right? Even if songs on the radio in the top 200, for example, aren't labeled as EDM, I think I actually did this exercise a couple of weeks ago and it's just the top 10 tracks.

the top 15 tracks are essentially just like EDM songs, like bad EDM songs, don't get me wrong, but like EDM songs with vocals being labeled as pop. And when something is mainstream, then you have to think of what the majority of the population looks like, right? And I think a lot of where dance specifically has lost its way is that a great deal of dance culture is not EDM. And in fact,

olivia (08:15.337)
Mm -hmm.

HERMIXALOT (08:38.296)
A lot of the creators in dance music, like if you call them EDM, would be like, fuck you. But the mainstream is reflected in capitalism, right? It's just like Insomniac is gonna, and thank God, like love Insomniac, they're great partners of ours, but they have to cater to an audience, right? They sell tickets.

So EDC is going to be representative of the majority, the majority of tastes. Something that we sort of advocate for in our work with EDM, in our work with Insomniac, for instance, is like you go to a festival, you buy tickets to the festival, you're probably responding to maybe the first two or three lines of a festival lineup. So all that space below.

should and could be used to diversify, to show people more music, to show people other creators, to promote things like visual representation, to book queer artists, to book artists of color that are doing dance music, that are arbiters of dance music. Excuse me. And Insomniac has been very open to that. You know, a couple of years ago, they gave us a forest art car at EDC Las Vegas and like our entire lineup, except for, I think,

Sam Devine, it was like their first time playing in EDC ever. It was a lot of, it was like a lot of folks' first time playing a festival ever. So like these, you know, these little levers of change are easy to pull. And what we try to do is make it easy to pull. We try to tell the partners that we work with, like, this is an easy thing that you can do. And it has great impact because if you give a queer artist, a Black artist, a female artist, a trans artist,

space on a lineup, put their name on a flyer. They can take that flyer and go get their name on another flyer and it has a domino effect.

olivia (10:38.473)
Yeah, that's a great point. Did you want to say something, Lauren too? Did you want to add to that?

mini bear (10:43.758)
No, I was gonna say it just, yeah, it makes a huge difference. It's like the getting your foot in the door kind of idea, you know, it's like, it's just, there's so many little gatekeeping things, you know, throughout on so many different levels throughout the industry and like it can be represented in so many ways. So if you're able to get your foot in the door in some way, like makes a huge difference for someone's career.

olivia (11:06.665)
Right. It's that first step in the door that leads to all the other opportunities, right? Like once you're kind of in the bubble, it's easier to be bounced around. So what you all are doing is getting people in that bubble. So I know that you really cover the full spectrum of this industry, everything from the production classes. And I know you travel with those. I have lots of friends who attend when you're here in Chicago, which is awesome. And then...

You're developing everything from like artists to like photographers and other careers in the scene, right?

HERMIXALOT (11:45.048)
Yeah, I think, you for us at this point, like the bedrock of all of this is education. And we sort of think of it as a two -pronged girl, right? It's like, we can teach you how to produce. We can teach you how to take great photos. We can teach you how to DJ. But also on the backend, we're educating corporations. We're educating promoters. We're educating agents. We're educating all the industry resources that we've, you know, sort of have the privilege of amassing throughout our career. Like, yo, this is much easier than you're making it.

And let us help you with that. And what it comes down to is we're interested in creating an industry that looks more like us, an industry that more adequately reflects society, like a civil and diverse and reflective society where everyone's identity is honored and seen and witnessed and validated.

and represented. And it sounds like revolutionary, but it's not. It shouldn't be, right? It should just be the status quo so that that's what we're up to. And that's why we put our hands in anything that needs diversifying. One thing about it, baby, we coming to do it.

olivia (13:00.681)
I love that. And you, so you said earlier that, you know, a lot of people pay attention to the top lines of the festival lineups. And so I'm assuming, you know, I'm not a booking agent, but what their argument can be is, oh, well, these are the people who sell tickets and this is why they're booking them. Talk to me about why it makes more financial sense to include a diversified lineup.

HERMIXALOT (13:28.824)
The thing about...

Like once a year, I get this question and I give the most unhinged feral answer. But in like two weeks, like Joe Wiseman in Insomniac is gonna be like, girl, did you have to act like that? And I'm gonna be like, unfortunately, yes, I did. But this is what happens. Like Fem House with great intention, we sort of like think of ourselves as like the anti gatekeeper gatekeeper.

mini bear (13:36.428)
I can't wait.

olivia (13:37.065)
That's what I'm looking for. That's what I'm looking for.

olivia (13:49.257)
you

HERMIXALOT (14:01.688)
Um, this industry is built on doing favors for your friends. This, this industry is literally built on a very small number of dudes, white dudes, cis white dudes, cis straight white dudes that have a concentration of power and they do favors for each other. And so what you're seeing is like, um, an EDC poster.

isn't an EDC poster because someone is like lovingly curating their favorite artists. It's because like four agents with a whole lot of power that have maybe the biggest artists in the world say, you can have fill in the blank. This is where I always get into trouble. I'm like talking to myself right now. Like don't name names. These are real people. You will get in trouble. You can have fill in the blank, but you also have to take.

these other eight fucking bros that are like mini me versions of fill in the blank and fill out the poster. And so why does it make economic sense to make it more diverse like lineup? It doesn't matter if it makes financial sense because the other way doesn't make financial sense. It's not about finance. It's about handshake deals on the dance, on the golf course. So.

mini bear (15:20.366)
Yeah.

HERMIXALOT (15:23.992)
You know, our argument is no one is, you know, like you think of how you engage with a festival. Are you with the magnifying glass, like looking at every?

mini bear (15:34.798)
You're going because it's the festival.

HERMIXALOT (15:36.76)
You're going because it's a festival. A lot of people aren't going, especially now, for the music. They're going to trip balls with their friends because it's a really fun time, which we advocate for. And we love when people act like that. So this idea that like people don't want diverse lineups or they don't know who these artists are, part of the fun of going to a festival, because actually, in my opinion, as a fan of music, a festival is one of the worst ways to see like your favorite artists.

mini bear (15:40.418)
Yeah.

mini bear (16:06.638)
Mm -hmm. Yes.

olivia (16:07.013)
Agreed.

HERMIXALOT (16:07.16)
When I go to a face festival, like the funnest is like stumbling on someone I've never heard of. People are actually going open with spaciousness to discover. And so why not use that flex if, you know, Ultra announced the 2025, like they put tickets on sale for 25 yesterday with no lineup. It's not about fucking financial sense. And that's like, those are the conversations that we're having in the back rooms.

mini bear (16:16.044)
Yeah.

mini bear (16:27.692)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

olivia (16:38.377)
That's an amazing point. And I hadn't connected those dots before. And I completely agree that it is so stressful to try to go see somebody at a festival that you really love, because you're like, am I going to get a good spot? Like, are they going to play the type of set that I want? Like, are they going to be annoying people in my way? It's a pain in the ass. Yeah. So you just, it's easy to just go with the flow.

mini bear (16:51.31)
So stressful.

mini bear (16:56.846)
Yeah, it's too manic. Yeah.

HERMIXALOT (17:02.136)
Yeah, yeah, the fun is like when you get there right at fucking gates and you're just walking around trying to decide when to engage in your deranged behavior, looking for stuff to eat, just like checking out the vibes.

mini bear (17:18.702)
Yeah. Yeah.

olivia (17:22.313)
That's such a great point. And you kind of just like blew my mind a little bit. So one thing that I have many, many friends who are local DJs who care about the topics that we're talking about. I'm talking about, you know, not straight dudes, everything but. And they are afraid.

to engage in these conversations, to start the conversations online, to advocate for themselves and others because they think that it will edge them out of opportunities locally if they rock the boat by having these tough conversations. Do you see that in the people that you work with and in workshops and other events that you host and what advice do you tell them?

HERMIXALOT (18:14.296)
This one's for you, Lauren.

mini bear (18:15.502)
for me. Yeah, I mean, I think right now at this point in my life, and I would say like the past like couple years or so, I think I just like intentionally try not to engage with people like that, which is kind of hard sometimes. I think particularly with like straight white sisters, which I guess to that point, I don't work with a lot of straight white.

I think because I removed myself from that situation, which is hard because they are just everywhere. But yeah, I have, I think particularly when I first, this is like, I guess one of those things where I also have to be careful with my words right now and not naming names. But when I first got into teaching, I think I was very frustrated by...

Um, my personal experience of, um, feeling like I had to be within a box or I was kind of like, what's the word? Like, I felt like I was like, kind of like a token identity that was like being used to show representation. Um, and that did a lot of things to my self esteem and I had to kind of like build myself up for like the past.

couple of years, it's like that stuff gets into your head. And again, it kind of brought me back to that place of when I was like in audio engineering classes in college and production classes in college. And I just like was in a room full of like dudes. And it really just like, it really informs you like in this like deep, deep child, it's like inside of like what you can and what you can't do. But I think yeah, because I think of my experience of like first getting into

teaching and then also just like not even just teaching but producing and just being in the industry for so long. I think I intentionally try not to engage with people that are not vocal or don't speak out and are just like not like real ones, I guess. But it's hard because it's like this industry is made up of people like that. So yeah.

olivia (20:26.761)
Yeah.

olivia (20:30.889)
So what is the... I guess there is no playbook, but what about, you know... And I'm gonna give a specific example, because I think this will kind of help illustrate my question, but I had a friend, she moved away from Chicago and now she's DJing in LA and New York, but she was very vocal and a big supporter of everything that we are talking about. And she feels that the way that she...

conveyed these topics online and because she was so vocal, it essentially closed the doors on her getting any more opportunities locally. And it kind of scared her into silence.

mini bear (21:11.916)
Yeah.

HERMIXALOT (21:16.312)
Well, for one, tell her to come see us. And for two, excuse me, I teach at UCLA. Minnie Bear teaches at UCLA too, and Occidental. Excuse me. And one of the things I tell my kids is that, like, number one, this industry isn't real. It's like, it's a literal made up house of cards and the rules that you've been brainwashed with and programmed with.

mini bear (21:17.868)
Yeah.

HERMIXALOT (21:46.008)
are designed to make you believe that you can't do it and that you don't deserve to. There's been no greater time in history to illustrate that that's not true. Like we all have the same technology. We all have the same platform. We all like the great equalization of technology and history and where the industry is. It's like it's perfectly aligned.

to blow over the house of cards. And so, yeah, if you take a stand, like a bunch of my friends took a stand on Gaza and Palestine and they've been like blackballed from doing certain types of gigs, that's really hard. But I'm like, isn't that good information? Like, don't you not want to work with people that would do something like that? And like,

mini bear (22:40.142)
Exactly.

HERMIXALOT (22:44.44)
you know, luckily, because of the great equalization, you can go do cool shit with your friends. You can go do things and build things with people that align with you on values and morals and integrity, the things that you find important as an artist. And that's what I would tell your friends to do. It's just like, you're getting scared out of rooms, you're getting chased out of rooms. They're probably rooms you don't want to be in.

mini bear (23:07.406)
Yep.

olivia (23:08.329)
Yeah, that's a great point. That's a really great point. So I know that this is a multi -pronged approach. It's educating people how to navigate the scene and how to create and secure opportunities, but then it's the education that you're doing with the people in power. So is there some sort of checklist, handbook that when you decide to work with and...

with an institution like Insomniac? What sort of resources are you giving them to say, hey, here's some things that you can do to make this a better space for everybody, how to diversify your lineups? What do you give those institutions?

HERMIXALOT (23:56.696)
We try to give them, and we're at a pretty good space right now. Like I said, we've been at this, this is our fifth year. So we've got a lot of data at our disposal from things that we've done that have worked. We've been on tour twice. We've done a bunch of festival takeovers. We know how many people are listening to the radio show. We know how many people are taking online courses. We know how many people are coming to our free sessions.

And so the reminder for us that we try to like, you know, when we're having these conversations about partnership, it's just like, all you gotta do is create the space. It's a really easy thing. It's just like, you have to unlock a door and then walk away. And the people that are hungry for this sort of gesture, these gestures, like the artists that wanna walk through the door and be a part of.

you know, the Insomniac family, the fans who go to these shows and go, fuck, if I could just see one black DJ over this next four days, people, you know, if you build it, people really truly will come. I think the next step in that education for us is sort of getting a little bit more intentional about making sure that the spaces themselves are safe, you know, like.

It's like, so like we've taken it to the back rooms, now we take it to the front room, now we take it to the audience and show folks like how to be good allies and show folks what it means to create like truly intentional welcoming spaces. So that's what we'll be getting into over the next couple of years.

olivia (25:39.817)
Wow, I love that. And there's a lot of clubs that do a good job that have messaging posted. Like one that I shout out like Spy Bar has messaging in their bathrooms. That's if you see any behavior like this, immediately notify a staff member. I always love seeing security that does their job well. Even if there's riff -raff going on, they don't try to rough people up.

They handle things calmly. I mean, it just makes like without even, without even really realizing, you just feel safer. So is that something like, is that that kind of education that you're talking about? Festivals, clubs, just being more inclusive, staff training, things like that.

HERMIXALOT (26:07.894)
Wait.

HERMIXALOT (26:26.008)
Yeah, you know, when we have our in -person events, like when we went on tour, like the Females Tour, for instance, like we had a meeting with security every day. It's just like, yo, there's going to be queer people here. There's going to be trans people here. There's going to be people of color here. It's going to be a much different audience than you're used to seeing. Treat them with respect. Treat them like, like not even just with respect, like treat, handle them with care. You know what I mean? Like all your inclinations to like pick the drunk dude out.

olivia (26:37.289)
Mm -hmm.

HERMIXALOT (26:55.736)
and throw him out of the bar. It's just like, no, that's not how we do things. So yeah, that's such a, there's so much there that I could, we've been talking for like half an hour, like we could be here for another three hours with me talking about it, but there's so much there insofar as like safety for artists and safety.

for the community, like all the stuff that's happened in New York at like Brooklyn Mirage and just like, I've been with artists here in San Francisco where like we got kicked out after a party and it's like 3 a .m. and like we're standing in the Tenderloin and our Uber's 38 minutes away, you know, so there's so many, there's a lot of work to do with respect to safety. What we try to do when we're activating in person is just make sure that everybody,

that's providing space and taking space with us is aligned with the things that we believe in.

olivia (27:56.297)
Yeah. And what about for the straight, cis, white, male, dude artists? What can they do? How can they be strong allies?

HERMIXALOT (28:09.624)
It's so funny because a lot of my, like my friend, Unique, has a clause in her contract that says, if you book me, you got to book at least one other Black person, one other queer person. There needs, I need to see Black people backstage. I need to see Black people on stage, stagehands. And it really is that simple. So that's, that's a, that's a one, that's one way. That's an easy way.

I always like, you know, if, if like a white performer sees like riff raff going on and see security getting rowdy, it's like, Hey yo, stop. What's going on? Uh, really there's, I think, I think like the, the, the thesis that I want to leave here, uh, today having communicated is that it's really easy to have an impact. Um, and the base of that impact is always just like, see something, say something.

olivia (29:08.745)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, it really isn't, I, I think a lot of people think it's harder to, to do these things that we've talked about than it actually is. And it's because they're so engulfed in their, you know, friends, helping friends, little like environment that they've created and it becomes so easy, right? When they're all just kind of helping each other out and it's this feedback loop.

that they don't see a reason to kind of step outside of it and look from a higher perspective. But it really is just that, right?

HERMIXALOT (29:50.584)
I think so.

olivia (29:52.265)
Yeah. So you told me that the next kind of step is working on like the club spaces and, you know, making these environments themselves safer. Is there anything else because FemHouse already does so much. What is like the next evolution of the brand?

HERMIXALOT (30:14.176)
Oh my God. There's like 50 million things, girl. And like we literally, we went to, we just got back from Miami Music Week and we went early to have like a retreat, like a leadership retreat where we just like did dreaming and sort of like intention setting and goal setting for the next three to five years. And I'm not going to get into it, but it's going to be a lot going on, you know, and you'll know it when you see it. Yeah. Yeah.

olivia (30:40.393)
It's exciting. It's exciting. And I mean, I don't really see anyone else doing this on the scale that Fem House is doing it. There's some local groups, but it's really incredible that you've been able to get in with Insomniac, you know, it's the monopoly on all of festivals in North America and be able to enact some change.

I mean, it's.

HERMIXALOT (31:10.152)
Yeah, I mean, you know, for us, I think the overarching goal is to sort of eventually have an end -to -end channel that starts with education. And you can like stay as a creator within the Fem House universe in this like cocoon of safety and not have that like limit your career as a female artist or career artist or whatever. And partners like Insomniac, you know, we just put out our...

I think this is why you're talking to us. We just put out our compilation record at the beginning of the month and it's our second one. And there's a cool moment. Like we did a panel this week in Miami Music Week and I was taking questions. It was a really tight panel. We had an agent, a manager, the VP of A &R from Amrata, Ronnie Ho, who's the head of dance development at Spotify.

Julia Figezi, who manages Bedwin and Bailey Greenwood from WME. And I was taking questions at the end of it. The panel was just all about, you know, creating opportunity and how to seize opportunity for artists that, you know, need teams. And this person stood up and it was Zlata. And Zlata has a track on our insomnia compilation. And she was like, yo, you know, like,

I came here to say thank you to y 'all in person, because this is my first time having a track on a record and like I'm playing ultra tomorrow because of that. And it was a really cool moment. So like we want to just create more of those moments where it's just like, you can come to us and learn from us and then we can get your track on a record and we get your name on some flyers. You can play ultra. You can, you know, you can, you can take all these big steps and do it with the safety and support of.

mini bear (32:43.234)
Oh.

olivia (32:56.871)
Hmm.

HERMIXALOT (33:02.968)
our wonderful, beautiful community.

olivia (33:05.513)
It's amazing. Community is so important to be able to push a career forward in this industry. Nobody can do it alone. It's literally impossible. And not just logistically speaking, but mentally speaking too. So it's really amazing that you provide that opportunity for so many people who deserve it.

HERMIXALOT (33:28.248)
It's a privilege. It's the coolest thing that I do and I have too many jobs. And Lauren actually has way more jobs than me, so.

mini bear (33:35.31)
Yeah, I mean, same. Same. I literally have so many jobs. But.

olivia (33:36.393)
Yeah.

olivia (33:44.041)
Well, my favorite quote in the world, I say it all the time, is if you need something done, you ask the busiest person in the room, and it is the truth.

mini bear (33:51.342)
Hmm. Yeah, don't ask me.

HERMIXALOT (33:52.824)
Because we're idiots and we're gonna say yes.

olivia (33:55.881)
Idiots or I don't know, just really talented. And it's hard when you have so many passions and so many skills. I mean, you want to share them with the world. And that's a beautiful thing that you do instead of gatekeep, right? Well, thank you both so much. This has been a huge privilege for me to be able to talk to you both. I've been following the Fem House journey, I think, since COVID.

That's when I started working in this industry locally. And so I'm super appreciative of all the resources you put out and everything you do. So thank you both so much.

HERMIXALOT (34:33.016)
Thanks for having us, we really appreciate the support.

mini bear (34:33.358)
Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.