A Roundtable Discussion with Discwoman and Papi Juice on Bed-Stuy’s Inclusive Parties

Over the past few years Bed-Stuy has become a hotbed of innovative dance music and party culture, and there have been few promoters on the scene with as strong of a presence as Discwoman and Papi Juice. Both parties highlight the work of women, queer and trans people of color, carving out safe spaces for their communities in NYC nightlife, but despite their success they continue to face a multitude of challenges in planning and promoting events across the city. In this roundtable discussion, conducted as part of the Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York 2017 Papi Juice co-founders Adam Rhodes and Mohammed Fayaz met with Christine Tran and Frankie Hutchinson of Discwoman to discuss their overlapping intentions, experiences and long-term goals both in New York and beyond.

One Last Shag, which is no longer open, is where Papi Juice began. What brought you there in the first place?

Adam Rhodes

Oscar [Nunez] and I are two of the founding people. He had started DJing recently and I had seen him play. We had talked about the possibility of doing a party [as] we had friends here, we both lived around here. We asked the bartender and the manager if he would give us a night, he said yes, and then everything just kind of snowballed from there.

Mohammed Fayaz

It was where we already used to hang out, and there was already a fem and women-centric queer party happening here called Azucar. Definitely somewhere that we were meeting at anyway. They had a really great backyard. Even though the bar was pretty small, it was a really nice place to chill. Central to most; a lot of people live either down by the A train or over here by the G train. Super central for a lot of people.

What are some of the lessons that you learned in the time that you did the party there?

Mohammed Fayaz

Promotion. Hard, hard promotion. Like, a month in advance if you want to get people in there, reaching out to all your family and friends and everybody.

Adam Rhodes

Yeah. It was super grassroots at first. I think the first party was just like you and Oscar and all of our friends. Everybody who we were chilling with every weekend anyway. It was also free for the first year here. The concept wasn’t even about making money at that point, it was just about gathering and sharing space in nightlife.

When did your two crews meet?

Christine Tran

We met last year [2016].

Frankie Hutchinson

I think Christine met you all first, right?

Christine Tran

Yeah. I remember running into Oscar at the taco shop next to Happy Fun Hideaway. And we’re like, “You know, I love what you do.” Our DJs were playing Mami Juice and Papi Juice. I feel like it was very organic. I’d played one. It was very chill. We just became family friends.

Mohammed Fayaz

We’d been admiring each other from afar.

Frankie Hutchinson

Yeah, you guys booked Bearcat, I remember. When we did Bearcat with you guys it was really in the earlier stages of when we started. I would love to look back at that email and see how I handled business back then. It was great. It was actually one of my best interactions with people, working with you guys. You’re so sweet and caring, which is so hard to find in promoters. It’s so tough.

Mohammed Fayaz

I think it’s because we’re fem. It’s like, “Wow, I love what you do.” And you have always respected it and either booked Adam or booked us, too. It just goes both ways. It’s not hard to be friends with each other. It comes easy.

Adam Rhodes

There’s not a lot of other super intentional parties out there in this space right now.

C’Mon Everybody is another venue that you brought up as important for various reasons. There’s somebody who works there that you said you wanted to highlight.

Adam Rhodes

Eric the owner has been really great about booking really amazing talent, from us to some other neighborhood DJs. It’s a great spot for sure.

Mohammed Fayaz

It opened last year or the year before, I think. It opened up at the same time The Shag was open and it was interesting because they competed for a while, just in terms of audience. But they have a whole music venue in the back and the bar’s larger. One of the problems with Shag was that we ran out of space very quickly. This was a good spot for people to come to. Eric definitely opened the doors for people, too. If you had something you were trying to do – if you were an artist with an EP dropping or something – you would probably hit them up to have it happen here.

Adam Rhodes

The week of the Orlando shooting, there was a memorial here.

Mohammed Fayaz

That was beautiful. It was a lot of Brooklyn DJs. Someone from the Discwoman roster was also there. It was like all fam. And it was a fundraiser. It was really intense: There was a reading of the names of the shooting victims. It was a really healing moment. It was really sad, too, very emotional. But it’s really nice that we had a space to do it. We didn’t have to go to a venue and try to make something happen. We knew it would happen here.

What are some of the challenges associated with finding spaces?

Adam Rhodes

Building trust with management, I would say. Building trust with security, making sure everyone’s cool with each other.

Mohammed Fayaz

Security’s huge, because our crowds are mostly queer kids of color and trans people. Any time we work with a new venue one of the first [conversations] that has to happen is with security, and to talk about sometimes people’s ID doesn’t match with their gender identity or their appearance. Letting them know that police take that for face value, and don’t cause trouble where there shouldn’t be any trouble. That’s an accommodation that most venues are not down for. It’s hard to find that.

Christine Tran

I feel like our community’s so tight-knit, too. We’ll hit each other up: “Have you ever worked with this venue?” Or, “Is it a problematic venue and why?” Every venue has their own situation and story. It’s just things to red flag or even address directly so it doesn’t happen again. I feel like venues are trying to be more proactive with like, “Let’s have security briefing, management and teaching even.” There’s a bunch of venues trying to do that in Bushwick.

Mohammed Fayaz

It’s tough because we live in New York, where NYPD is a legitimate system. And for us, where a lot of our parties are young people of color, of whatever identities, security kind of looks at that as trouble. We’ve been told at venues to not play hip-hop, like the day of, while our DJs were just setting up. “Oh, by the way, we just want you to let you know that you shouldn’t be playing hip-hop.”

Christine Tran

You’re preparing to do a walkthrough and they’re like, “What kind of music do you play?” With this side-eye, and I’m like, “Why are you asking me?”

That’s interesting, because London has seen a big thing where if it’s a grime party you can’t book the venue.

Frankie Hutchinson

You’ll likely get shut down by police.

Right. It’s perhaps less attached to a specific music.

Mohammed Fayaz

It’s why we have such a small pool of venues to work with. For the most part, you tell people that we throw parties for trans people of color, for them that’s like every red flag that they have. And they’re not interested.

Christine Tran

I think that’s just an issue infrastructurally. When you’re trying to get insurance and you put “Top 40 parties,” people are like, “OK, that’s chill.” But you put “hip-hop,” they’re like “Mmmmmm, we need a little more coverage.” And you’re like, “Wait ...”

Mohammed Fayaz

And they want you to pay for it. It’s like, “Well, have you seen my crowd?” My crowd is so chill and beautiful and the vibes are so good.

Christine Tran

That’s like some systemic shit that we have to address.

Frankie Hutchinson

When I first moved to New York, I used to go to a ton of hip-hop parties, and none of those parties exist anymore. It’s definitely an intentional agenda to shut that kind of music and those kind of scenes down. Because... What is it? It’s racist, essentially.

I asked what some of the challenges are, but perhaps on the flip side of that, what are some of the things that you have found that work? You were talking about exchanging information. What are some of the other things that have been positive and fruitful?

Christine Tran

Meeting each other. These are spaces where we get to see each other in real life and just be in the same room and express ourselves in the truest form. I think that from the beginning, starting parties and things like that, that was the intention, for like-minded people to come together and create these spaces for each other.

Mohammed Fayaz

Totally. It’s beautiful when you’re working on an event and we’re the organizers, but the spaces just take off in their own way every time. Every party is so different and their vibe leaders are so fun. It’s really special to think that we’re able to put these communities together, and not just direct the space completely beginning to end. The magic just kind of happens.

What changes have you seen in the time since you’ve taken Discwoman to another level with a booking agency?

Frankie Hutchinson

It was really just an idea of protecting artists from being f’ed over, for lack of a better term. And we’ve found that putting this kind of barrier between the artist and the promoter helps negotiations. Often promoters will kind of take advantage of a young artist and really lowball them in terms of money. We wanted to put more of an infrastructure there for these marginalized artists to create more of a system, accountability, something in place where they feel more protected and less vulnerable. It’s worked really well for us. The booking part is one of the most successful components of what we’ve done.

Has it helped to sort of define the other components of what you do?

Frankie Hutchinson

Yeah, definitely. We have Discwoman and we kind of wanted to branch out. DW is the roster, so the artists on it don’t feel like they have to constantly be repping Discwoman all the time, and they can kind of be nurtured. The artists come before the brand. That’s what we want to do, encourage and foster growth of the artist on their own.

You mentioned the issues that you faced with venues sometimes trying to control the music. Where do you all stand on this idea of trying to engage with the systems that you are potentially in opposition with? It’s such a big gap to cross over. I imagine that you can’t even choose to try and engage somebody that’s directly opposite to you, versus engaging somebody who’s next to you and with whom you might be more able to relate.

Frankie Hutchinson

Well, I like just connecting with all people. I don’t really have time to connect with people who are the worst. It’s like, “We’re all exhausted enough as it is."

Christine Tran

It’s a lot of labor.

Mohammed Fayaz

We do find venues that we like work with. We work out of Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg and their security team – they’re all of color, a lot of them are New York natives. It’s dope because they know what they can do, they know how to work with the police to the point that we don’t have to have those conversations or think about them. Sometimes there will be a cop car stationed outside of our party, which is very well at capacity, or it’s poppin’ off, but Baby’s can handle that kind of work and knows what they can get away with. Which makes our job easier and makes us love working there.

Sugar Hill is a venue that Discwoman have done two parties at so far. Can you explain how you started working there and what it’s been like?

Frankie Hutchinson

I went there for a party – I cannot remember what it was – but I was just blown away by the space. There is nothing like that venue anywhere in New York City. It was just beautiful. And more importantly, a black-owned business which we just don’t get, ever, of that size.

Mohammed Fayaz

It’s a neighborhood institution.

Frankie Hutchinson

It feels like a museum in there. It’s like, “Can we really have a party in there? Oh, OK... But can we really play hard techno here? OK, let’s do it.” That sort of contradiction between this new scene that’s popping up and it happening in that space that’s been around for ages is just such a nice synergy that I like to see. And the people that own it are just so sweet; I love them. And they make food there, too. It’s really, really great. We have Detroit [coming up] in May, we’re doing a massive party there. This is our biggest ever party we’ve ever done in a city we don’t live in.

Christine Tran

We always like taking risks.

How often do you work outside of New York?

Christine Tran

Quite often. As far as production, it’s maybe like once or twice a year we’ll do a bigger production outside of New York.

How about Papi Juice? Have you managed to get out of the city?

Mohammed Fayaz

Yeah, we were just in Boston last weekend. It was really really fun. In Boston, the bars close at two, so last call at 1:45 AM was definitely...

Adam Rhodes

Weird. I’m like, “What’s going on here?”

Mohammed Fayaz

Three o’clock is when New York starts poppin’ off, so it was very interesting. Then we’ve done New Orleans, Chicago, Philly. We’re going to San Francisco, Oakland and LA. There’s already pre-parties that are poppin’ off.