Intro (a long one, 10 minutes, at least)
It’s the 8th of March. Today we celebrate every womxn on the planet and every womxn in history that lived before us and forged a better path for today’s female population. We respect and salute those who have stood up and fought so today we are able to make our own decisions, so our voices can be heard and we can continue to make positive changes. Sweets and dead flowers, no thank you! We celebrate and honour feminine strength and we want to prosper further! So, here’s to all my ladies across the Globe and all the men supporting them on their journey! 🔥🔥🔥
Now, let me introduce myself. You can call me Ynez, and I am so glad to have the opportunity to write to you on this special day. At the moment I’m soaking up the sun in the French Alps where I am spending the next week DJing at a festival. Although I’m sad that I’ll miss the traditional ‘Womxn’s Night March’ in my hometown today, this festival will be the perfect way to say goodbye to this year’s winter time. Later this month we are welcoming a new season - spring. It’s a representation of new life, new beginnings, new energy and nature reborn-blossoming process. For new beginnings to be made and to be clear, it’s important to go back to the past and honour it by remembering where it all began.
For me, it probably begins when I was around two years old and my parents used to take me to our hometown kids disco nights every Sunday (pretty dope business idea tbh!). I even have a VHS tape of myself at that time dancing around the venue. Also, my parents were always referring to the fact that I was only four years old when I declared I wanted to be a DJ when I grew up. They didn’t even know where I picked up the concept and knowledge about the profession! The fact that I was always the one to record mixtapes for my ‘girl squad’ in primary school was also one of the signs (this would include dedicating hours recording songs from the radio, MTV or VH1 - first to VHS tapes and then to cassette tapes, so you can get a proper mixtape with the wanted tracks. Oh, and the quality of the sound was just amazing, haha! 😆). It also goes back to all the dance lessons I took during my childhood and teenage years.
I was 18 when I first visited a radio station, and fall in love with it straight away! That’s how my story in this, unfortunately, so called ‘male dominated industry’ begins. It still makes me angry that we need to talk about it this way, but we must. There is still a plenty of space for progress and equality when it comes to womxn in the music business. And in life in general.
The question that we womxn often ask ourselves is - Can we really have it all? Yes, we can, if we are good at organising and managing our own time. But let me get this straight: ‘ALL’ is a term that consist of lots of different variations and packages, and it is our own choice which one we will purchase. It must be the ‘ALL’ that suits us the most.
As for me, everything mentioned earlier ultimately led to me starting my own Internet radio, working as a club DJ, organising events, working on music festivals as a PR, press and with artists. I also have a degree in journalism, so writing is just another skill I like to nurture besides music. But music has always been and always will be number one for me. It is my biggest love and there was never any doubt that I will live off anything else besides music and disciplines related to it. I have my own company for DJing and I am my own boss now (for the record, this is the first time in my life that my boss is a female), I am still working for many festivals in different sectors, and that means I travel a lot. It’s a dream job for me, because I can decide how much and on which projects I’ll work + I could never settle for working in the office for eight hours (tried it, quit in a month). 😰
I have a really busy, hyperactive mind and body, so I constantly feel like there is so much for me to do and to learn in this place and time. Right now, I am balancing my days between DJing for a living, travelling to gigs and festivals, doing PR for a couple of festivals, attending music production classes and making music, hosting and producing my weekly radio show, going to dancehall classes, muay thai and yoga lessons, learning about frequencies, vibrations, Ayurvedic science and quantum physics all combined with female psychology.
I am Croatian born, Western Europe oriented female who is trying to move country this year, so there are a lot of challenges ahead of me and I am happy that I’ll be able to share them with you in the world of Internet, as it is happening. If you ever feel like there is a topic I should write about in my blog posts, please feel free to tell me.
This last week I’ve seen so many articles, social media posts and TV shows focusing on womnx’s rights and what needs to be done so situations get better. It saddens me that this topic is in focus just in this period of year because of International Womxn’s Day. Western European society and economy is one of the best in the world when it comes to labour rights of womxn, democracy, human rights and freedom in general. But there is still so much space for a change and if we make the change here (where possibilities for change are bigger), maybe we can help to bring some of the changes faster to parts of the World where womxn need it so desperately. We have a lot of work to do and we should never stop.
Coming from a post war, still very traditional, mostly catholic and 99% white country in Eastern Europe I can tell you that it’s never easy for a womxn. Most of the young girls don’t tend to think about it that much, since they don’t feel it on their skin, yet. Some of my girlfriends tell me; ‘What do I need feminism for? I’m doing just fine as it is!’ and I feel like they still need to learn so much.
I mean, it is nice and empowering when people are saying; women are beautiful, they are spiritual, in touch with their emotions and intuition, they really run the world, they bring new life to the world… That’s all OK (and true), but stop with the compliments and let’s talk about the wage gap, sexism, equality and a hundred more actual topics in 2019, am I right? 👩🏾🏫
I am here to write about my love of music, my everyday life and situations I am facing as a womxn working in many different aspects of the music business, of endless feminine energy that all of us possess, and about the obstacles we are facing today in this, still (as previously stated) male dominated industry.
Let me make this clear, I am not here to give you advice, lessons or universal recipes. I am just a womxn, human like every single one of you, trying to manage life in my own way, the best that I can (hopefully) with my own truths. Some of the thoughts and experiences I’ll share with you in the blog posts to come and who knows, maybe one of you will relate to them, maybe someone gets inspired a bit, and someone might get angry. That is all good 'cause it involves feelings. :)
I’ve learned that with having an open heart and being open to the World and to new knowledge, comes a great flow of new energy and love that is essential to the spirit and soul of every womxn. It gives us power and awareness to make a change for the better, no matter how small that change may seem. Sending you my love and support on whatever step on your journey you are as these words find you! My mind is buzzing right now so I don’t even know if these random things I wrote all at once make any sense, I just wanted to touch on all the things that I’ll write about in my future posts. So, I’ll leave you for now and try to learn to snowboard! 🏂🏼❄️
And remember, every day is womxn’s day (but we already know that) :)
Love,
Ynez
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