EVENT: Djing at Fun City Shingaling in St Petersburg!

So this Friday I’ll be celebrating International Womens Day by DJing at Fun City Shingaling in St Petersburg. It will be my first time in Russia so I am very excited!

Check out my latest Little Miss Sunshiine show to hear a guest mix by Mr C who has invited me over to play.

And here is a small interview I did, you can find the english version below and the Russian version on Mr C’s blog.

Selection of music at LMS shows is great. You play a lot of good jazz and soul and funk. Tell us more about your musical background

I have loved music all my life, mainly because of my dad. He has been a massive music head all his life & introduced me to a lot of stuff from the 60-70s. I then decided to explore the origin of that music & what it had lead to, which introduced me to music like jazz, funk, soul, hip hop and so on. I’ve always been fascinated by the history if music and how certain genres & sub-genres were born or influenced by music from the past.

What’s the connection between Transylvania, Sweden and UK in your life ?

I was born in Transylvania but my entire family is Hungarian. My dad fled to Sweden before I was born and me & my mum joined him in 1989 when I was 3 years old. But my dream was always to work with music so I decided very early on in my life that I would move to London to work with this great passion of mine. And that’s what I did…

Do you work for Fat City Records and Jazzman Records at the same time, how could that be possible ? Also your Laid Back show and Jazzman Show
– what’s the difference ?

Well Fat City Records is owned by Jazzman Records, so I was hired to manage FCR on Jazzmans behalf. But since we share an office and I’m a Jazz Girl at heart, it became a natural extension of my job. So much that I was asked to manage the Jazzman shop last year.

My show on laid back radio is my own show that I have been making for 3.5 years now. It was the first ever show on the station that had a proper host and it never stops to surprise me that so many people tune in!

The Jazzman show is a joint show with Jazzman Gerald on NTS radio, it’s very different from my own show because we play 2 hours of mainly vinyl from his personal collection. I’m really just there to make sure he talks about all the amazing stories that goes with them since I think they deserve to be told.

We know a few people from Jazzman Records and they are all crazy about vinyl (Gerald, Liam, Fryer etc). How do you work with those guys, do they bite sometimes ?

Hahahaha! That’s a funny question! I adore them all – they are very special in their own specific ways. I admire their passion and their deep knowledge & great taste in the genres they specialise in. And no, they don’t really bite, unless you mistreat their rare & expensive records ;)

Do you feel something special about vintage records, i’m sure they are all around in jazzman office and gerald could tell a story about each of them. Tell us about your Jazzman Records Experience.

I fell in love with my dads vinyl records as a kid and have had a love affair with them ever since. I got into djing through hip hop & breakdancing as a teenager, but I was never really as interested in the art of mixing as much as I was about the music found on the actual records. What I love about working at Jazzman Records is that I can request to hear any kind of rare Jazz or Funk record and chances are that Gerald has it – with a funny or interesting anecdote most of the time.

Ok so do you know anything we don’t know about some top secret stuff on Jazzman records coming out soon ? :)

We always have what feels like 100s of new releases on the go. The issue is always that since most of the records we reissue are super rare and we do everything 100% legally, it sometimes takes YEARS to track down and find the right people who can give us the rights to release them again. But Spiritual Jazz compilation vol. 4 is coming soon which is an amazing TRIPLE LP, so is the new Sign Of Four album (which is a double 10 inch, hand screen-printed) and a very limited Jukebox Jam Release will be coming out for record store day. And then of course the other 97 releases we are working on… but I can’t reveal too much on those, so just keep an eye on jazzmanrecords.co.uk and make sure you sign up to the newsletter to get all the info before everybody else!

Tell us more about Laid Back radio and your personal show (some stories maybe). The one with Dj Vadim is pretty funny, where it was recorded and did you hooked up with him ?

So my own show came about after the founder J read a music related post on my blog – he asked me to do a guest show and it was so popular that I was offered a regular slot. The rest as they say is history.

The show with DJ Vadim was something we recorded at his home studio here in London. He knows a lot of music people I know, and I guess that’s how we got to know each other. I felt like he had this great vibe & fantastic personality and to be honest, I was just fed up with so many music people on the scene taking themselves so seriously. So we did the show as a laugh, just two music loving friends messing about playing some vinyl and having fun. I hope we can do one soon again!

What are you gonna bring with you to spin St.Petersburg at Shingaling Party ?

I will be bringing a bag of Funk & Soul 45s only – I’m small and too lazy to carry 12s & LPs ;)

Have you ever heard anything about IWD (International Women’s Day) – The 8th of March that we celebrate in Russia ? Female djs normally spinning in the clubs on that date all around. It’s a holiday when girls having fun! But not many girls spinning vinyl, especially funk and soul. Do you know some soul sisters (djs) on the scene?

Yes! We celebrate it, I did a guest mix for Nomade Radio last year and I guess my Fly Girls Make Noise mix would be a very suitable thing to listen to as well! I love this idea that female DJs take over the clubs and the decks, we should have more days like this! If Im honest, I don’t really know that many, at least not purely Funk & Soul djs. But I know super talented and wonderful female DJs like Josey Rebelle (Rinse FM), Eclair Fifi (LuckyMe) and Fatoosan & Miki Gold from the all girl SupaFly collective to name a few of course.

Please tell us more about studying and your degree in music industry. It must be very interesting

I moved to London to do a BA in Music and Media Management because I wanted to learn more about the business side of the music industry. In my last year I got head hunted through last.fm by a guy called Thristian (behind Boilerroom) who at the time was working for Gilles Peterson, for a job at Gilles label, Brownswood Recordings. It’s safe to say that he.single handedly changed my life forever.

Through working at Brownswood, and working a few years at digital agencies, to then end up at Fat City / Jazzman gave me a real hunger to learn even more about the cultural, entrepreneurial and commercial sides of the music industry. So I decided to gp back to uni and do a MA in Music Industries part time – something I will hopefully be done by September 2013!

It is an uncertain but very fascinating and exciting time to work with music and I basically just wanted a stronger knowledge base so I could develop my business & entrepreneurial skills, as well as putting them to good use doing work for Jazzman & Fat City.

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More info can be found on the below places:
http://vk.com/orsii_in_russia
http://djchak.posterous.com/march-8-with-little-miss-sunshine