MikeQ

Lauren Martin

Hello everybody. I hope you’re all comfortable. Thank you so much for coming out on a very cold, gray, German evening to sit in a room of warmth and light with us. This talk is part of CTM Festival with Red Bull Music Academy. We’ve had a couple of talks as part of CTM of people who come from very distinct musical worlds and in those worlds they are very innovative and have built a character of their own.

With me on the couch is DJ and producer who has been a leading light in his very unique musical world, which is ballroom, and we’re going to get into the sound of that, the culture of that, Mike’s role in that and just riff on the subjects that are really close at heart to the subject. Please help me welcome Mr. MikeQ.

MikeQ

Thank you. Hello.

Lauren Martin

Thank you for being with us.

MikeQ

My pleasure.

Lauren Martin

Great. Now, let me set the scene. Ballroom did not start in Berlin where we are. It started somewhere very different. If you’ve never been to New Jersey how would you describe it to someone?

MikeQ

Jersey, well, I’m from East Orange, New Jersey, which is up north, about 30 minutes outside of New York City. It’s your average suburban ghetto. Not always the safest place but it’s a place my family and I have been able to call home for the past 30 years and I’m still there. What’s also great about East Orange in particular is all the musical greats that come from there, so Whitney Houston, Queen Latifah, Naughty By Nature, a lot of people come from there. It’s great to be from there.

Lauren Martin

Do you feel that there’s a particular, like you just mentioned all those artists, do you feel that there’s a particular attitude when it comes to music, maybe not necessarily one particular sound, but an attitude that comes to music that’s quite indicative of that part of New Jersey?

MikeQ

No, not really. A lot of talent, but between the artists I just named and a lot of the DJs and producers I know, a lot of good music comes out of Jersey, so it’s a place full of talent in whatever way that is.

Lauren Martin

Shall we play a song just to get everyone in the zone of this music? Why don’t we play a song from your youth in New Jersey. How does that sound?

MikeQ

OK, sure.

Lauren Martin

OK. Why don’t we set the scene of what it was like to drive around New Jersey as a kid?

MikeQ

Cool.

Lauren Martin

How about, let me see, we’ll also preface this, we have 15 hours of music for this so we have so much music we can pick from. What about, I know what we’re going to do.

(music: Lil' Louis – “Club Lonely (Club Radio Mix)”)

Oh yeah. It’s literally impossible not to sit and try and sing along to that. That’s amazing. Would this be kind of the sound of driving around as a kid in Jersey? Is this the kind of beats that would be in the car?

MikeQ

Yeah, particularly my Aunt Gloria. She, back in the early ‘90s, she was the first person to expose me to house and dance music. She went out to clubs and stuff back then and any time she would come pick me up to go to her house she always be playing this track or Marshall Jefferson, a lot of Earth People, I mean Earth by Dance People, excuse me and just stuff like that. I still didn’t really know what it was, but it was something I liked.

Lauren Martin

As a teenager where did you fit in this musical landscape? Everybody as a teenager feels like they belong to a music tribe, so was there one for you? What grabbed you at the start?

MikeQ

At the start, well, from there I really didn’t get into music. It was a bit later in let’s say ‘98 when I’m in the sixth grade. A lot of teens in Jersey went to the skating rink back then or just had a lot of high school or school parties, dance parties and stuff like that, or parties in the house. And they would be playing a lot of dance music, mostly stuff out of Baltimore at that time. Not so much of the older classic house. That’s kind of what you do in Jersey as a teen is listen to the Baltimore stuff, so that’s what we did.

Lauren Martin

Obviously if you’re not old enough to get into clubs you have to do your own parties. Were you ever part of a street team?

MikeQ

Never. I never even went to parties when I was younger. Like I said, I went to the skating rink maybe two or three times and then just house parties, but there was a school around the corner from me, VLD, and it was a middle school. I was able to get into those parties, but I just never went because I was never the type to party and stuff like that.

There was a music store in my city, Johnny’s Music World, and I remember after I got my first job in the sixth grade I had got my first check or whatever and I went and bought a CD player. I went and bought the Pokemon soundtrack and this CD, this club CD that they had at the store which I had bought maybe four times in total, that had a lot of this older Baltimore tracks and stuff on this. That’s what I listened to in my personal time.

Lauren Martin

Speaking of CDs that you’ve got, what’s that?

MikeQ

This is my huge collection of CDs that I’ve had… It’s a funny story with this because before I started collecting these I had an actual...

Lauren Martin

I’ll show them. I’ll show them.

MikeQ

... a smaller, a smaller book. It was only about 30 CDs. I got robbed for it coming out of a club one night. This is after I started DJing. This happened after I said I wasn’t going to do it anymore. This is the CD book that I used to play out of from 2005 to 2010 before I switched to Serato.

Lauren Martin

I should note that this is in chronological order, right?

MikeQ

Yes.

Lauren Martin

Yeah, so you can literally see the music aging with every cover. It’s absolutely incredible. So you got robbed for your music?

MikeQ

Yes. After I started DJing at The Globe in Newark, it was the gay party that goes through there. It was a New Year’s party, New Year’s of 2005, and coming out after that night these four guys had pulled up in a car. I was with a friend of mine and they took my CDs, my coat, $400 earrings and after that I was just like, “I’m not going to do this no more.” I hadn’t even really started DJing. I would only do like a 30 minute set at this party back then. I hadn’t really started yet, but...

Lauren Martin

We’ve heard stories of, not to speak of anyone particular instance, but we’ve heard stories about DJs being robbed because one because it’s a crime, but also because the music was so competitive and hard to get your hands on. Was that just a random thing or was that part of…

MikeQ

It was a random thing. Like I said, Newark in particular is not the safest place in Jersey so stuff like that happens all the time.

Lauren Martin

Obviously we have this huge pile of CDs and CDs are kind of the foundation of you starting to DJ and produce. Could you tell me a little bit about you starting to DJ at The Globe and what kind of format that you’d be playing music on?

MikeQ

Well, I didn’t go to The Globe until, it was October in 2003. I was in high school, maybe 10th grade at the time, 11th, and I had always heard about this party. Friends in school would be talking about it, but was just always afraid to go because again, I had never been to a party before. Finally one night we went out, just me and him to this party and it was like the most amazing thing that I had ever been to. The DJ at the time, he would play a lot of hip-hop, reggae, Jersey club, because that’s what you do in Jersey and then that’s also the first time that I got introduced to ballroom. Which, it was only like a three-minute segment, not even three minutes. At the time where he would play two or three tracks at the end of the night and that’s where everybody would vogue for a hot second before the club was over with. That was my first introduction into ballroom.

And from there I started looking for more of the music so I’m on America Online at the time, dial up and stuff. I had a friend on there who led me to a club in Harlem called The Clubhouse that had their parties on Thursday nights. The Globe was Friday. This was Thursday. The Clubhouse was kind of the equivalent to what the Glow was, just in the New York form.

Played the same music except there, they would play more reggae and no Jersey club at all because that wasn’t really a thing for them. And then they had an actual ball at the end of the night. So, I went out to this place and I had bought CDs from the DJs there and still hadn’t really found a lot of ballroom music, but I wanted to hear more of it. I loved it so much, the dancing, the music. It was something different about it. I actually want to play the first track that I ever heard.

Lauren Martin

Yeah, that would be fantastic. So what is... So this is the first one you ever heard at the Globe or at the Party in Harlem.

MikeQ

This was at the Globe in 2003 and it was a Vjuan Allure track. I didn’t know who the artist was. The DJ, who was a straight DJ actually at the time…

Lauren Martin

So he was a straight DJ playing a gay ball.

MikeQ

Yeah.

Lauren Martin

Interesting.

MikeQ

Which probably explains why he only played a small segment of…

(music: VJuan Allure – “Make These Bitches Gag”)

Lauren Martin

Sorry what was that called and who was it by? I say by because there’s edit and then there’s edit and there’s edit.

MikeQ

Right, that was “Make These Bitches Gag” by Vjuan Allure, which was, you know, one of his Ha once he started remixing Masters At Work’s “Ha [Dance]” for the ballroom scene. So, it was that “Din Daa Daa” by George Kranz and “Satisfaction” by Benny Benassi that the DJ would play. That’s the only thing that I heard, ballroom or ballroom like. So then, like I said, went to this club, The Clubhouse, in Harlem and got acquainted with the DJs there, bought some music but still just didn’t have enough of it, I didn’t know who Vjuan Allure was at the time. It was Angel X and Tony Cortes that was playing this party.

So, a few months down the line a friend of mine, Scooter Balenciaga, that’s his house name, he brought the program FruityLoops and Acid Pro to my house. He wasn’t a producer or anything like that, he just knew of these programs, which I had never heard about, he didn’t even know how to use them. He brought them to my house and I just started playing with them, making my own edits and stuff and that’s how I kind of got like started.

And there was a ballroom forum at the time, walkwithmewednesdays.com, where everybody would go, it’s called the shave room, you’d go through your post about balls or talk about people and just a whole bunch of gossip. They had like a music section, that’s where I would post my edits. That’s how I kind of got heard about. So, eventually I became the DJ at the Globe and The Clubhouse, in 2005, just a year after I had started producing.

Lauren Martin

There’s a lot in there. OK, I’m going to go back a little bit to listening to, to hearing that Vjuan Allure track for the first time. Partly why the ballroom sound is so fascinating and so innovative is because it did away with the verse, verse, break structure of older house records that were used for old way and new way. And it basically just found the breaks and made entire instruments out of them. Can you tell me a little bit about what you think the genesis of what that new ballroom sound is?

MikeQ

Well, if you ever hear Vjuan Allure talk, he’s who I get my inspiration from and things like that. And what it was with the ballroom sound in those older “Ha” tracks that they would play and to what it had became, he would go to balls and bring out a whole bunch of records. He said that everybody only wanted to hear the “Ha [Dance]” all night. So, you have this, something like this huge you’re carrying around but everybody only want to hear two or three songs for the night. So, that’s when he started to remix that “Ha” into different tracks and he would make tracks for categories. So, you know, every category has a different track that you would play for that. So he’d make categories-specific tracks. And that’s where that kind of got started.

Lauren Martin

So the “Ha,” the “Ha Dance” is such an iconic track for this, from Masters At Work. Particularly, why do you think, do you know why Vjuan Allure or this early ballroom sound picked up on that in particular? Because it’s almost really unique to ballroom that one track, one break in a track has manifested into thousands of edits.

MikeQ

I’m not sure on where it exactly came in. Talking to one of the other legendary DJs in the scene, DJ Carlton, and he’s been DJing balls longer than Vjuan. He doesn’t produce or anything. And he’s another, you know, straight guy. He’s from East Orange, where I’m from as well. And certain tracks that came into ballroom, I believe he told me the story about the “Ha Dance,” you know, where just he played that record. I don’t know if it was him, or somebody else, you know, brought that record to a ball and just everybody liked it. So that’s how that kind of went. Just whatever people liked I think. It wasn’t, the “Ha Dance” wasn’t made for ballroom. It was just something like other tracks that was picked up and just used by them.

Lauren Martin

Also, a huge part of what I’d like to get onto as well, is the sense of movement within the scene and how it directly influences the music itself. Do you know, like, how do you feel about the influence of a particular break like the “Ha Dance,” literally changing the style of moves in the balls?

MikeQ

I think it’s amazing, the way it is it’s like with the “Ha Dance” they have this crash sound that kind of happens on every fourth beat, so I think that kind of like, I think that even change vogue itself, just the way that people danced and it had the kind of influence and you know, I think that’s just amazing for a track to be made, not for ballroom or these guys, Masters At Work, didn’t even know from the beginning that it was being used or as big as it was in ballroom and for something to be that iconic, is… I don’t know. And like even for years now, we’ve been trying to like come up with what’s that next sound that could be sampled so much and be a ballroom staple and still haven’t figured it out.

Lauren Martin

You’ve also sampled the “Ha Dance” a lot. Should we listen to one of your strong efforts?

MikeQ

Sure.

Lauren Martin

Let’s do that. Let me see, if I search for “Ha Dance” in this I’m going to get a lot of tracks up here.

MikeQ

Yeah.

Lauren Martin

OK, I have “AOL Ha.” How does that sound?

MikeQ

Sure, that’s one of my first tracks I did in 2005 I believe.

Lauren Martin

OK, Let’s try it.

(music: MikeQ – “AOL Ha”)

Lauren Martin

That’s fantastic. I just love the sense of humor and like the playfulness of that.

MikeQ

Thank you.

Lauren Martin

Tell me again, I feel like we’re always coming back to the CDs, but it feels so crucial to what you do. You’ve said a couple times now that you used to buy the CDs off these tracks straight from the DJs in the clubs. I’m really curious, would you then go home with these CDs of tracks and then make your own edits further of them? I’d love to know about the process.

MikeQ

Yeah. Pretty much. All the music I collected you know I would sample, especially like the ballroom stuff, it just didn’t come out of nowhere. I would get those CDs and sample stuff from there or stuff I found online, which music online wasn’t a big thing back then. Yeah, just like whatever I thought sounded good and I would just chop it up and make it into a beat. Then the “AOL Ha” that was like really special to me because AOL is like a big thing with me because that’s where my name actually comes from, MikeQ. My name was MikeQ7000 on AOL. The Q and the 7,000 was actually Infinity used to make a lot of cars Q and a number so I just bumped it up to 7,000, added it to Mike, the Q kind of has no meaning or anything but I took the 7,000 off and that was my DJ name. I hadn’t been a DJ yet but I was DJ MikeQ. Later on now I just rather be MikeQ, although I’m DJing more. It’s weird.

Lauren Martin

Tell me about how you fostered your early music and style as a DJ through these online forums because that almost feels strange to talk about online forums as a file sharing way. How did those kind of conversations inform you getting involved in the scene and making music?

MikeQ

Well it was a lot of, like I said, posting the music on the forum but then I would also hang out... From the time that I went to the Globe and the Clubhouse, I was there every week, became friends with the DJs. I’m in the DJ booth and stuff like that and you know it was kind of a thing just to put new edits and stuff out. That’s what people they went up for.

Before I even started DJing I remember taking these edits to the clubs and stuff and the DJs will play them there and just to see the reaction of people from something that I sat at my house and made was amazing. DJing, you know that came on later on. That was actually something I never even wanted to do or producing, it just kind of like happened.

Lauren Martin

When it comes to you playing at the Globe, those early shows, obviously you’ve moved on to Serato and things, but when you had these did you mix them live or were they kind of like premixed sets? What was the deal?

MikeQ

Back to the way beginning when I first got my first gig, I was afraid to DJ so I would make... A CD is what? 80 minutes? I would make, on a computer, and just paste track for track for 80 minutes and do that through the course of a night. I had up to 7 or 8 CDs and start one, when it was finished put in another one [laughs]. Fake it until you make it. That’s what I did until I got more comfortable with DJing. Then I would start to mix track for track live.

Lauren Martin

OK. What gave you that, not just the idea, but the confidence to go out there? Was it making your own edits? Was it having that edge of like your own original work?

MikeQ

I’m not even sure if it was like…

Lauren Martin

Did you just get called out? Is that it?

MikeQ

Yeah. It just all happened but a lot of the confidence that I had would actually go into mix track for track came just from the DJs that I was playing with, watching them and stuff and just learning about stuff like that.

Lauren Martin

OK. Now tell me about your role as a DJ because it’s not simply the case that you turn up to a party and play records for people to dance. The ballroom DJ has a very particular role. Could you describe, if you’d never been to a ball, when you walk in where are you? What are you doing? What is the social structure of a ball?

MikeQ

A ball, which is like our gay Olympics. The houses, they would come and congregate under this roof. The ballroom, not the ballroom dancing that you know, it came from like the venues they would have balls at. Like the Marc Ballroom, that’s where that name came from. It’s where a lot of houses would come together and compete under this roof and it’s a place where you just come and be yourself and express your creativity. You know anything that you do you can kind of find a space in the ballroom, whether you’re dancing or fashion. For me music. That’s how that is.

With me going to balls or just my role as a DJ is just there to play music. What’s different about now, where I’m deejaying in clubs and my name is on flyers, my face and stuff like that, at a ball you barely got your name on a flyer or you’re in the back somewhere and you could barely see. When I was playing at Vogue Knights at Escuelita, I was in a back room like with just a small barred window that I could barely see out of so I’d be just playing by my ear. It’s an important role to the ballroom but it’s not like exaggerated.

Lauren Martin

You’re certainly not the focus but your actual craft of DJing has a very, very direct relationship with the crowd. You dictate movement and the movement dictates you. Right? Is that how you describe it?

MikeQ

Yeah so what it is, I call it the vogue trinity. You have the MC, you have the dancer, and you have the DJ. I feel that one goes off the other two, so I could be watching somebody vogue and I’ll have a track on this side and just have a high crash on that side. As I’m watching them do things or if I know they’re about to dip or do some crazy stunt I’ll give them a certain amount of crashes or just some kind of way, as well as listening to the MC and what they’re saying. The voguer, they’re listening to the music and the MC and you know the other way around. It’s the vogue trinity, what I call it. Everybody works off of everybody and that energy.

Lauren Martin

Part of that energy, you were saying how Vjuan Allure would have like different tracks signed up for different categories. What’s your style for DJing for different categories?

MikeQ

Well I do as well. Once I started making tracks I would make category specific tracks as well. You know at a ball you’re the only DJ so you have to know what to play for everything so you have runway tracks, voguing tracks, old way, realness, and things like that. You just kind of need to know what to play that will get everybody up at the function.

Lauren Martin

What is your favorite category to play tracks for? Maybe we could play something to give people a sense of what that might sound and feel like.

MikeQ

Definitely voguing is my favorite and you know there’s many types of voguing. Then also runway is, I think, an amazing category that takes you know a lot.

Lauren Martin

I think I have an idea for what to play. Let’s play something a little bit classic. This is Moi Renee “Miss Honey.”

MikeQ

OK.

(music: Moi Renee – “Miss Honey”)

Lauren Martin

Tell me about the kind of sounds you hear in a track like that, because that literally sounds like being at a ball.

MikeQ

Well, that track is funny because it’s actually not a ballroom track. That, I would call, more of a “bitch track.” That’s something you would hear either before the ball, at the ball, or maybe like at a gay club somewhere or something like that. If I ever played that track at the ball, it would be for like the category of Butch Queen Up In Pumps, which is just like pumping up and down a runway with heels on, and trying not to fall. So that’s something I would play for that.

But yeah, there was like this era of bitch tracks that came out and, you know, just had like these amazing feminine male voices, and said different things and reeds and stuff like that. So I came in to find a lot of that music as I got into ballroom.

Lauren Martin

Tell me about how... We were just mentioning there that, like the vogue trinity of that. That expedience of DJing at balls and at parties like that. How does that inform you making your own tracks? Do you think of the dancer and the MC when you’re making music?

MikeQ

Definitely. You know, if anybody asks me my process for making a track, what I’m doing is picturing somebody voguing or walking runway to it, or, you know, if I’m home alone behind closed doors you might catch me practicing to some of them. And then you know, I will also be able to take these tracks to the club, so I would test them out on the crowd and see what kind of response I got to let me know if it was a good track or not, or what it could be used for. ‘Cause there’s different, like... There’s battle tracks in ballroom, which are I would say are more minimal but still, like, hype beats that don’t have much of a vocal on it, but something that the commentator is able to talk over the top of. Then you have your other beats that’s like practice beats that you would buy on a CD or listen to at home and stuff like that.

Lauren Martin

It really feels like what you’re saying is that it’s really really hard, almost maybe impossible, to make a ballroom track if you have no expedience of the balls.

MikeQ

That’s not all the way true, because I’ve heard ballroom tracks come from people that probably haven’t been to a ball or don’t know that much about it, may have just heard my music or seen one clip or something like that. So, like, a friend of mine, DJ Sliink, from Jersey, he’s a Jersey club producer, and you know, he’s made ballroom tracks that I’m able to take back and use in ballroom that are just as hot as what we do.

Lauren Martin

But do you think there’s perhaps quite a fine line that you can cross over, where you can take like the signifiers of the sound, that’s so specific to a scene, and then just take out of context?

MikeQ

Definitely, with that... Let me see... How could I explain this? Put that for me in a different way, like, almost?

Lauren Martin

As opposed, like... It’s quite easy, because it’s such like a signature sound, to take these sounds and put them on tracks not for balls.

MikeQ

So you mean like other people outside of the ballroom to take the tracks? Well, that is something that’s been happening a lot lately, just with people thinking that ballroom is a trend, whether the dance or the music, or just cool in what way. So you’ll have a lot of producers, including friends of mine, that think that you can sample the “Ha” by Masters At Work and that makes it a ballroom beat, which it really doesn’t, ‘cause I’ve heard tracks that have had it all wrong or just the crash in a random different place, but that doesn’t make it ballroom, so you kind of really do have to be there and experience it to know what you’re doing, and where stuff kind of goes.

Lauren Martin

I’m curious about how the scene maintains its structure and integrity, ‘cause you have the Qween Beat collective. How would you describe Qween Beat and how it functions?

MikeQ

Well, Qween Beat is my record label. It started out as just a name to put my music under, and over the years from 2005 to now, I just added members from ballroom and later on, outside of ballroom. And we kind of like, almost have a house structure, a family structure just like ballroom, just in a musical sense. Qween Beat was one of the first, I would say the first group, period, to come out of ballroom to be like a collective putting out music and stuff like that, and you know, others have followed over the years, so we take from ballroom what we do, and that kind of family house structure.

Lauren Martin

And it is kind of a like a family and a house, because there’s 19 or 20 of you now? From all over the world?

MikeQ

Yes, it is, 19.

Lauren Martin

That’s great. What kind of roles does everybody play. How’s that structure maintained?

MikeQ

So I’m the father, the HBIC. And then, you know, we have different people that do different things, so... We have producers, like Jay R Neutron from Baltimore, BYRELL the GREAT who is from New York, you have Koppi who is from Japan and she commentates, she makes beats, she does dance classes, so she holds a lot of hats in that. Dashaun Wesley, who’s also a part of Qween Beat, he’s a dancer as well as a commentator. So it’s mostly built up of DJs, producers, commentators, dancers, and then we have one guy that does, like, video mashups of... He’ll put one of our tracks to like different ball clips and things like that, and just sync the video to it. So, yeah.

Lauren Martin

How did you reach out to Japan with her, because that’s really fascinating how a lot of young people are discovering ballroom fresh through being able just to watch it on YouTube? It used to be the really, the not done thing, to go and film balls, and now it’s like, it’s vital to the spread of the message.

MikeQ

Well with Japan, or Koppi Mizrahi, she found out about ballroom maybe... I don’t know the year exactly, I want to say 2005 as well... Just through watching them on YouTube and then she started to come to the states after a while to compete in the Latex Ball, and from that she was able to meet up with the people, join a house and stuff like that.

And she was actually one of the first people to book me in Tokyo for her ball there back in 2011, so I got linked up with her, just from being at the balls here in the States. She was like a fresh breath of air to ballroom. She was different. She was also a woman, you know, that was able to come in and she’s now a legend in the ballroom, so she was able to make something of herself here, and then take that scene or take ballroom culture back to Japan and do something with it as well.

Lauren Martin

Should we listen to her track, actually? This is on...

MikeQ

Qweendom.

Lauren Martin

Qweendom. I was going to let you introduce it. This is the compilation album that came out in August just past.

MikeQ

Yes.

Lauren Martin

Yeah. Great, okay. Let’s listen to her track then, so you can get a feel of it, ‘cause it’s just wonderful. This is called, “Manko Backpack.”

(music: Koppi Mizrahi – “Manko Backpack”)

Lauren Martin

Not the kind of attractive, nice soft transition moment, so just going to have to do that. That’s fantastic. Tell me about, you’re saying that it’s so interesting that this is such a strong widespread culture now, but Qween Beat is quite rare in that you’re actually producing and releasing original music. Was that not really the done thing for ballroom?

MikeQ

No, not really. Just me coming in and following behind what I was seeing from the DJs, Tony Cortez, Vjuan Allure, Angel X, where they would sample different… Those house tracks that were used in early ballroom so “Work This Pussy” by Sweet Pussy Pauline, the Junior Vasquez edit, and “Love Is the Message” by MFSB, “Witch Doctor” by Armand Van Helden, things like that. Those are just a few tracks that also like “The Ha” are heavily sampled. That’s just, those are ballroom sounds now. When you put those sounds into a track, it makes you, if you are familiar with the music, you just know what you’re listening to. That’s what I was doing was just sampling a lot rather than making super original stuff, where as the years have gone by and I’m learning now, things have changed.

Lauren Martin

How has it changed, because if you’re not, this is something that’s fascinating. If you’re not using that original bank of the core six, seven records, or breaks from those records, in order to make the ballroom sound, how do you make new ballroom without always going back to those original six or seven breaks?

MikeQ

Still you’ll always I feel like still find a little sample of something in ballroom. Just as the dance kind of changed from what it was early on, like now’s a lot more… So vogueing is split up. It’s so many different ways to vogue. It’s the old way, then there was the new way. Then after new way, you got vogue femme which is vogue femme dramatics which is self-explanatory, just being dramatic and doing stunts like that, slamming hard on your back and whatnot. Then you have soft and cunt, realness with a twist. Those are all different styles of vogueing. It’s just a little bit more faster, lot more dramatic, a lot more stunts and stuff like that, so the music was able to change with that and I just took what I was hearing, here in Jersey Club and Baltimore and house music and what I had heard from ballroom and just put those elements together in something that kind of worked for what I was doing.

Lauren Martin

Could we possibly have the TV on, because I want to show a quick video clip, if that’s possible. Can you tell me where this party is?

MikeQ

This is Vogue Knights, which is in New York City. Was a party that was started at Escuelita then moved to another club, and this club is at the Copacabana in Times Square, which was the last venue that we were in. This was in Thanksgiving night.

(video: Vogue Knights)

Lauren Martin

That was fantastic. That was the party that you were DJing at for years in New York, which is Vogue Knights.

MikeQ

Yeah, six years I been playing that party.

Lauren Martin

What perhaps did Vogue Knights do that other balls or parties like it did not do? Was there something unique to Vogue Knights?

MikeQ

The thing with, so going back to the Globe and the Clubhouse again, the Globe was Jersey’s thing and the Clubhouse was Harlem thing. The Globe, that went on til about 2011. The Clubhouse stopped in maybe ‘06, ‘07, and then after that they moved to another location under another name but the same promoters. It was Club Life down in Chinatown. That was the other two. Those were just the weekly things that we had to go to. Balls usually happen on a annual basis or individuals would throw it, houses would throw balls at different times, not on a weekly thing. Vogue Knights kinda came in and that was the only weekly thing after the other places were gone, that’s all we had to do as far as ballroom on a weekly basis while everything was a little bit more spread apart. Then Vogue Knights, the purpose that it served was just to be another safe space for people to come practice your vogue. You don’t have to be on your best shit there as compared to another ball, which actually you do because you just do. That’s what that was, the weekly thing for people to do on a constant basis and just to come and be around people you like.

Lauren Martin

Specifically for New York, obviously there’s balls and parties like this all over the US, but particularly for New York, how have you found the change in the city affecting the scene? I know that Vogue Knights moved venue quite a few times. What sort of issues have you faced?

MikeQ

That’s what more of it is. It’s just the venues. A lot of the venues in New York and Jersey are going away. And ballroom events don’t have the best reputation when they go into a venue and come out leaving it trashed and what not. Glitter all over the bathroom and what not. Losing those over the years, a lot of things have calmed down with that. Just recently Vogue Knights lost its venue as well as the promoter, so that party stopped right now.

Basically, there’s… Beside the Kiki balls or other annual balls that happen, there’s nothing on a weekly basis happening like that anymore, in New York. Which is the mecca of ballroom.

Lauren Martin

How does that affect everyone and everything about it?

MikeQ

Well now actually because it was really not much of a space in between The Globe, The Clubhouse, Club Life, Vogue Knights all happening, but now it’s been about a month since Vogue Knight’s happenings. Myself, as well as other people, you see the posts on Facebook about having withdrawals. There’s nowhere to go in that form to see your friends or just certain people. There’s a lot of people I don’t see unless I’m at a ball or at Vogue Knights in particular. Now it’s like everybody’s just an Internet personality again. And there’s nowhere to go.

Lauren Martin

How does that affect the social purpose of balls? It’s not just somewhere to go and listen to music and show, it has a social structure for people who very much need it. How is that affecting…

MikeQ

Well with some people, and balls, a lot of cash prizes will be given out for grand prize, that paid, I’m pretty sure, a lot of people’s rent or put food on their table and things like that. In a way that’s kind of like going, for some people, even myself, is put a little thing in my pocket with not being able to make money from that no more. There’s still balls that happen. There’s still houses that congregate and get together just as their house or other balls that may happen and come up. That’s when everybody will get together again. Socially I’m not really sure. I guess everybody’s going to other parties or where they used to hang out in the village in New York City, which has changed drastically since back in the day. That’s not even a place you would go anymore to hang out with your friends. I don’t know. I stay in the house if I’m not out DJing. Socially I’m doing nothing.

Lauren Martin

You mentioned Kiki’s as well. The Qween Beat crew have done the official soundtrack to the Kiki film. Could you tell us about that film project?

MikeQ

That film project, that film is very different from, let’s say Paris Is Burning, which is the other film. With Kiki that kind of digs in deeper to a little bit more other issues that we deal with in ballroom: so political issues, violence, death, health issues. It’s more character-based, so it follows a certain group of characters and their life and how they come into the Kiki scene, which is, the Kiki scene is like a subculture within the culture of ballroom. Mostly participated by the youth, so let’s say 14 to 24 years old. Another safe space for this younger generation to go to and do the ballroom thing, then eventually they come into the regular scene as well.

It’s all connected in a way. But the Kiki scene, or, the Kiki film rather, it’s different in that way from Paris Is Burning. It’s still entertaining, but just is an update on what’s happening now in ballroom.

Lauren Martin

It’s really interesting when you think about how this new film about the Kiki scene, is like you say it’s not like Paris Is Burning. I feel that there’s a certain, when Madonna brought out vogue and when a lot of people’s lives were put on show or exposed around Paris Is Burning, there was a crest of cultural capital around the ballroom scene and vogue. A lot of people did not benefit from it. Do you feel that ballroom has had to survive in certain ways after that happened, and this Kiki film is an example of it? I’m curious about your thoughts.

MikeQ

Yeah. Definitely. With ballroom, it’s always a thing of survival. For it to be a culture that has come this long way, stands for something… Kind of got lost in what we were saying.

Lauren Martin

Saying how there was a wider pop culture moment around vogue and a lot of people in the scene did not benefit from it.

MikeQ

Right. With Kiki film, I don’t know the whole story on Paris Is Burning, but with Kiki, a member from ballroom, Twiggy Pucci Garcon, approached Sara Jordeno, the director of Kiki about doing the project. Ballroom participants are a lot more involved in the production of this film and putting it out. From that, they’ve been able to go places around the world, just to travel from that film and do different things. Even myself, being at Sundance Festival last year, going different places doing Q&A’s and whatnot. It’s been great. It’s different in that way. It’s something that we hope will give back to the community and spread what it is and make awareness about it.

Lauren Martin

Obviously films like this, when it comes out soon, people will be able to see it for themselves, but what do you think ballroom could continue to do or do different or adapt to, in order to make sure that everybody is elevated in it?

MikeQ

I feel like praising your own people. Then watching what outside people do. With ballroom it’s not really like a cap on what people do. So you have dancers who are going out and doing big dance classes and that’s almost to me, recruiting a whole army of new people into ballroom that aren’t just coming in through the dance or the trend, but not through the experience.

Then you have me who’s spreading ballroom through music and other ways. There’s no one person that says what goes how. I think it’s important for everybody to realize what you’re doing with it and whose hand you put into, who gets noticed for it. Things like that because it’s the people that created the scene and are living it everyday, that should be making something from it or doing something with it. Those are the faces I feel you should see.

Lauren Martin

Cool. We’ve been very glad to see your face today. Before I go to questions, I want to say thank you very much to MikeQ for talking today. Thank you. [applause] Does anyone have a question for Mike, at all? Do we have some microphones or should we not?

Audience Member

OK. I’m Johan. Hi. Thank you for being here. You touched briefly upon music producers taking sounds from ballroom and trying to come up with their own ballroom sound, and getting it right or getting it wrong. I’m curious about how that is perceived in the actual scene. I’m thinking of the Apple spot, that Apple put out to advertise the iPhone 7, last year, which featured a ballroom-inspired track that I guess a lot of people thought might be your production, but which actually was a French thing, from Paris. Not related to ballroom at all. What do you think of that? How was that discusses in the scene? Is there a good way to appropriate your sound, or a bad way?

MikeQ

In the scene, I don’t think a lot of people really knew it... The people that did see it, people started tagging me like, “Congratulations on this track that you made.” And stuff like that. I’m like, “No. I didn’t do this.” They liked the track. Appropriation of the music isn’t a big talked about thing in the scene itself. It’s just something that I like to blurb about a lot because it’s important, or other DJs. But you won’t really find other people in ballroom discussing that topic of music and appropriation.

With that, there’s a right way to go about which is being informed about what you’re doing. To go to a ball and get knowledge and know who, what, where, when, why. All those things. Then you come in, make a edit or whatever, but then if it’s not your thing I wouldn’t say stay there or continue to keep on doing it. Go back to what you do. I like when producers can make a track for ballroom and I can take it back and play it for a ball. Stuff like that.

There is ways to do about it. This guy in particular I had seen in an interview he did where he was being an asshole and brushing it off like it’s just dance music, so why can’t I make edits? Or whatever. Then with Apple, I don’t think they knew what they were going for. I don’t think they were going for a ballroom track. They might have been looking at that certain producer and liked that certain track of his.

Lauren Martin

Did you want to ask one, as well? I know you’re right at the front but we’ll need it for everyone.

Audience Member

Hello

MikeQ

Hi.

Audience Member

Hi. I wanted to know your involvement in GHE20GOTH1K and how you met with Venus and how it started. How it changed New York.

MikeQ

GHE20GOTH1K, I didn’t come into that until, I believe it was started in ‘09. I didn’t come into until 2011. Just know once I started playing other parties outside of ballroom, and that still is the coolest thing I think you can attend in New York, outside of maybe a vogue event. That’s this amazing party where, like ballroom, different people can come under one roof. Gay, straight, white, black, whatever, and enjoy themselves and that’s been like a monumental thing to me. To be a part of and it’s taken me other places. I play GHE20GOTH1Ks in Russia, Toronto, different places. With GHE20GOTH1K also, we were also to bring balls there. So we’ve had small category or two, made into that. That answer your question?

Audience Member

Yes.

Lauren Martin

Anyone else?

Audience Member

Hey.

MikeQ

Hi Mary.

Audience Member

In regards to appropriation and being informed about the balls and this, that… Did you find that a lot of DJs from all over the world, or just outside of the scene and pop stars even, coming down to Vogue Knights on a regular basis? To know what’s going on and to experience the culture?

MikeQ

The thing with that, I hadn’t even seen a lot of people actually come to balls, beside like, we’ll say FKA Twigs. She might have came to Vogue Knights on three occasions, then did whatever she did with it, don’t have a super comment on that. [laughs] I don’t know. I like her. I like her and she did what she did, but it’s like, “OK where is it now?” I don’t see anything that she’s doing today with ballroom, or trying to inform people of what ballroom is. People, they come in and they try to take bits and pieces of what they want, and do whatever with it. That’s it to them.

Audience Member

I just remember seeing something on Facebook about the one time Madonna called and you weren’t in town and she wanted to come to another party. Did she ever come down?

MikeQ

No. That’s funny. That’s actually Diplo who became a friend of mine, he’s friends with her. He’s the one that text me and wanted to bring her to a Vogue Knight, but Vogue Knights happens on like, Monday or Tuesday and this was on a Friday. But that probably wouldn’t have happened anyway.

Lauren Martin

Actually, speaking of pop stars, I know that Missy Elliott’s slid into your DMs a few years ago. How was that experience with her? Was that a bit more conducive?

MikeQ

With her, I had met her in New Jersey actually. I was DJing at this older club, older crowd club. They had a Vogue Knight there, it was a Wednesday. So her, Queen Latifah and Salt-N-Pepa, they all came. It was like nobody there, maybe 15 of us and they’re here waiting for a ball to happen. I met her there the first time and I gave her some music. Then it was years later, once I got on Twitter and stuff, she hit me up and she was like, “I need your help on something. Send me some music.” So I sent her some stuff to come to find out she actually just wanted music to... She was doing one of her artist Sharaya J, looking for a producer for her. She actually ended up using DJ Jayhood, who does Jersey clubs. I guess she wanted more of the Jersey club sound. As a gift for sending her music, she recorded over one of my tracks and did a one-minute commentation and you know...

Lauren Martin

That’s wonderful. That must have been really nerve-wracking, being in an empty room with all of them going, “Where’s the ball?”

MikeQ

Yeah. Very amazing. Or other times… Like Queen Latifah, probably met her more than anybody, first on my street where I lived at because she’s from East Orange as well. Then she brought Missy Elliott there, then she came to Vogue Knights and she’s in the DJ booth touching my Serato and stuff. Rubbing on my shirt. She didn’t even really want to be announced that she was there but she hopped on the mic from the back a couple times but nobody knew it was her. Janelle Monae’s been there. Yo-Yo, the rapper, but you never seen any of them do anything ballroom, it’s just coming out to enjoy themselves.

Lauren Martin

I suppose that’s the way to do it, right? Turn up but don’t show off. Let everybody else do that.

MIkeQ

Yeah.

Lauren Martin

Anyone else got any questions? You’re allowed two.

Audience Member

I’ve already asked one, sorry. I’m curious about your relationship with Roman Anthony. I was very surprised that on your compilation there was this track by you and Roman Anthony, one of the greats of New Jersey house, but he has passed a couple of years ago. Did you actually work on that track together or how did that come about?

MIkeQ

With him, we actually never met. It was when we first started talking, I found out that he would... I used to stream Vogue Knights live on Mondays. Somehow he found out about that and he would chime into the stream. Then he sent me a track, that track, the early edits of it. He said he made it just being inspired from what he was watching. He passed it on to me to finish it, which he never got to hear because he passed unfortunately.

Lauren Martin

It’s great it got a proper release so everyone can hear it. Anyone else? OK, great. Thank you very much again, Mike Q. Really appreciate it. [applause]