British monthly dance magazine DJ Mag published its 25th anniversary edition earlier this week.
The publication, criticised previously for ignoring female talent – after featuring next to no women in its top 100 DJ list last year, has chosen this time around not to feature a single female on its cover that featured no less than 25 DJs and producers.
In response to another year of criticism, DJ Mag’s Carl Loben, writing for the Huffington Post, attempted to explain why no women made the cut for the magazine’s list of the most influential pioneers in the last 25 years.
In an article titled “Who Are The Women Pioneers Of Dance Music?” he wrote; “For the 25th anniversary of DJ Mag, we had some very distinct criteria to be one of the chosen 25 pioneer,” and that unfortunately whilst making the list they couldn’t agree on any women who had “pioneered something that’s changed the landscape of the scene within the past quarter of a century.”
Loben suggested that there simply weren’t any women who would’ve been worthy of replacing some of the men included. “Should Sister Bliss from live dance act Faithless be in there?” he asked. “But then we’d have to replace Liam Howlett from The Prodigy.”
Loben eventually gets around to issuing at apology, but follows it up by asking viewers for their opinion on the issue. “For that reason, I now believe it was a mistake not to include any women on our 25th birthday cover,” he said, before asking, somewhat passive aggressively, “How many should there have been?”
Reactions on Twitter conveyed the general sentiment of music fans towards the matter pretty well, with one challenging the magazine to get rid of their arbitrary criteria used to select those on the cover, and questions how DJ mag determined that Daft Punk were DJs yet Bjork was not.
Others criticised the magazine for having a yearly issue of the magazine featuring exclusively women as a token way to get out of naming females in their top 25.
Check out some of the reactions below.
https://twitter.com/blackmadonnachi/status/725687813673349122
@blackmadonnachi @camea_clink @AdSavilleDJmag @DJmag They refer to not wanting tokenism, yet that's what "Women in Dance Music Special" IS.
— Noncompliant/Giant Arm Recordings (@_noncompliant_) April 27, 2016
@AdSavilleDJmag @DJmag @blackmadonnachi sure but seriously the whole gender separated magazine issues is getting a bit dated
— Camea (@camea_clink) April 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/ZelMcCarthy/status/725384954155134976
