In a largely male-dominated field, lesbian DJ Alyson Calagna is a welcome respite. The Miami-based beat master spins at the Heretic on Oct. 18 with an opening set by local DJ Brian Beck. One of Calagna's few contemporaries in the lesbian DJ realm is DJ Lydia Prim, who plays a late set into the morning the same night at the Bodyshop.
It may be uncommon for female DJs to play at mostly male parties, but it is even less common for any DJ to show cracks in their façade of music snobbery. Calagna is honest about her musical roots.
“When I was little, I loved Wham! and Culture Club,” Calagna says. “Then when I was a little older, I got really big into hair bands. I’m a hair-band freak. If Def Leppard is on the radio, I’m screaming it.”
Such bands don't seem like a good basis for a career in clubs, but Calagna was fortunate to spend her childhood in locales with more exotic musical reputations. Her stepfather worked in oil, so she spent her formative years in Scotland and Dubai before moving back to Lafayette, La., in ninth grade.
The extent of available American music was bootleg cassettes and the weekly "American Top 40" broadcast by Casey Kasem, so Calagna developed an appreciation for cross-cultural tunes.
“Growing up in an Islamic country, there is such different music over there, the rhythms of Arabic and Indian music. There is a conglomerate of culture," she says. "I had all different kinds of music at all times. … That’s how I really grew up to love all forms of music.”
UPON HER RETURN TO THE STATES, Calagna became active in Lafayette’s teen clubs, first as a resident breakdancer and then as a DJ. Later, it was her residency at New Orleans nightspot Club 735 that started putting her name on the map, and she still plays the club Oz in New Orleans during her travels.
Calagna says that these days, house music is “where [her] heart is” and that she plays all forms of it, from deep house to electro, tech house and “whatever else moves me.”
“I play all different styles in the night seamlessly," she says. "It’s not just one record of something and then it changes; I’m able to mix all those sounds and have it work for me. It’s always what I like and never being put in a box. It’s playing different stuff and making it work so it all works together.”
Calagna is quick to dismiss claims that house music is in its twilight. Though a generation of its fans have grown older and circuit parties are no longer the rule of gay nightlife, she believes that house is stable.
“I don’t think it is ever going to die,” she says. “That’s like saying pop is going to die. There are too many people that live for it. There are too many house music producers and DJs and clubs. It’ll just keep evolving, like music.”
Though she plays a handful of lesbian and straight parties, most of Calagna’s club nights are for gay men. After 15 years in the business, she says that most of the patrons have no problem with a woman in the DJ booth.
“It used to be really hard, but thank God it’s not any more," she says. "It took a long time to get the guys to the point where they didn’t mind seeing a female in the booth, but now it's very much ‘music is music.’ Most people are about how the DJ is going to make them feel.”
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