Spotlight on DJ Kiki

“Music started sounding the same all over. So I thought, ‘you know what, I love music. I want to challenge myself’. I listened to a lot of underground stuff back then and there weren’t a lot of women doing this, so I thought maybe I could change the scene,” says Felicia ‘DJ Kiki’ Mutonga about the moment she pivoted into being a professional DJ.

That was almost five years ago, a time during which she says she grew tired of always requesting songs at events and bothering DJs to play what she wanted to hear. The 27-year-old music mixer says she hasn’t looked back since.

“I have a love for music and I’ve always been curious and enjoyed taking on challenges to see if I’m good,” she recalls.

Once she realised that she was really serious about music, she started making moves.

At the time she worked as a brand ambassador for a popular drinking establishment, where the Deck Geeks used to run the show every Thursday for hip-hop nights. One third of the team, BeatSlanger, was her go-to guy and mentor. He taught her the theoretical and practical side of spinning the decks. Five months later, she got her own residency at the club and the rest, as they say, is history.

Very few people are able to master the art of keeping a crowd happy the way this DJ does. As the resident DJ at some of the trendiest spots around Windhoek, she’s one of the few female mixers on the event circuit.

DJ Kiki is formidable, not just in the realm of music she operates in, but as a brand, fashion influencer and media personality.

However, she explains that operating in a male-dominated industry isn’t always a walk in the park, and she doesn’t particularly like to wear the ‘female DJ’ title as she considers herself to be simply a DJ.

“As a woman in the industry, you always have to work 10 times harder than your male counterparts. The majority of event organisers are men and a lot of the time they don’t believe that you can play or that you’re good, so you constantly have to prove yourself to a point where you even have to take free gigs just to prove you’re here to stay. It’s still a battle,” she says, adding that one often gets underpaid or low-balled, especially when starting out.

That has not stopped her, though. She can still be found spinning the decks weekly either at Brewers Market or The Social Club in Windhoek as a resident mixer, as well as other pop-up events and corporate gigs.

“The Social Club has always been a different type of setting for me. That’s the place you go to find the music you would not normally hear in Namibian clubs. I love the vibe there, it is so accommodating of everybody”, she says.

For others who want to keep crowds at events and parties on their feet, the young creative advises that budding DJs be prepared to work in an environment that can sometimes be overwhelming.

She says there are certain characteristics she would advise one should develop to take on this life. The first is patience.

“If fame is what you are aiming for, then you might not have the patience, because when you start out, you might have to play for empty chairs. It takes time for you to grow.”

She adds that self-respect, hard work and a passion for your craft are equally as important.

If she could change anything about the creative industry, it would be to have a sort of artist body that actually fights for the interests of painters, musicians, dancers, actors, etc.

“This way we won’t get exploited. We’ll be paid our worth and not have to negotiate down. We go through a lot because we don’t have a body that protects us,” she says.

– Anne Hambuda is a poet, writer and social commentator from Windhoek.

Follow her online for more.