DJ Ipek

Winner of the Siegessäule (Berlin’s gay and lesbian magazine) DJ award for the year 2000, DJ IPEK is resident DJ at SO36 and has made guest appearances at clubs all over Germany and abroad, earning herself a central place in the house-music scene. With her explosive fusions of disco-house-orient-train, queer-classics, oriental dance-floor and tech-house, electronics and asian underground, she continues to break musical, cultural and political taboos.
‘It is commonly known that I am Turkish, and consequently a lot of people believe that all the music I do is Turkish, though I play a wide mix of, for example, Klezmer, Rai, ArabicPop and TurkishPop. This misunderstanding I can only explain as undifferentiated Euro-centrism. Occasionally I am also asked if I know and understand the content of the songs I am playing, since they might be sexist or promote violence against women. (…) It is remarkable that people appear to be familiar with the content of non-Anglo-American and non-European music. And it is amazing that sexism and racism are seen as Arabic and Turkish phenomena. Similar content in European or North American songs are not cross-checked (…) Still, nowadays it occasionally happens at Lesbian parties that the Arabic, Turkish or Hebrew music I play is rejected, since it is too different and not danceable for the average West European woman.’ (DJ IPEK)