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2. Copenhagen's women's scene
Chez Debs, or Deborah, lists her personal draw to fancyHIM itself as her whole reason for gravitating towards performing there. "I've long been interested in Japan, but then I kind of got this chance to actually go to Tokyo. I figured that I really wanted to perform while I was there so I searched the web for several electro parties. And the moment I hit upon fancyHIM, I was convinced that I had to see it for myself! I immediately got in touch with its organizers. I mean, the style underlying the event and all the people attending appeared to be irresistibly edgy and attractive to me!"
Chez Debs
Deborah was born in Belgium and has been working in Denmark as a songwriter and performer for the past 9 years. Her queer creds have also been pretty well established - she first performed with the Canadian queer band, Lesbians on Ecstacy at a 2005 live event held at an old church in Copenhagen.
She explains that, early on, her work with electro music was very low budget. "One day I just happened to spot some music software at a bookstore in Denmark. At the time, I had thought that exorbitant amounts of money would be necessary to produce music using computers - but here I saw for the first time that I may be wrong! At first I started with very simple programs, and kind of worked my up to the more difficult versions with time. I began on a very old computer coupled with a $10 microphone - I worked with only the bare basics (laughs)"
The scene in Denmark is not exactly well-known, but a series of fateful happenings have taken place over the past few years. Especially within the electro scene, women have gotten together and collectively bolstered the booking of female artists - making Copenhagen home to a most unusual women's scene. "The concept is rooted in the collectivization of women at The Ladies' Fest, which actually began in the United States. The idea is that, since it's pretty difficult for women to make headway for themselves in a man's world, women came together to sponsor their own women's festival. So when that movement made its way to Europe, I got involved in its planning. At that point, girl bands and queer bands were getting to know each other pretty well, so quite naturally I fell into a queer environment." As her music label focuses on female electro artists, a number of queer girl bands are produced by it as well.
Deborah explains the queer scene in Copenhagen as being, "not quite as large at that in Berlin, but since Copenhagen is a pretty open city itself, the queer scene is popular with straight folks as well." In other words, there're not a lot of events for 'women only' - rather, the recent trend is to hold mixed, queer events. "I like the queer milieu very much both for the good parties, the open-minded atmosphere and the nice people you can meet there, no matter how old or young they are."
Deborah is broady active in everything from songwriting to performance. She explains that her source of musical inspiration lies in whatever feeling she feels at any given moment. When asked about the lyric, "You say you're gay," from her song "Soyousay", Deborah replies, "As a rule I try not to make statements about the meaning of my songs. I want to let people derive their own meaning from them. But one thing I can say is that this song is about feeling confused over sexuality. It's about the confusion we feel over our sexual inclinations and who we find attractive."
She performed solo in Japan, but Deborah often performs and collaborates with other artists. For one, she has been working with two other women since June 2006 in a group named "chez debs et les complexes". "That's because I want to start giving shows that are less your average live event and more like a performance concert!"
All of us at Tokyo Wrestling can't wait to catch electro-trailblazer Deborah at her next performance in Japan!
Chez Debs My Space → www.myspace.com/chezdebs
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