Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson has had a monumental impact on the last decade of dance music, first by disrupting a male-dominated industry through Discwoman – the agency and mix series that nurtured Juliana Huxtable, Ariel Zetina, Ciel and so many more – and then by creating a new, dedicated zone for Black artists with Dweller, an annual festival that takes place across various venues in New York each February.
And all without ever lowering herself to the status of a DJ.
With the peak of Discwoman press hype now a distant pre-pandemic memory, we thought it’d be a perfect time for a No Tags interview with Frankie. We’re not really in this game to speak to amoebic newcomers about their career hopes – you’ll find plenty of that in what remains of the music press. Instead we wanted to talk to Frankie as a seasoned veteran of rave, and as someone who’s both seen and enacted immense change in the scene, even helping overturn NYC’s racist “cabaret law”.
Ahead of next week’s Dweller festival, we talked to Frankie about the need for Dweller and the unique family atmosphere at their parties, as well as the underground films that the platform has curated for a season on The Criterion Channel. We also discuss why Dweller recently cancelled a showcase of Black artists at Berghain, the state of NYC nightlife, and how raving brought a shy, scared teenager out of her shell.
Plus: her favourite films about white men in crisis. Enjoy!
Tom Lea: So, as a trio of Letterboxd power users, I want to talk about the Criterion partnership first. It's so rare to see a brand partnership pop up on the timeline and not think, “Well, that's kind of lame.” That happens a lot. But it’s rarer to think this is actually really cool!
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: You know, I've always fantasised about working in film and not music. But these are the cards I was dealt I suppose! So it's nice to be able to combine what I'm doing now with another love of mine. Ash Clark who works at Criterion, we actually went to university together in England and it was just a coincidence that they ended up working there. We actually tried to do something last year which didn't line up, but they were really up for it.
Ryan Clarke, who I work with on Dweller, he's one of the curators. He's also the main editor of the blog. He's even more well researched in the areas of music and film than me. He largely created it alongside [artist and writer] S*an D. Henry-Smith. They both do the education portion of Dweller together, and they largely programmed the Criterion stuff. I kind of set up the collaboration then passed it off to those who I think would probably curate it best, and then that's kind of how it came to be. I honestly wasn't really... you know, you do these things, but when you're in your own world curating them, you don't really think about how it's going to reach others until it comes out. And then you're like, oh, people are into this. I was like, wow, this is cool. So, yeah, that's what happened.
Chal Ravens: Not all of the films are about Black dance music. There's a documentary about Larry Levan and there's this document of Jeff Mills in the mix, but some of the short films are more like the kind of art film that you would see in a gallery. It'd be great to hear you explain some of the connecting tissue between them.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: We didn't want it to be so literal as being a history of dance and that kind of thing. Because, you know, Dweller is so... I hate to say multifaceted, but it kind of is in the way that the way people are connected. So we wanted to reflect that in the curation of the movies too. For instance, the short film Trial Period by Kiernan Francis, it's a great short film about queer kids and nightlife, it's a fiction piece contextualised in nightlife. It's not talking about the history of dance, but where dance has led us to, these moments in the afters and stuff like that. It's hard for me to articulate but we just did not want it to be like, “dance started here, and now we're here.” It's more like, everybody has such different connections and expressions within this very vast medium.
Chal Ravens: It’s also very much about people. A lot of the short films are personal, really intimate projects.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: 100%. A lot of the things when we do Dweller are quite visceral, like, we feel things. And that's how we book and create stuff, or we have strong visions for things. That's what leads us to create it rather than trying to do something that is like, “We need to educate people on this, this and this.” That's not how we approach things. That does end up being something that happens – it’s a byproduct, people do learn things, we do have very literal materials on our site, the blog. But I think when it comes to us creating events, and even a partnership like this, we want it to have a slight romance and poetry to it rather than being like, “We want to teach you things.”
Tom Lea: This is a good opportunity to zoom out a little on Dweller. When did you have the idea to create it, and what were the urges behind it?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: It definitely comes from a deeply personal place, obviously. To put it simply, as a Black person in this scene, you do react quite strongly to not seeing Black people being represented in club culture. For me, I didn't even know Black people were responsible for this shit in the first place. There was a really big learning curve for me to come to terms with. So with that comes a lot of rage. You know, you're pissed off. And I want to settle my scores, and I want justice, that's what I'm like. So Dweller is seeking justice, I guess. And trying to make something that's our own.
I was speaking about this yesterday, actually, with Enyo [Amexo], who co-curates Dweller and is a programmer as well. And I was like, “This is so sick for us, because it's something that a lot of white people can't touch.” That feels like justice, I guess. So there's something really exciting about that, to feel like you have a sense of ownership over something that when I started, I didn't even know that we owned in the first place. I use the word owned loosely, but you know what I mean.
It's quite a trippy experience, not knowing something your whole life and then being bombarded with all of this fucking cool shit that you wish you knew from a younger age. This motivates me. It's reflected in other work I've done too. I don't like people not getting credit for what they deserve to get credit for, ultimately, and this is definitely driven from that place. But you know, I think a lot of the rage has passed for me, so that isn't necessarily the driving factor as much anymore. Rather just trying to maintain an ecosystem that we can enjoy.
Chal Ravens: What have been the best Dweller moments so far? I guess I'd like to hear about the kind of atmosphere that's generated at a Dweller event, and in what ways that might be different to any other kind of club event.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: So, so many moments, but I'd like to talk about this moment. The first year we did it, it was just at Bossa Nova [Civic Club].1 I think we only paid guarantees on the Friday and the Saturday so everyone was doing it for a percentage of the bar. There was no money or production or anything, but people were just really up for it. That was such a unique energy. Now it's grown, there's expectations that come with what you do, which can be quite challenging. So it's weird. While it's happy to grow, it's also a tough thing to adapt to. Some of the earlier memories, these feelings of creating something that everyone is just locked in for, regardless of what the production's gonna be, regardless of what I'm gonna get paid – just let's fucking do it, let's go. You can't really replicate that, it's just a moment in time. So I'll always hold on to that spirit. And I think that spirit still lives within the festival a lot.
In the second year we introduced Nowadays2 as a venue. I had made it a goal for myself to go to every single thing, which means that I missed everything at the same time [laughter]. I remember I arrived at Nowadays and DJ Stingray was playing there, and I arrived right when he finished so I missed the whole set. And all I see is Juliana Huxtable emerging from the dancefloor like “Oh my god! This is incredible!" Just this expression of, I don't know, catharsis, and just like she'd had an exorcism.
I think what always sticks with me is just how much joy people experience there. And you know, yes, we create this whole festival but [the overall experience] is created by everybody who is there and how much they want this to happen. That is maybe the unique energy of what it is, that there are so few spaces like this. When we see each other there it's like, “Happy Dweller!” People go around and say that! There's this need and people just feel joy. I don't know how else to describe it. It's hard to pinpoint, but that just really sticks out to me, it just defines the feeling and experience of it.
Tom Lea: It’s funny, when I was in New York in 2022 and I went to a few of the Dweller events, the main memory I have is seeing RP Boo footworking at the front of Nowadays while Black Rave Culture were playing, with the biggest smile on his face. It was a really beautiful moment.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Totally, totally, I love that. That's so sweet. Yeah, stuff like that, exactly. When we had Jeff Mills last year, when he came to the education bit he was just chilling in the crowd, you know? That's kind of what we want to create, get rid of this line between people who you look up to – let's just immerse together in this way.
The scene in general feels like it has so many different segregations in it, and it's definitely a lot to do with class and wealth and status and all this kind of thing. Everything we do with Dweller, we want to just push against all of that. We want to work with people who want to be around people, we don't want to work with people who do it because they want to be looking down on people, or are into being looked up to or something. We want to create a conversation, a more fluid atmosphere where people can sit next to Jeff Mills in a talk and it's like, whatever. That's what we want. I don't think anyone was quite like “whatever”, but still.
Tom Lea: I mean, Jeff's a special case, right?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: But it was really chill, you know! And that's how it should be, it should be comfortable for everybody there.
Tom Lea: What's the plan for this year’s Dweller? Is it a scale up of what's happened before?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: You know, I think it's really hard not to scale up every year, because we just have more and more ideas, and there's more and more artists who want to play. Last year, we had maybe 50 or 60 artists. This year it's close to 80. So it's a lot of people. But I think there has to be a ceiling to it. I don't think we could just grow and grow and grow and grow, it's so hard to maintain it. So that's some of our bigger conversations this year – how do we retain Dweller’s intimacy? And you know, what I'm talking about before, this integration of all these different people but remaining this cute family affair. You're straddling a fine line. With so much growth and publicity comes all these different people who want to be involved, and what does that do to the event, and all these really exhausting questions that I'm really tired of. I just want to have a nice festival, you know, but it's hard to ignore these pressures that are coming in.
Tom Lea: I think there's this big fallacy in the live music industry that you always have to scale up and sell more tickets the next time around, and there's actually such a virtue in finding that sweet spot, whether it's a festival or a club night. Like, this is actually the optimum size to express what we want to express and to do our vision justice. I think a lot of people lose sight of that, and it's super important to keep that in mind.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Exactly. I try and imagine Dweller as an [EDM mega-festival] Electric Zoo or something like this, on an EDM-scale capacity – what would this be, you know? And I just don't think it would translate to that scale actually. So whilst it might be an interesting concept to some to make it a huge, huge thing, I don't think it could retain the same thing that it has. Even last year, there was lots of talk about how many white people were at the festival, so imagine doing an EDM-scale one – we've definitely lost our core audience! So you've got to really be thinking about these things.
Tom Lea: I guess it's the core audience, but it's also the space, it needs to be a space that people can feel comfortable in. I'm not even sure it's possible to do that, full stop, when you scale up that high, to an EDC [Electric Daisy Carnival] level or whatever.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: I completely agree. Yeah, I don't think so.
Chal Ravens: I feel compelled to mention some dance music headlines of late: Dweller cancelled the Berghain event that was coming up. I just want to know about why you took that decision, and whether it was specifically to do with Berghain, or if it was to do with Strike Germany, the artists' boycott of Germany that's happening [in response to censorship of Palestine solidarity movements]. Maybe you could just shed some light on that decision, because it can't have been an easy one.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Well, actually it was easy to be honest. It was a really easy decision. It wasn't to do with Berghain, and it wasn't attributed to Strike Germany, we made the decision in October when this stuff happened. We saw the immediate reaction that pro-Palestine people in Germany were receiving from German police, government, institutions – for lack of a better term, the cancelling of these artists. News spread about friends who are pro-Palestine [in Germany], just the onslaught. And it just came up in me that I can't actually imagine us throwing our all-Black party at Berghain, I just couldn't see it. I cannot be in that place, doing this thing there. So we just made the call, it's not going to happen unless there's some kind of shift.
It's really trippy, honestly, to think about where we were a year ago, and how excited we were about this, and how it felt like the right thing to do. And just one year later it feels like absolutely the wrong decision to make. We cannot bring a whole bunch of Black people into a space, advocating for a country that is adopting quite fascist policies at the moment. There's people who say you could say the same thing about America – I mean, sure, but I live here, so I guess that's the difference. But I also would encourage people to do that, if they don't want to come here. You know what I mean? If that's the line you want to draw, you should draw it. It's important for you to do what feels right. And that's what felt right for us.
So when we saw the Strike Germany thing pop up I was like, hell yeah, because when they passed that law about having to basically pledge allegiance to Israel3... it's just astonishing, honestly, the level of control there. It's really fucking sad. And it's sad that so many artists are forced to make that decision for themselves right now. And it usually hits artists who aren't as rich and wealthy in the scene who make these hard decisions as well. It just really sucks.
Chal Ravens: There’s a really curious division in that scene as well. Of course there are multiple scenes within any city, but it does bring to the fore that there is a largely white German old guard [faction of dance music], and the left in Germany is brought up to be staunchly defensive of Israel and simply can't get their heads around the Palestine issue. And then you have this massive international, ex-pat-slash-migrant community of people who just see it as obvious. And maybe this is just the first time it's really, really been pushed to the fore like that. And suddenly you look around and you're like, well, whose side are you on? It's so unbelievably divisive. I'm getting the impression from people who live there that it's actually just really stressful and depressing.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Totally, it's really brutal. I think I'm still in astonishment about it all, so I find it hard to articulate, but I do know where I stand on this and that's really clear to me. So, not doing something, that's the best decision we made. And it seems so, seeing how things have gone, because we made this decision before that law was even in place. You just get a sense that these things are going to snowball and get worse.
Chal Ravens: I was thinking about Berlin as a global capital of clubbing. It's changed a lot in the last six or seven years, really broken out of the techno mould – well, to an extent. But I think it's interesting that its reputation as a cool, progressive, cosmopolitan global city is actually frequently challenged by the reported experiences of people of colour, artists or DJs, who go there and have a completely different experience of being in the city than I do when I have my techno-tourist weekend. I was wondering what your experience has been generally of bringing artists to Berlin?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: It’s a mixed bag. I've had some of the best times of my life in Berlin, as have many of my artists, it's a really meaningful place. I've met so many people, I've built many relationships there, and I've been given many opportunities there too. So it's definitely a place that is in my heart. That being said... you know, living in New York, on a personal level I don't feel perceived, or that people are even looking at me or interested in looking at me or whatever. In Berlin, there's definitely a switch. You stand out, you stick out. Things like that affect how you move through a place, you feel way more visible. That's the difference in experience between me and you. I think that definitely applies to the artists I've worked with, too. I think we can all recount a racist incident we've had on the street, in the club, on transport, something like that. It's so common. I'm 36 now and when you've lived in this skin for that long, it's kind of everyday shit. It never prevented me from coming back, obviously. But it's tiring feeling so visible.
Chal Ravens: And such a extreme contrast to the freeing experiences of being in clubs there, and how much freer they are than clubs elsewhere.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Right, right. It's really ironic, because clubbing in Berlin is some of the best clubbing I've done. I've had incredibly, incredibly euphoric experiences. Just out of this world times. And then you walk outside and you're like, oh, that doesn't match what just happened inside. But yeah, I'd say that a lot of it is exhaustion and getting tired of really basic perceptions of your identity. That’s what it's about, rather than people calling you the n-word or something like that. That hasn't really happened to me there, I haven't been called derogatory statements, but it's the way people try to connect with you by pulling out your differences. “How do you do your hair?” Stuff like this where you're just like, “girl, if you were in New York you wouldn't last five minutes.” I think it's the repetitiveness of the way you're coded there that becomes what is tiring. At least that's my experience.
There's definitely people who are way more visible than even I am, and I think that comes with its own dangers and violence too. I can only speak for me, but I can say for the artists that I've worked with there, I think we all share a certain exhaustion in the way that we feel like we're being seen, and feel like we're being judged. It's just a collective consciousness of understanding that experience. After certain Black artists I know are done touring Europe, they're just so fucking tired and wanna come home to New York, if they live there of course. But then you miss the hedonism of it, so you're excited to go back, and then you go back and you're like, get me the fuck out of here! So it's push and pull.
Tom Lea: Not that it's the priority here, but I do wonder what this does long-term to Berlin as a dance music city, a place that people from the US, from the UK, from across Europe, wherever, see as a place to go where it's viable to be an artist, and where they can move and make a living off their art in a way that they maybe couldn't in New York, London, LA, whatever.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: 100%, I saw a tweet from DJ Haram speaking on this as well – like, definitely pro-boycott, but also really curious about how this restructures the whole scene. It's such a centrepiece. It is the middle, in my opinion, it's like the touring station. And it has an incomparable club scene. So I'm really interested too to see what happens here.
Chal Ravens: I really like asking people this question: what was teenage Frankie like? And how did music fit into your life back then?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: I actually didn't come from a real musical family. I grew up with my single mother, my mum and my brother and I, it was just the three of us. We had many, many, many hardships. And we didn't have many, many, many moneys, let's put it that way. We had like three CDs at the house growing up, namely TLC’s CrazySexyCool, Mary J. Blige’s My Life and Toni Braxton. And there's a couple others as well, Tracy Chapman.
Tom Lea: I mean, they're really good CDs at least.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: They’re really, really top tier records! There was also Kenny G, Breathless. I didn't listen to that one, actually. But yeah, I was a really emotional teen, I would listen to Mary J. Blige on my own in my room and just start crying to songs and imagining life outside of my little room, which I think maybe some of us can relate to, maybe not. I really felt her words even though she was going through a coke addiction or something, but I was just sitting in my room connecting. But her words were really, now I've learned, from a place of real deep struggle and trauma.
There was a big pivot when I learned about other music, which was when I had a really big crush on a friend of mine when I was 16. He had a car and loved music and was in a band, all this stuff. He was the first person [I met] who just loved music, in a way that I didn't really understand. And I still sometimes don't understand, because I see the way some people love and are immersed in music, and it's definitely different for me. I'm immersed in creating spaces for music, but music, that's something that I'm still learning to understand and appreciate even at this age. He introduced me to Aphex Twin and Björk, I couldn't believe it. It truly, truly blew me away. He showed me Lauryn Hill, one track in particular, the song with her and D'Angelo, ‘Nothing Even Matters’. I will never forget the first time I heard that. I think I was also so moved by the way he was moved by the music, watching the power of what it can do to people and how profoundly people feel it, that I got addicted to wanting to listen to music like that.
So I started loving Aphex and Björk. I got really into Björk. Vespertine is one of my favourite records of all time. I found a new world of things. But I didn't really go clubbing or anything like that. I was a very, very scared teenage girl. I was very scared of dating, I was very scared of going out, getting drunk. Didn't get wasted. I was really nervous. I was actually kind of the perfect daughter because my mum was never scared about anywhere I was. She didn't have any problems with me, which I think was a great relief to her.
Chal Ravens: Did you end up having a big rebellion then, later on?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: 100%. I went to the University of Sussex and behind the school they would throw raves, like free parties. I'd never been to raves in my life, but a lot of the kids there, they'd all taken years abroad, they were all wealthy, from North London, mostly white kids. They had all been pretty seasoned in taking drugs for the first time, they were like cool, you know? And I remember wandering into this field and I was just like... I was so scared. This shit was scary.
Tom Lea: What was the music?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: I don't know, but I do remember one definitive moment. I took ecstasy for the first time that year. That was a really, really pivotal moment in my life, honestly. It really opened up my mind.
Chal Ravens: If someone's suffering from fear then...
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Exactly, I stopped being scared. My friends who were more seasoned ravers, they took me to Raindance4 in London. That was my first experience of ecstasy, at Raindance and I was like, “what the fuck is this!?” That club was insane, SE1. And after that I went back to the field raves, and it was like, I can do this now. I remember the sun coming up and them playing Aphex Twin 'Windowlicker'. And I was like oh... my... god. Full circle. The whole moment just blew me away. It was just so beautiful. I just couldn't believe what was happening.
Tom Lea: I was curious, especially because we were originally going to do this interview in London last year. You've mentioned in some previous interviews that you've historically had a pretty rough relationship with the UK and you didn't particularly like going back, but those were quite old interviews. Is that still the case when you come back to London now?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: I think a lot of my disdain for London comes from a lot of hardships or traumatic experiences from being there as a young woman, a young girl. Growing up in London, it was a place where I felt like I was told I was ugly and not smart. So I still have a grudge against that being my experience as a kid. I've actually had to learn how to re-love London, which has been kind of awesome. I think in my more recent visits, I've actually really enjoyed my time there. And it's actually contradicted a lot of my previous grudges against it. A lot of people have been very kind to me. So I'm in a better place with it. It's given me a lot too, we've done a lot of Discwoman stuff there. People really absorbed it there and loved it, and I can be grateful for that. But it's a complex place.
Chal Ravens: Are you an American now? Like, do you still have culture clash moments of being a Brit abroad?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Brits abroad! Sounds like a show, doesn't it? I would watch that. I am actually an American now, I have my US passport, but I have dual citizenship. I've lived in New York since 2009, so it's almost been 15 years, which is kind of absurd. It will be 15 years this summer. I don't know how my accent sounds to you guys, but for most Americans, I still sound pretty British.
Chal Ravens: Surprisingly British, I would say!
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Yeah, it hasn't really gone away. I'm constantly asked where I'm from, and I think there's always a sense of like, “excuse me, I've lived here for 15 years. This is a basic question.” I actually would say I mostly get it from British people – like, “oh my god, you're English!” And I'm like, you know... what are we gonna bond on?
Tom Lea: The Traitors.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: That’s true. That's the best thing that's come out of England in a long time.
Chal Ravens: What’s your relationship with the club at the moment? Do you still go out-out off your own back? Or is it more work stuff, going to see people that you know?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: I go out a lot less than I used to. As you get older, your relationships to spaces and drinking and drug-taking become a bigger thing to have to think about. When I was the booker at Bossa for instance, it was hard for me to be in that space without drinking or something. And I don't want that to be what I have to do to be in those spaces, you know, and for that to be my only option in there. I want to stay alive and feel good and mentally well, those are real big focuses for me.
Honestly, if I was out all the time, I wouldn't be able to do or plan Dweller. I have to take it seriously, and one of the things about that is having my head screwed on right at the moment. Currently, I’m completely sober. And that's why, you know, when we chatted earlier, I feel like I'm actually having a good week where I don't feel as stressed, because I do think I'm able to manage stuff. It's not hard for everybody, but it's hard for me to manage going out and also having a healthy lifestyle – for me they're often quite incompatible. I have addiction in my family, I have addictive tendencies, so I have to remove myself from spaces sometimes to manage that. So yeah, it's a push and pull. It's really, really tough.
It can be a really, really dangerous place as well. Once you've been in the scene for so long, you really see the good, the bad and the ugly, and you just want to protect yourself and self-preserve. But I also feel guilt about that sometimes, because I want to see more things, I want to be out more. It's important to go support friends, it's important to see who the new DJs are or whatever. I need to be doing that as well.
Chal Ravens: And then they're like, “I'm on at 4am!”
Tom Lea: The amount of times I imagine we've all had that conversation.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: I slept on New Year's Eve, actually, and I woke up at 7am to see Juliana [Huxtable] back-to-back with JASSS at like 9am.
Chal Ravens: Perfect, that's classy. Am I right in saying that this year will be the 10th anniversary of Discwoman?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: You are right.
Chal Ravens: Well, one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is because there was a moment, five or six years ago, when Discwoman was getting so much press across the board. You were very present, quite rightly, and doing something that felt very bold and very special. But of course there are cycles, and you're an institution now rather than the hot new thing. I think that's kind of a criterion that we're looking for when it comes to people to talk to on No Tags, where you've actually been around a bit and got your bearings. So how has Discwoman evolved since that moment? Where are we now, a decade into this project?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Yeah, for sure. I really appreciate that framing as well, because it is so cyclical, you know, you're in that limelight spot of talking about these issues, and then everyone moves on to the next thing. And that's kind of what this industry is like, it's so fleeting, but it's also hard to sustain that kind of thing. We're just gonna keep on talking, keep making the same points over and over again, consistently? It's kind of exhausting. And most of all, where things really shifted for me was at the beginning of the pandemic, where we got absolutely slaughtered online for asking for donations5. I felt really low because you feel like you put in so much goodwill. That's how you get treated after all that you feel like you've done, and I was like, I don't want put this in anymore actually. I don't want to put in this time. I don't want to give more of myself, I've given so much of myself for this.
Tom Lea: And so much time where you've been working for free.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Exactly. The things people said were just so cruel, and I'm like, wow, the way people would just turn on you... I don't want anything to do with any of these people. I don't want to give up myself to anybody anymore. And that's what shifted my focus more into Dweller. We were talking earlier about justice, and something that people can't touch. It got even more like, “fuck y'all. We don't need y'all anyway, I don't need any of you guys, I don't need any of this, so we're gonna build our own thing.” And that's felt more comfortable, for sure. I think when you're in that limelight moment of talking about these issues, you're a product for people a lot of the time – “oh, we can tap into them, they'll talk about the women thing that we want to talk about.” That's what you become, and I think in that moment in the pandemic, that's when I realised what was happening. People actually don't see me at all. And that really, really sucked. But I'm also glad that it happened. Because I feel like I know where I stand more, and I think I can be way more protective and have way better boundaries.
Chal Ravens: Give us your take on New York club culture right now, because it's interesting to think – and this came up when we spoke to Nick and Tony – but the first time I ever went to New York was in I think 2009, and the dance music options were very, very different then.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: When Bossa opened in 2012, there was nothing around that neighbourhood at all. There was absolutely nothing. And now it's the centrepiece of five or six different clubs, there's just so much. It's really, really thriving. It's a shame I don't go out that much, but it is thriving!
Chal Ravens: Because I wouldn't say that about London right now.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: What would you say about London at the moment?
Chal Ravens: I mean, there are places that I enjoy going to, but I don't know that it has enough small venues that are good. I really like going to Fold and The Cause, they feel weird in their own ways, they have their own personalities and I feel like you get left alone, which is my top demand for a club usually. In terms of a smaller, Bossa-sized space... I just don't know that there are that many places to throw a good small party.
Tom Lea: I think another big factor with London is that 10 years ago Dalston was the epicentre of everything. There are still plenty of good venues in London, more in the 300-400 capacity range than 100 cap, but they do exist. But when everything centred around Dalston and Shoreditch, all those venues were really near each other. When I was in New York two years ago, I was like, “wow, people club-hop here.” I'd meet someone and we'd go catch someone's set at Rash, then go to Paragon, and then Nowadays, and that doesn't happen in London, or very rarely, because everything is either south-east or north-east but those are an hour’s journey from each other. So there's not that central point where people meet anymore. That's kind of my take on why London clubbing feels weirdly stale at the moment, despite there actually being quite a lot of good clubs.
Chal Ravens: But I would also say that one problem we have is how much harder it is for a 24-year-old, who has maybe just come out of uni or something, to throw a night. It's basically financially impossible. But how do people do that in New York? It's even more expensive.
Tom Lea: Sorry to interject, but I do think it's maybe quite crucial to this – it feels like the minute anyone is doing anything in London they're snapped up by an agency. And a lot of the agencies in the UK are not good, and don't care about promoters trying to throw club nights in 100-capacity venues. In my experience of New York, it just seems to be easier to book nights with up-and-coming artists, it feels like a bigger talent pool of people that are accessible. Whereas the minute anyone's doing anything here they get snapped up, and that agent will be like, “well, you can only play London twice a year now, and it's gonna be at Fabric.”
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: God, what a buzzkill. I hate that shit. On your point about club-hopping, I think that's really, really important when we're talking about this, because New York does have a 24-hour public transport system so people can get around. And it's cheaper to take the train here than it is in London as well. It's $2.90 to go anywhere.
I would say that within the club scene in Brooklyn, it's probably not an hour to get from one place to another. There's lots of clubs in Ridgewood, there's lots of clubs in Bushwick, and if you're just going between those two, it's very local, the whole scene. So once you're in it, you can kind of just jump around and stay in it. I think London's a little bit more spread out than that. So I think that's quite hard, and I think that's hard financially for people as well.
When you're talking about booking nights and the cost of that, booking a night at Bossa is essentially free. When I was booking there, the club functioned seven days a week, so if you're a young DJ wanting to get into it and you get a Monday night at Bossa, you can kind of do your own thing. You don't get paid a lot, you get a percentage of the bar, but you still have a lot of creative licence to do what you want. And there's also such a big talent pool, like you say, who will be happy to play on a Monday sometimes.
Umfang's night Technofeminism, I think it started on a Tuesday and then it worked its way up to a Friday or a Saturday. But that built so much of her identity as an artist, you know? So it's not just about getting people in the door, but it's about people seeing your taste, or seeing your perspective. And you can really define it and hone that in doing a Tuesday club night where you're not really having to spend any of your own money. I think that shit is punk and cool, I like that a lot. So that was really fun to do, working with people like that when I was booking there.
Tom Lea: If you look back through dance music history, there's so many really important midweek parties. In London there were tons, there was CoOp, there was FWD>>. And those don't really exist anymore. It feels like new nights and new promoters aren't given those [affordable, midweek] chances in London at the moment.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: That’s a shame. It's a real shame. It's a place where you flourish creatively.
Tom Lea: So we always end up talking about films, and like I say, you're a Letterboxd power user, and former film columnist actually… or maybe current film columnist on hiatus, I'm not sure?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Yeah, the last time I wrote about films for Dweller was like two years ago, so it's been a long break.
Tom Lea: So tell our listeners – what are the best and worst films you've watched recently? What would be a recent recommend and a recent avoid at all costs?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Last week I watched a great movie called Glengarry Glen Ross. That movie is so funny. You're just watching these white dudes have a meltdown about not being able to reach their sales commissions, but you get invested. You're sad for these guys, you know? And Jack Lemmon, oh my god, he's so good. His performance is just amazing.
Tom Lea: We should plug the fact that you have a Letterboxd list that’s called… is it White Men Falling Apart?
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: I have a list called The Plight of White Men6. On that list I have About Schmidt, I love this movie. The performance by Jack Nicholson as this retired man just trying to find himself is utterly amusing and just so deeply sad. It's a quite literal plight of this man who's been this top exec, not knowing what to do with his time outside of business. I have Adaptation on here, the movie Happiness. Have you guys seen this movie?
Tom Lea: No, I know Adaptation but I'm not familiar with Happiness.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: Well maybe I shouldn't tell you but just dive in. I think it's an incredible piece of cinema. I watched it when I was quite young, and some of it is really, really dark. So it's not really for everybody. But the positioning of who you empathise with or who you are forced to empathise with, regardless of what they're doing in this movie, is really interesting to watch. And then the movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas.
Tom Lea: Oh, that's a white man with a plight right there.
Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson: That is white plight. I love me a Michael Douglas dramatic performance. Hell yeah. Wall Street? I love that movie. He's just like... I dunno, what a weirdo. I just love it.
You know what was trash, which I hated? Babylon. I really hated that movie. An obscene waste of money, I think I just get offended by the amount of money these movies cost to create absolute garbage. Like god, what could we use those funds for?
I guess I'd finish by giving us a special shout out to the British movie Rye Lane, it's beautiful. I just want to see it again, it was such a feelgood movie. I feel like those are like so fleeting, those kind of films. It's rare to feel that warmth in cinema sometimes. So that was great.
Recorded at: SRP Studios
Theme music: Jennifer Walton
Branding: All Purpose
A small club on Brooklyn’s Myrtle Avenue, Bossa Nova Civic Club is at the heart of New York’s underground dance scene, with Frankie booking the club’s events from 2018 to 2020. In January 2022, the club was forced to shut after a fire, but eventually re-opened in October of that year. For more info on Bossa, we’d recommend this Resident Advisor history of the club.
Nowadays is a club in Ridgewood, Queens, infamous for its Nowadays Nonstop parties which run for 24 hours or more. It also serves Club Mate - TIP!
In January, the Berlin Senate for Culture added a clause to its art funding requiring applicants to accept the controversial IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which is understood by many as a tool to limit criticism of Israel. That rule was ditched after artists mobilised in protest, but still stands across the rest of Germany. Chal actually wrote about this for Novara Media last month if you want more on the story (with an obvious caveat for left-wing/techno bias, sorry but this is how we roll).
Raindance is a DIY London rave event that’s been running since 1989, starting as a series of illegal outdoor raves in East London and eventually hosting nights at Fabric and the aforementioned South London club SE1. The Raindance crew have hosted everyone from The Prodigy and Carl Cox to Slipmatt and Kenny Ken in their time, and as their RA bio puts it, are “34 years and still misbehaving!”
For more on this episode, check Afropunk’s op-ed from 2020.
08: Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson on Dweller and making actual change