HONEY DIJON: REIGNING QUEEN OF HOUSE
She never panders to the audience, but is solely consumed with telling a story, her story, through the power of music.
You could say Honey Dijon is having a moment with the release of her latest album ‘The Nightlife’, but the Chicago-born DJ who spends a lot of time of her time in Europe, has been having ‘moments’ for over a decade.
Honey Dijon has always been one of those staple (stable) DJs of mine that has stood the test of time. Her DJ sets have been the soundtrack of my life on the dance floor, unlocking core memories of different times, places, and iterations of me.
I got acquainted with her sound in Toronto when I frequented ‘Industry’, a warehouse type club space that was at the forefront of the new sound of house music coming from Chicago and New York. Danny Tenaglia had a regular night at the spot, and I’m almost certain I saw her DJ there (though, let’s face it, those days are quite hazy).
I do remember dancing outside Toronto City Hall for an event organized by promoters of the underground rave scene who were fighting the local government to recognize the importance of nightlife as vital and culturally significant of the City’s socio economic infrastructure.
Looking back, this was an important development in my own taste in electronic music. At the time, I was frequenting many different parties, straddling different underground social scenes and mainly going where my friends wanted to go. The rally covered a wide variety of electronic music and was probably the first event akin to what we know as Festivals today. What developed for me on the concrete ground of City Hall was a sudden awareness of the kind of music that made me want to dance. And that music came from Honey Dijon.
I think most people of this generation of nightlife enthusiasts are aware of her through her now iconic Sugar Mountain set for Boiler Room in 2018. Her hour-long set was like a dissertation of house music, spanning several genres, building narratives and arguments out of vocal edits and jazz riffs.
What I appreciate about Honey Dijon is that there is a vibrancy to her sound that is rooted in disco and African rhythms that feels alive in improvisation through DJ mastery.
If you’ve ever watched Honey Dijon play you can tell she loves DJing. Her sets are always peppered with innovative transitions, fast edits, impromptu build-ups and surprising vocal mash ups. She never panders to the audience, but is solely consumed with telling a story, her story, through the power of music. Sure there are moments when the joy over takes her and she becomes one with the sound and the crowd, propelling her to dance with abandon. But mostly she keeps her her head down, eyes on the decks, tweaking and playing with her edits, trying to concoct a swirling sound that becomes a battle cry, a gospel hymn, a warning, a sexual awakening.
What I appreciate about Honey Dijon and what I feel I can count on whenever I’m fortunate enough to see her play is her clarity and intention. Are her mixes always seamless? No. But that isn’t the point. She’s there to create a moment, to be authentically herself, to be courageous and try things on the fly. This is what makes her sets sound so exciting and real.
The ramping of BPMs, and the quality of techno being defined by how fast it’s playing is a Post-Covid phenomenon that I hope dance and nightlife scholars will study more closely in the coming years. But I think we’re in an interesting era where popular music, particularly with female (presenting/identifying) artists are now going back to a late 90’s, 2000’s sound. Just listen to FLO, Jesse Ware, the return of Robyn: pop is exploring dance club and house rhythms again, which makes Honey Dijon’s latest album all the more relevant.
While we often like to believe ‘the underground’ (whatever that means these days) is an example of utopian wonder where PLUR is bountiful and the space is full of possibility, Honey Dijon continues to make her mark in a cis, white-male dominated environment. As a trans, black woman, her events are undeniably a space of resistance, queer joy, sex positivity and just bad-ass energy.
Still at the top of her game with no signs of slowing down, Honey Dijon, for me, is the personification of what house music is.