Jaguar knows everyone in the room. Probably because they’re all fans, or artists on her label, and therefore instant friends. In between hugs and hellos, she grabs two untouched espresso martinis off her dinner table, and heads to an empty stairwell in the back of the club to find some form of peace and quiet. Despite offering to leave them on the floor in the corner, security confiscates the martinis. We crack on.
BSC: How has Utopia changed since it launched with its first event in 2020?
Jag: I was going to launch Utopia in 2020, but then it was lockdown, so the first one we did was a socially distanced event at Night Tales [in Hackney]. Everyone was sat down, it was very weird. You could order these giant cocktails to kind of keep you in your seat, but it was still really fun. I just booked my friends really - Tshirt, Tajine Tabasco, Absolete - it wasn't quite the Utopia I had envisioned and it's changed so much.
In the time since we've become a record label. So now when I'm booking the nights I have the label artists in mind as a priority because I kind of want to tie into their [music] releases and I really want to nurture those artists.
I see UTOPIA as a community, with so many different aspects - we have the record label, the club nights, the podcast, and a WhatsApp group with 500 creatives in it. It's all about working together and creating a space that people feel safe to be themselves in with a queer edge.
BSC: That’s Utopia, but you also have the Jaguar foundation?
Jag: The foundation came about during lockdown. Initially, I taught an online dj course for Future DJ called Future1000, to get young women and nonbinarypeople under the age of 18 into dj-ing and dance music. From there, we started trying to find statistics and information about gender in dance music, but there just wasn't really anything out there. So then me and my manager at the time decided to do our own research and put together a report with Sony’s social justice department. It was this massive undertaking but something I'm so proud of.
We now actually had proper statistics about radio, streaming, charts, festivals.
The top lines were for the official chart, but only 5%* of the biggest dance songs were being made by women and non-binary artists as the primary artist, which means that 95%* had men as the primary artist. For radio it was the top 100 songs on UK radio, 1% , for festivals.... There was loads of press coverage.
The report mainly looked at the commercial side because that’s where the most data is, and that's where it's ‘the worst' [in terms of diversity].
I've been trying to use the report to make more people understand that problem. When we put the report out, I felt like there was a lot of momentum, and from the conversations I've had with big people at big labels or big artists that it was taken very seriously. I think it just opened the door to talk about these things, and provided statistics that people could refer to.
BSC: How important is connecting with the new generation of dance music artists in London?
Jag: It's more about my personal goal of wanting to help people and make the world a better place by using the platform I'm so lucky to have, and have been able to build up over the last ten years. I want to help the new generation but also it's been really important to connect with the older generation - I think we can learn a lot from each other.
For example I've been lucky enough to connect with dj Paulette and Smoking Jo, who are literally two women in their fifties - and pioneers! Smoking Jo is still the only woman to have won the DJ Magazine's No1 dj of the Year Award in 1992, and no woman has ever won that since. They've both just released books and they're at a point in their career where they've had to overcome so many obstacles, but I feel like finally now they're getting their flowers. But they deserve more than flowers! I feel really lucky to have connected with two black women from the UK in dance music because I didn't know about them until lockdown. I can learn from them and they can learn from us - I think we just have to be really empathetic and understanding of each other to progress.
BSC: So what do you look for when signing an artist to label UTOPIA, or when collaborating on a track?
Jag: I say that I find people. It's so important to have people who you can vent to, or talk about just whatever! That you can trust and connect with. There's not many women of color who've come up in UK dance music, and I really hold them to my heart. Not only did I love their tune, but I want to work with people I believe in. Like Mel Brown, Lewis Lennon, Van Damn, all of them. Genuinely it’s like a family, but it's also such a pleasure to call these guys my friends and [having them on the label] means I just get to hang out with them more. It feels like we're creating something that doesn't exist; the music scene can be so hard, and cutthroat, especially now with the cost of living crisis and clubs closing. 40 festivals have closed their doors this summer in the UK, five clubs a week or something - times are really hard in this music scene.
BSC: You’ve come a long way since 2020. What are your career goals now?
Jag: I have many goals. This is an interesting point in my life because I had so many goals and then I got to the point which I've been trying for since I started. Getting on Radio 1, being a more established taste-maker in music, having a club night that people come to. (I still freak out every time people show up!) Having a label, all of these things, but I think that now Utopia is very much my future. It's going to be the legacy of my career.
I want it to be a festival, I wasn't us to be Defected Records level in terms of notoriety as a label. I want to take it all the way. Writing camps. A publishing company.
And in terms of the Jaguar foundation, I want to build on that more, do more editions of the report with up to date stats and maybe go more into the nuances of gender because that experience is so nuanced depending on how you identify. I feel like gender identity is such a fast evolving thing. Grants for artists. And all the while, I’m gonna keep dj-ing, keep doing radio, and build the podcast. Utopia is about giving people a good gig, having an opportunity to test out new music, meet the community, and other people from the label. That's what really interests me; bringing people together. This is dance music! It's about coming together to listen to the music you love.
*These statistics are from 2022 and have since changed.
-poster-00001.jpg)
