Few names reverberate as loudly across the electronic music scene as Honey Dijon’s. The Chicago-born, Berlin-based DJ is one of the most revered names in house, heralded as something close to—if not actual—royalty. But the journey from outsider to industry pioneer has been a tumultuous one, as the Panorama Bar prodigy reveals in a new podcast. “To be really honest, I was invisible for so many years,” she tells Jakob Thoene. “I wasn’t even considered, so I learned to not have my value placed in other people’s opinions about me.”
In the hour-long, candid conversation hosted by Telekom Electronic Beats, Dijon opens up about her experiences—in life and in the industry, from school to the international stage—reckoning with the issues she’s faced as a Black trans woman. “My childhood was horrible,” she admits—”not from my house, not from my nuclear family, but when I left that front door, being a non-binary person in a Black and Latin neighbourhood, that was not a walk in the park.”
From her childhood in Chicago, to finding community in New York’s trans scene, to building her name in Berlin—Dijon elaborates on the intricacies of her experience, and the notions of success. “Success for me is the fact that I survived as a trans woman,” she says, “because we all know that there is a [disproportionate] amount of violence that happens against trans women of colour.”
Listen to the podcast below, and find out more here.
Feature Image ROBERT RIEGER, courtesy TELEKOM ELECTRONIC BEATS
