DJ Paulette’s Welcome To The Club is an enlightening journey through the highs and lows of a life in electronic dance music that spans three decades. Written from a Black woman’s perspective it provides a rallying call for future generations.

Photography : Lee Baxter

Paulette hails from the North and in 2024 it remains her home. The city of Manchester has long had a thriving club culture and it’s there that Paulette discovered her true identity as a DJ. The recollection of those early days is told in sometimes harsh but glorious detail in the Finders Keepers: In the Beginning chapter. After a stint of go-go dancing at the famed Number 1 Club Paulette commenced her transition from a “naive, twenty-four-year-old unhappily married wife in suburban Stockport …” to become a face on the Manchester clubbing and gay scene and, eventually, a name DJ.

As she maintains, back in the early Nineties, there were no Red Bull Academies or mentors – no YouTube tutorials – where you could learn the craft of Dj’ing. You simply bought and hustled the vinyl and honed your skills. Paulette’s passion and love for the music and clubbing was what she took to the party. She landed a gig at Flesh at the Hacienda and found a welcoming community, a fresh vibrant rebellious family with a lineage linked to Queer Nation and Kinky Gerlinky. Flesh ran for five years. The club elevated women DJs and had a profound impact on Manchester’s LBGTQ+ arts and culture scene and DJ Paulette was at the heart of the action.

Predictably, she had to deal with male DJs or record shop bods who refused to take her seriously but she was undeterred. Paulette took the next step of moving to London. She found a job in the music industry and sought out like minded souls and allies in clubs like Gilles Peterson’s Monday night session, That’s How It Is – a club night close to my own heart.

Welcome To The Club takes us a wild ride that follows the global evolution of electronic dance music. It takes us to Paris and Ibiza. We get to experience “the death of a DJ” and her re-birth. In the book she channels her fierce positivity, love of the music and combines it with a dynamic intelligence that allows her to review and extract lessons based on the misogyny, racism and homophobia that she experienced over three cyclical decades.

The result is Paulette recognising her current role as an “elder” within her community and enjoying a positive and exciting alignment with the rising tide of younger Black women DJs who found fresh momentum and purpose during the dark, forced isolation of the COVID times. Paulette introduces her readers to the talents and missions of Jaguar, Jamz Supernova, Erica McCoy, Nia Archives, Anz, Sherelle and Nadine Noor alongside the works of BEMA (Black Electronic Music Association) and the Black Artist Database. There are tectonic shifts ahead.

Her journey from pre internet to the modern day metaverse has been radical. After rallying her will to fight back the crippling depression of the COVID years DJ Paulette’s energy has been reignited The positive impact of the BLM movement along with a renewed sense of freedom reveals a DJ Paulette who appears more fired up and more resilient and militant than ever. She uses the closing sections of the book to celebrate her community and offers up a rallying cry to her sisters and allies, in clubland and beyond, that calls for more unity, for no more silence and a resolve to push ever forward. Speaking from the heart of the Black electronic dancefloor Paulette declares, “Long may my work and ministry continue.” And with that I concur… ‘Welcome to the club! ‘