If you know what you’re looking for, Seattle’s Queer club scene can take you right to the night of your life. Among those cultivating that electricity are local DJs Mixx America and Summersoft, some of the many Black and Queer entertainers across the area who have become staples in the community — even up against expectations of arbitrary palatability and pervasive inequity in the industry.
Somnia Feral, known publicly as DJ Mixx America, first started spinning at the Central Washington University’s radio station for a summer course credit when she was 19. Now, she works as a resident DJ at Queer/Bar, the Wildrose, and Chop Suey. As a Black entertainer primarily DJing for the Queer community, she said she’s felt an imbalance in promotion, publicity, and compensation.
“I've been told behind the scenes — from promoters that are honest with me — that my cis, male, white counterparts are going there and quoting them two and a half times what I'm quoting,” Mixx told the SGN. “So maybe that's why I'm getting booked so much, because I'm not asking for $300 to walk in the building and do something that I love.”
Mixx mentioned how there have been weeks at a time when she’s worked night after night, having to turn some venues down, which she considers a blessing.
Music has always been a part of Mixx’s life. It stuck with her through her marriages, divorces, day jobs, departure from school, and relocating. It wasn’t until a decade ago when DJing became the career move that made Mixx a name to know in Seattle.
The club where Mixx jumped into Seattle’s Queer community and began her full-time DJing was Maxim’s, which has since closed. It was owned by three Black Lesbians, which was a comfort for Mixx, who had just come out as a Lesbian, she said. Queer venues were some of the first to embrace her, and through word-of-mouth, the news of her DJing skills spread, flooding her with bookings of all sorts.
With that success, she was quit her day job in the private sector and started her own LLC, Mixx America, almost three years ago.
An Oakland native who moved to Seattle in 2019, DJ Summersoft told the SGN that people in this city seem to pay more attention to up-and-coming non-Black musicians, particularly those who are LGBTQIA+.
“I get a lot of pushback, sometimes, by some people in the crowd when I'm playing hip-hop in general,” Summersoft said. “I think the interesting part of that is that, when I came out [as Queer], this is the music of my coming out, too. I wasn't young in the club listening to pop music.”
Celebrating Blackness in the Seattle club-music scene
Summersoft said that entitlement — the expectation of what Queer music should sound like — and the tunes themselves “go hand in hand.” She noted how her style is “all things soul” across genres, from hip-hop to R&B, Afrobeats to disco, and everything in between.
Mixx, similarly, said she wanted to “cut her teeth” in the field as a Black woman when she began her music career, and now specializes in old-school hip-hop and R&B. While the artists' love and familiarity with the music sets them apart from other local talent, crowds still request younger, whiter, ultra-pop artists, like Chappell Roan, even on a night dedicated to their sets that highlight Black culture.
Mixx said she won’t bend to that pressure. She’s comfortable in her skin, confident in her craft, and has earned the respect of her audience. But she has previously mused as to whether she would be more prolific or profitable if she quieted her artist brain and altered both her appearance and musical style. Ultimately, though, promoters hire Mixx for her authentic self.
“I'm not trying to be skinny. I'm not trying to be young, I’m 45, and I’m okay with that, I’m proud of that,” Mixx said. “I'm going to cut my hair; I'm going to dye it fuchsia. I'm going to do what the fuck I want to do. I'm comfortable doing it like that, and I also book 20 gigs a month doing it just like that.”
Both Mixx and Summersoft are well-established and unapologetic in their signature styles and have deep love for the venues and communities that have embraced them. Nonetheless, they believe a hard conversation about race in the Seattle music industry needs to be held.
“I have more skill — and that's a fact, Mixx said. “I know that there are DJs that have less skill than me who are making more money than me because they're not Black.”
While Seattle’s Queer entertainment scene is fairly diverse, the lack of support for Black-produced events and the prioritization of white Queer music creates complications. Summersoft suggests that a perceived lack of Black DJs might reflect audiences self-selecting events and circles that rarely promote Black entertainers more than once a year for Pride.
That doesn’t mean Black-centered events don’t exist in Seattle — Summersoft and Mixx host one themselves with their friend and colleague Deejay Hershe called “Hella Softies.” They started it in 2022 on Summersoft’s birthday, and it became a twice annual show at the Wildrose: once in December for her birthday and once in the summer, often falling before Seattle’s Pride weekend.
“The goal is to have a lot of Black folks, or POC, or people who really enjoy our music specifically, between the three of us, coming out and filling up the Wildrose and having it be a completely different energy,” Summersoft said.
Summersoft and Mixx want the Seattle club-music scene to cultivate that energy and allow Black queerness to exist comfortably — not just this Pride, not just once a month but consistently.
DJ Mixx America can be found during Pride here:
DJ Summersoft can be found here:
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