Lady’s 1st ‘spin’ Women making waves on the DJ scene

By Heather Allen

A different kind of magic is in the air at Momstera Lounge in downtown Campbell.

The lights are dimmed. The point of sale has been tucked away. The northfacing window shades are drawn.

Along the small sales floor, seven young women stand in a semicircle surrounded by snaking vines and the bright leaves of Stromanthe “magic star” plants and the large variegated leaves of a mature Monstera albo

The young women discuss Rhianna’s 2023 Super Bowl halftime show while they wait for their teacher, DJ Cutso, to finish setting his music mixer up on the sales counter and for the night’s lesson to finally begin.

These ladies are the 1st Class, an inaugural six-week DJ program that teaches women how to “bring the vibe” to any venue, make a name for themselves and get paid in the competitive and highly political nightlife scene.

The class, hosted by Ladies 1st DJ Club Bay Area, is the brainchild of husband and wife DJ duo Soulmates — Charlene Alcanices and Mike Alcanices — who brought the club together and later formed the class to fill a void that Charlene Alcanices saw in the entertainment industry.

“I saw a lot of inequality happening in the scene and how the promoters or other DJs would approach other female DJs and lack of pay or insinuating that female DJs don’t have the same talent as male DJs. Or they might ask for favors right in exchange for bookings. Those types of things,” said Charlene Alcanices, the owner of Momstera and founder of Ladies 1st DJ Club Bay

Area.

She opened her plant boutique in Campbell Avenue in the winter of 2022 after she spent a good part of the pandemic selling plants over Instagram and by appointment out of her garage. The name — Momstera — was her daughter’s idea. It combines the word “mom” with “monstera,” a popular houseplant with large, serrated leaves.

Charlene Alcanices said she knew that she would infuse her female DJ community into her brick and mortar plant boutique healing lounge. Momstera is as much a healing lounge as it is a plant boutique. The lounge hosts a healing sound bath meditation called “Magic Hour” every fourth

Tuesday of the month.

“So this became headquarters for Ladies 1st after hours,” Charlene Alcanices said. “This is a space where female DJs can come together. It’s a safe space where we can play, ask questions, be vulnerable with each other about what we’re experiencing in the community and it’s really an opportunity for us to empower each other to go out and change the culture within the industry.”

That inequality is something that her husband Mike Alcanices, who is a music director for several nightclubs around town, is all too familiar with.

He said that the female DJ scene was very catty before they started Ladies 1st, but he and Charlene saw that as an opportunity. Instead of having to dress provocatively or give favors to promoters to get bookings or treating other women behind the decks as competition, the women of Ladies 1st come together to elevate each other.

And now they are teaching the next generation.

“It only works if you give it away,” Mike Alcanices said. “You have to think of the next generation because it would be unfair to let it die off when you die off from it. You have to be able to let somebody else take it.”

Charlene Alcanices and Mike Alcanices have high stakes in that next generation of lady DJs—their daughter, Jazz Alcanices, is in the 1st Class.

Jazz Alcanices said it’s been a transcendent experience for her learning to express herself in a new way.

Aside from learning from people who aren’t her parents, one of her favorite moments was shadowing 1st Class’ deckmaster Cutso in Oakland.

“It was just so amazing getting to have a group of girls, who are on the same frequency of high vibration and who appreciate the DJ,” Jazz Alcanices said.

Jazz Alcanices explains that going out with 1st Class and performing with other women has helped them understand and work around microaggressions and other confidence-shaking experiences, like how to stay safe after a gig.

“I feel like there’s a shared sense of tribe mentality or a shared sense of understanding with one another so it makes it feel more I guess, safe in that way and comfortable for us,” Jazz Alcanices said.

That tribe brought their high frequency vibes — and the beat — to 1st Class’ graduation night at 55 South in early March after spending six weeks learning how to mix tracks and match beats with various songs playing at once.

Each of the seven women took a turn at the decks, spinning mixes of crowdpleasing throwbacks and modern hits to a packed house.

The classmates danced and cheered in the front row, losing themselves in the sounds of their tribe, cheering each other on.

Each was the other’s biggest fan.

The night finished as Charlene Alcanices took to the decks, closing out an all-female DJ night, giving a glimpse of Soulmates’ goal.

“I’ll feel like we’ve arrived at our goal when this is normal,” Mike Alcanices said. “I want it to be so common for a woman to be a DJ that she is no longer labeled as a ‘woman DJ,’ she’s just a DJ.”

When women can band together to support each other as DJs in a little plant boutique, it looks like that future may soon come into bloom.