Movement Music Festival opens this weekend at Hart Plaza, and Stacey Hotwaxx Hale will be there for the 26th consecutive year.
Hale, known as the Godmother of House, has been on the lineup since the festival's first year as the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. When that event launched, the lineup had hundreds of DJs and acts. Very few were women. "They weren't paying attention to women," Hale told Outlier Media. "And not to be at fault, that was just our society at the time."
Hale came up in the late 1970s as Detroit's dance scene was moving from disco into house and techno. Her older brother introduced her to music. DJ Ken Collier, a foundational figure in Detroit's early house scene, gave her mentorship before she turned 21. "Once I saw what Ken was doing, that's the first time I heard a mix of two records," Hale said. "I knew that was my path."
By the mid-1980s, she was DJing on WGPR's "The Scene" and had crushed 600 DJs and rappers in the 1985 Motor City Mix competition. She built her name in a scene that included The Electrifying Mojo, Duane "In The Mix" Bradley, Jeff Mills, Hump the Grinder, and the Belleville Three. The rooms were Cheeks, Club Heaven, and the Chess Mate. "The music that we were playing, you couldn't hear on the radio," Hale said. "So that elevated us to a whole 'nother status."
Zana Smith, who owned the Downstairs Pub in that era and now runs the Spectacles storefront and Soul Detroit brand, puts the period plainly. "It was a real danceable era," Smith said. "A lot of times when you go out now, people are just nodding their heads."
DJ Stacye J is part of the generation Hale helped create space for. A Detroit native who started making beats in the mid-2000s on entry-level equipment, she absorbed old-school R&B from her mother and hip-hop from her brother. "So I got all the music from before Motown, to Motown, to NWA," she said with a laugh. She found mentorship in Detroit Trickster and DJ Sicari. In 2010, Piper Carter brought her in as DJ-in-residence for the Foundation of Women in Hip Hop's weekly events at the Old Miami. From there she worked Detroit's art and hip-hop spaces: 5e Gallery, the Temptation Lounge, the Liquid Flow event series.
DJ Killa $quid is also on the Movement bill this weekend.
"I was being who I am," Hale said. "My roots were planted very early in my life for music of sound."
Movement runs Saturday through Monday at Hart Plaza.
