My name is DJ China L’One, the Founder and CEO of the first official Female DJ in the world, the now, renowned We Run the World Female DJ Agency.
I was born in Sierra Leone; West Africa and came to the UK at the age of 13 to join my Mother. At the age of 14 my mother was sadly diagnosed with schizophrenia so both myself and my stepfather helped look after my younger brother James who was 1 years old.
As a child, I suffered from stuttering which was a struggle for me as my ambition was to enter the performing arts industry as an actress. At the age of 16, I decided I had to do something about it, so I got into self-development, by reading books to help me conquer my fear. Also, at this age I was then accepted at the Italia Conti School in Wimbledon where I would go in every Saturday to practice performing arts - dancing, singing and acting.
In the 90s, I became a poet as a therapy to channel and to help me deal with my mums’ mental illness, my stuttering and my confidence. I have written lots of poems and performed poetry slam all over London where I have won various poetry competitions. One of my poem titles ‘Success’ won for Black History Month 2002 at Croydon College, where I was attending. I was then called by the principal officer of Croydon college, asking me if I could recite it for the Graduators of 2002. Because of my stammering, I told the principal I might be too nervous knowing there would be hundreds of people there. So, every day after college, I would practice but eventually I kindly ask the team if I could pre-record it and mime it on the day. On the day, I did mime it and to this day, everyone that attended that graduation thought I’d performed the poem live. As some many graduate and families came up to me saying, that my poem ‘Success’ was touching and made them cry. Performing poetry slam really did helped me with my stammering. My poem, “When you are Natural, you can never be Ugly”, was used as a drama sketch for young people and was performed at the Brixton art gallery.
Back to my DJing, in the early 2001, my friend invited me to her birthday party. Whilst there, I noticed that she wasn’t very happy, and I asked her why. She said it was because nobody was dancing, so I said to her, “don’t worry”. I then went up to the DJ and said to him, “I know big tunes, can you show me what to do with the DJ equipment?” The DJ showed me the basics, like how to bring in the music, whilst fading out the other and how to change the music. As soon as I learnt this process, I took over and everyone started dancing and my friend was happy. When the party finished, people then came up to me and said that they didn’t realise I was a DJ. I loved the buzz and that everyone was happy. I loved the fact that I could play music and not worry about my stuttering. At that point I made the decision that I am going to be a DJ.
So that was how my journey of being a DJ started and if I look back, the next day, I went to cash convertor and bought the same equipment the guy had from the party and practiced with it. I then went to my local youth centre and I said to them that I would like to have a night, every Friday and I want to play music; They accepted my request. I then started doing events at my local Baptist church in the early 2000, getting all the young people over the UK to attend. To achieve this, I promoted the event with the local newspaper called The Voice in 2000-2001. All my various workshops and young people events were a success. Also, in 2001, I woke up with an idea called “Raw Talent”. The idea behind this was to help young people who had raw natural talent in singing, dancing, rapping, DJing, but lack confidence. A friend helped me put a business plan together and then I approached the Princes Trust with this “wicked” idea and asked them if they would give me a grant to do this as I was confident that this would help the young people. They loved the idea and offered me a grant. So, in the same year, Raw Talent was born. It was a membership club only and aimed for young people under 18 years of age. As well as volunteers, I paid professional singers, dancers to come down and help me at the club, which was based at my local youth centre. This became such a huge success, I was granted an award by the Princess Trust for single-handedly running the club. I was then approached by the Royal Arts Society and also recognise me for creating a platform for young people realising their talent in my community.
Fast forward to 2005, I was still DJing, but I also decided I wanted to go to university to further my education. I attend Thames Valley University at West London and studied two degrees in both Media Arts and music Technology. In 2007 I completed my university course but also found out that I was one of 20 out of 200 applicants selected to take part in BBC3 documentary “Making Slough Happy. The documentary was televised for 4 consecutive weeks and it show-cased my talent for rapping and singing as I performed one of my songs on the last day in Slough on Television.
In 2012 I woke up with another idea and run it by my friend Tamara. I told her I wanted to run an all-female DJ agency. She said “this is right up your street – do it..” So, attending business workshops and sessions and asked their advice on how I start the business, whether it should be a limited company etc… So, in April 2012, We Run the World Female DJ Agency (WRTW) was born with the whole initial idea to highlight and make the public aware of female DJs, as I was aware from around 2004, female DJs were not recognised other than well-known radio female DJs. This however, was not the case for your average female DJ. So, my plan was to make people want to consciously book female DJs and not just their male counterparts. I was going hard on all the social media platforms to make this happen.
Now in 2019 I can happily say that I have accomplished this and now We Run the World have clients who will openly say that up until now, they have always used a male DJ for any event but now they are saying they want a female DJ. Although long, I had a reason why I named the agency, We Run the World Female DJ Agency, because I did not want this to just be a UK awareness but a worldwide change. It wasn’t about getting or winning awards but for females DJs to do what they love and have fun doing it.
I can also proudly say that from 2012 to present day, we have DJ’d in various countries nationally and internationally - some of those being: Canada, US, Mexico, Dominican Republic, China, India, Italy and Norway and Sweden. As well as that we have worked with a lot of big brands like: Sketchers, Boohoo, Morphe, Glamour Beauty Festival, Channel 4, Colombia Pictures, Women’s FA Cup, Adidas, Mercedes Benz and many other well-known corporate events, high-end hotels, beauty and fashion. In the United Kingdom, we have played in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham, Derby, Preston and many more. We Run the World is here, to help female DJs and to give them an opportunity and a platform. That’s what we are about and that’s what we will carry on doing - making pathways for female DJs worldwide.
