DJ Soul Sister is the award-winning “queen of rare groove,” and not only one of the longest-running live DJ artists (mixing and blending 100% vinyl) in her hometown of New Orleans, but known worldwide as a vinyl crate digger, party promoter, and tastemaker. As a veteran radio programmer on WWOZ FM for nearly two decades, she is the host and founder of the popular “Soul Power,” the longest-running rare groove radio show in the U.S., and was cited by New York Times pop music critic Ben Ratliff as “What to Do This Weekend.” Music artist Solange called her “wonderful” and “life given,” and dj artist King Britt said she was “the best…top 3 DJs for me.”

Her live, improvisational, and vinyl-only funk and rare groove music sets have also landed her everywhere from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Voodoo Music Experience, Essence Music Festival, BUKU Music & Art Project, Jam Cruise, Boiler Room, and Electric Forest; to opening for her favorite artists like George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, The Roots, Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker, DaM-FunK, Average White Band, George Duke, Teena Marie, Doug E. Fresh, Biz Markie, ConFunkShun, the funky Meters, Dumpstaphunk, Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, Soul Rebels, Lettuce, Tower of Power, and more; to features on MTV UK and VH1 and in Spin, Wax Poetics, URB, OffBeat, and New Orleans magazines. She has also performed alongside DJ artist/producers such as Questlove, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Mannie Fresh, KON, Maseo (De La Soul), Low Down Loretta Brown (Erykah Badu), Rich Medina, Skeme Richards, and many others. She was even personally invited by George Clinton to DJ his 71st birthday party.

Soul Sister has been throwing parties in NOLA since 1997, including the infamous HUSTLE! party (now presented sporadically; formerly at Hi-Ho Lounge, Mimi’s in the Marigny and Leo’s Bar & Grill), and her self-produced events bring together a diverse mix of locals, visitors, and even celebs to dance to the music she has loved most since she was a child: funk, soul, rare groove, underground disco, jazz fusion, true school hip hop, and more. She is the first DJ to ever win a Big Easy Entertainment Award (2010 and 2017), and has won OffBeat Magazine’s Best of the Beat Award in 2018 and in each year from 2010 through 2016. (New award rules, which give others a chance, prevented her from being nominated in 2017 since she won 3+ years in a row.)

Not only a music lover, she is also a scholar, her opinion-leader and tastemaker status is sought out for interviews, articles, lectures, film presentations and panel discussions. She is the host of Lost and Found on Red Bull Radio, a monthly show which debuted in July 2018. Other recent features include Nelson George’s documentary Finding the Funk, which aired on VH1, the book Dust & Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting, and spots on Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM and on Red Bull Radio. She has also presented papers at the Pop Conference at MoPOP (Museum of Pop Culture, Seattle), Stanford University, and at academic conferences for IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music) and SEMSEC (Society for Ethnomusicology Southeast and Caribbean Chapter).

Soul Sister has taken the nightlife by storm in her hometown, known more for its top-notch live musicians than its underground DJ scene. To her credit, Soul Sister’s parties and live DJ sets are now regarded and respected alongside those of her jazz, blues, rock, R&B and funk musician colleagues, many of them fans.

When she is not playing, teaching about, writing about, or sharing music she loves, she is a devoted full-time administrator in higher education, and is a part-time graduate student working towards an M.A. in musicology.

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