I’ve known Chippy for over a decade (we’re best friends…) and she’s always had the same energy: loud, fast, hilarious, brilliant. What’s changed is the scale. She’s navigated US deportation, DJed every city on earth, built out a caring underground scene in Toronto thru DJ workshops and her Pep Rally parties, co-founded Soujourn Festival and is now launching a label-Pep Rally Records. Chippy’s built an entire world while still being fully herself. We caught up across time zones to talk about how she’s doing it all, what the label means to her, and what comes next for someone who is literallyyy nonstop….

For those new here can we talk about what first pushed you towards DJing and what keeps it interesting for you now?

I’ve always made music and played shows. When I got deported from the US, I needed to make money quickly. I was going to see all these DJs, and thought “well, I could do this…” I already knew how to DJ, but it wasn’t the number one thing that I wanted to do. I ended up falling in love with it even though it started as a way for me to survive. DJing goes hand in hand with making music. I can play the music I like and also play the music that I make.

How would you describe your sound today, and how has it shifted from when you first started doing music?

My influences come from so many different places–from the places that I’ve lived, the situations that I’ve been in and environments I’ve partied in. I’ve always been influenced by electronic music because you’re able to put so many different elements into the sound and there are no boundaries. I like to experiment with playing a bunch of different things. I guess the only thing that’s changed is other people putting me in a box. I’ve put out a lot of hard techno mixes but I didn’t really see myself in that space. People would hear a specific side of mine and then would be like, ‘Oh, that’s who she is.’ There are other artists in the techno space who are like ‘this is my sound, this is who I am’ and that’s what they’re gonna play. I just didn’t see myself in that grouping of artists. I’m trying to find my way back to the roots of all the different sounds that I really enjoy-all the different genres of electronic music, not just a specific type of techno.

Photography by Callum Sheedy

How did Pep Rally happen? What sort of space were you trying to fill?

When I first came to Toronto, it was a bit of trial and error for me forming different collectives with other people. I was throwing new parties which were kind of flopping in the beginning. There was this collective that I was a part of called Something Special, which clearly wasn’t something special, because it doesn’t exist anymore. *laughs* It was a bunch of us but then everyone started doing their own thing. The only two members that stayed together were Karim and myself. We had a similar vision and wanted to keep creating spaces and parties. We wanted a queer, black & brown rave where we could feel free. A diverse group that is also diverse in the sounds that we play and diverse in our mindset. There wasn’t a space where we could do exactly what we wanted in the beginning and now it’s grown into something even bigger than we even imagined. It’s one of the biggest raves in the city of its kind. We’ve stayed true to a lot of the beginning concepts and have also incorporated the needs of our audience.

How do you include your audience in your decisions?

I always ask for input on the lineups. I also ask, ‘did you feel safe in these situations? What do you want us to bring? Do you want free water?’  things like that. Paying attention to the audience is an important thing for me. I’m always asking questions to improve what we’re doing. I’ve also done workshops to teach other people how to organize parties, because, you know, we aren’t going to be doing this forever. Passing the torch to the other younger collectives that are passionate about this is important- a lot of the older generation just hoard power and space and knowledge. This isn’t the only party to ever exist and even now we’re kind of taking some step backs, doing less events and holding space for younger collectives to try to take over the space.

What’s special about the Toronto scene? 

The good thing about Toronto is, there are a lot of people in the community that are down to work with each other. For example, promoters will collab on events. We share the dates of when we’re throwing parties–we have a shared calendar. Everyone is willing to be like, ‘Oh, you’re throwing something, then I won’t throw something then.’ Everyone communicates. I don’t really see people being competitive in a way that’s like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna take you down.’ People are really just down to have a good time. There’s a lot of different scenes. Just like how there’s diversity in the food and culture here, there’s diversity in all the different sounds and parties. There’s always something going on.

Was it easy to build all of this? 

We’ve faced many challenges. There’s not a lot of spaces in the city to throw events. Everything is so expensive– from renting space to lighting to sound–everything. We’re a DIY event- it costs us almost 40k each rave and upwards. The Canadian dollar is low and everyone’s fees are in USD which makes it almost double, so it ends up costing us so much. It’s one of the reasons why we want to take a step back from throwing as many events. We’ve been doing monthly, maybe twice a month. It’s quite a lot.

Are there any collaborators, you want to note?

Nino Brown is one of my big collaborators. Her and I have a party together called Circus, that’s a branch of Pep Rally. We do it during Halloween and Pride. Also Young Teesh and Bambii- You know the girls, we like to get together. Even though sonically, our sounds can be different, we make it work. Dancing from Heaven is another party that I’ve collaborated with. Format and Last Planet are who I do Sojourn with. 

Let’s talk about Sojourn! How did you go from throwing parties to a full on festival?

Format and Last Planet are two other older collectives in the city that do warehouse raves at the same venue we throw Pep Rally. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to throw a festival on my own. I don’t have that kind of money or experience with getting all the security, fencing, sound and lighting to that extent. We all wanted to do something at a bigger scale. We figured if we put our audiences together we could really do something special. We all have a similar vision about underground music and culture and a desire to build it up more.

The festivals that do exist in Toronto are very EDM and mainstream. Nobody does programming like a Dekmantel or something more underground with interesting sounds at a festival scale production in Canada, or in Toronto specifically. We really wanted to offer that to the city. There’s so much local talent that only play in small bars every night. They’re not playing at a festival scale, even though they technically could. Mixing local acts and bringing bigger underground artists to Toronto was really important to us. This is only our second year, and everyone’s really been enjoying it. It’s been exciting for us to see it grow.

What did you experience the first year of throwing this compared to this year?

I was way less stressed out this year, that’s for sure. The first year was insane because you don’t even know what to expect. You want to just kind of put everything into one festival, because you don’t even know if it’s going to happen next year. The first year I was like, I’m going to put everyone on the lineup. All my friends have to be on it. Everyone has to be involved. 

You don’t know how many people are going to come. You don’t know if anyone cares. Are people going to find out about it? You’re like, oh my god, I’m just gonna be losing a shit ton of money, and this is gonna, you know, be horrible. This year, I was like, okay, got this. Like, we’ll get it together. Obviously, it’s still stressful because it’s still a new project. But I think, yeah, we found out all the mistakes we made the first year, and we were able to scale it back a little and make it make sense but still have it feel as big as the year before. 

Do you have any favorite moments from last year or this year?

It’s so weird because it all just flies by. The first day is really, really stressful– I’m running around, making a list of all the things we need to fix. Saturday is the biggest day and usually the day that I play, so it’s still so hectic for me. This year Juan Atkins played Sunday. He’s like one of the creators of techno–a lot of people didn’t know that somehow. For me and the two other people, Drew and Fahad, who I did the party with, it was an epic moment to close the festival with one of the people who created techno and it was really the only time we could kind of let go, because it was the end. Sunday, I’m like, ‘Okay, fuck it. Like, let’s just party.’ 

Are you gonna do it again next year?

Yes! We’re already in the process of booking. Last year we didn’t know if we were going to do the second year because we lost money. Well, we lost money this year too, but I think maybe the third year might be our lucky year.

And finally, let’s hear about Pep Rally Records! What inspired you to launch a record label?

Even though I announced that I would be stepping back from throwing so many Pep Rally events, there is still a lot we want to do. I have music of my own that I want to release and there are not many labels that I felt like made sense for the music that I’ve been making. I also want to feature artists from Toronto/Canada. There are a lot that I really like that have so much good music but aren’t getting much support here with budgets and promotion. I’ll still be looking at people around the world, but Toronto is my focus currently. I’m really excited. I’ve been working with a lot of really interesting artists that I think people are going to like. The first release is in September. It’s going to start with some of my releases and collaborations with people that I’ve been working with here.

What sort of artists or sound are you aiming for?

If you’ve been to Pep Rally, you’ll understand that it’s going to be a similar vein of music played at our parties. There are no boundaries, sonically. You can mix it into a bunch of different genres, but it stays within the electronic world. I want it to just be a fun, playful, sexy vibe.

Photography by Callum Sheedy

If you happen to be in Toronto this weekend, you can celebrate Chippy’s birthday at her annual Pep Rally Birthday Rave. Give her a hug for me!