DJ Ohso felt something important was missing from Atlanta. There were no party spaces for Black women like herself to feel completely safe. There were few spaces for women and LGBTQ+ people to feel empowered to pursue their craft. She wanted a place for people to be themselves, and she knew she needed to be the one to create it.
Ohso, 35, is an Atlanta-based DJ who created Bounce Dat, a party series designed to create a safe space for women, femmes and queer people. Begun in 2019, Bounce Dat returned at The Loft on June 11 for the first time since the start of the pandemic to help raise money for her family at risk of losing their home.
Born to Ethiopian parents, Ohso grew up in Toronto and was expected to find a job as a doctor or lawyer. As a young teenager, she snuck out to a concert and instantly realized she wanted to become a DJ.
But when she asked her mother if she could be a DJ, she was told that “girls don’t DJ.”
Fast forward a few years, Ohso studied nursing and then took another job to pay off debt. But at a conference, she met a DJ who helped her create a tangible idea of who she could become, teaching her how to mix records in his basement.
After watching YouTube videos and interviews that helped her become more confident in her career choice, she booked a one-way ticket to Miami — after telling her parents she was on a trip looking into job openings — and began seeking out DJing opportunities.
“When you come from that type of household, it can be very judgmental, it can be like they’re just extremely hard on you because of that pressure of ‘hey, we left our country and we sacrificed our own lives to give you a better life,’” she said.
Credit: Courtesy of DJ Ohso
Credit: Courtesy of DJ Ohso
“The moment I decided to start living for myself, and when I noticed that I started to actually feel genuine happiness, I felt that weight being lifted,” she continued. “I felt that feeling of all of these things that my parents have been afraid of and trying to discourage me from doing, it was only because they didn’t understand it or that they didn’t feel like they were capable of it.”
At one of her first big sets, in which she opened for DJ Spinderella, a special guest was in attendance: Will Smith. She remembered him going crazy on the dance floor and shouting out her name.
“I just was jaw on the floor because now, on top of the nerves of this is my first time, this is that thing that I’ve just felt in my gut I needed to leave my country to do, and then now you’re also telling [me] that the person that helped inspire that moment is here?” she said.
One of the figures who helped her get into the scene was Monie Love, a British rapper, two-time Grammy Award nominee and radio personality for KISS 104.1 in Atlanta. Love met Ohso at a party and they immediately bonded. Love decided to “adopt her as a little sister” and “be for her what I wished I had.”
“Being culturally a prodigal daughter, if you will, as far as being from a completely different country, and moving to another country in regards to shooting off a career within the culture and just being bitten by the cultural bug, I know a thing or two about that and that is a main connector between DJ Ohso and myself,” she told The AJC.
“I wanted to also expose her to what I do professionally, the circles that I’m in professionally, because I see something in her and I feel like she’s going to take it, she’s going to use it, and she’s going to craft her skill,” she added. “That’s the kind of female empowerment I vibe with, less talking about it, more doing.”
Both Ohso and Love said that meeting the crème de la crème of celebrities immediately launched Ohso into the limelight. She found that Miami was too expensive and moved to Atlanta, where she became a teaching instructor at a DJ school. After seven years, she found that Atlanta was “the closest to home that I’ve experienced besides Toronto” since it allowed her and others around her to be themselves amid a rich and creative music scene. Around this time, her parents became more supportive of her craft and they better understood the business aspects of her profession.
“People [were] just being like, ‘well, you can’t wear your hair like that because that’s going to stop opportunities from coming,’ and I’m just like, ‘I don’t hear you, I don’t hear anything you’re saying,’” Ohso said. “At the end of the day, I feel like a lot of people speak from their own limitations and not on purpose.”
Credit: Courtesy of DJ Ohso
Credit: Courtesy of DJ Ohso
After taking in the city’s nightlife and music scenes, she found that there were very few parties and spaces for women and LGBTQ+ people to feel comfortable and “sexy.” She envisioned an inclusive party with everyday people coming together through different genres while also giving Black women a place specifically for themselves.
“We can fit into so many different pockets, but where is the party where you can come with your home girls, and you can enjoy yourself without having to worry about being grabbed on or hit on or danced on unsolicited?” she asked.
She imagined a blue-lit room featuring DJs playing the music of Foxy Brown and Megan Thee Stallion, where partygoers dressed like Rihanna and Beyonce. The party would have money guns, a beauty parlor area and a face tattoo corner. It would be open to women, femmes and LGBTQ+ people, and men could only come if accompanied by a woman or invited in. After building up her reputation, she created Bounce Dat in 2019.
“It’s set up in the most ideal way to me to where people can come uninhibited and just enjoy themselves for the night and not feel ridiculed and not feel judged, not feel that they’re not safe,” she said.
A few months in, Ohso canceled Bounce Dat because of the pandemic. Though the concept remained similar between 2019 and last Saturday — she still wanted to provide to people who had nowhere else to go — this year’s is for a different cause.
At the start of the pandemic, her father passed away in Ethiopia, and for the past two years, she devoted her time to caring for her family as they risked losing their home in Toronto. Ohso said many people have volunteered their time to get Bounce Dat up and running as part of fundraising efforts to bring peace back to her family while her mom tries to save the family home.
“I can’t imagine any other way that I can contribute to taking care of where he left off without it being what I do as my career,” she said. “... Just knowing that he was okay with it, and that he was happy for me and wanted me to be successful no matter what, it gave me that extra push that I needed.”
Over the next few months, Ohso hopes to elevate the production value of Bounce Dat and scale to bigger and better spaces, as well as invite headliners to create special moments. But for now, she is focused on giving back to her family who gave her assistance and acceptance along her journey.
“Everything will be OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end,” she said.
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