Meet Lauren Munar

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Munar.

Hi Lauren, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
After catching the house bug first as a dancer in the early 2000s, I began DJing and promoting events in my home city of Los Angeles by 2004. Over the years, I enjoyed many residencies at some of the top clubs in LA and was probably one of the better-known female house DJs in LA during the mid-2000s.

By the late 2000s, my ear for music began to change and I was into more organic and less electronic sounds at a time when electro-house was popular. I also felt like I was outgrowing the club scene. Simultaneously, I started a career in early-stage start-ups, which was all-consuming. I hung up my headphones by 2009 with no intention of returning to DJing as my start-up career became increasingly intense.

During my decade in the world of internet start-ups, I helped build 5 different companies in the home and fashion space, including ShoeDazzle, which was responsible for starting the online subscription fashion business model. I experienced many career highs and lows. The last few companies had weak leadership teams and I experienced a string of bad bosses. By the end of my career in start-ups, I was drowning in the toxic masculinity of Silicon Beach (the southern California counterpart of Silicon Valley) and was in desperate need of a career change.

As my start-up career was coming to an end, I was getting married and my husband was here in Atlanta working on various movies as a sculptor for the film industry. In our first year of marriage, we saw each other for a total of 6 weeks because the big-budget fantasy and sci-fi film projects that he tends to work on were all being made in Atlanta, and not in Los Angeles. We quickly realized that at this distance, our marriage would be difficult to sustain.

I didn’t know what I was going to do next work-wise and the burnout from 10 years of start-ups was real. I was ready for a change of scenery, so I decided to make the move to Atlanta in 2017. The first couple of years were hard. I was in a pretty deep state of depression and was set adrift in a new city without a community or the sense of identity that I left behind with my previous career.

Thankfully, my husband always encouraged me to get back to DJing and I found my roundabout way back to it eventually. At first, I began thinking about producing events after I started going to events at what used to be The Music Room, as well as the early days of Chaka Khan Hacienda–both of these places are where I began to find my now closest friends and community.

In October 2018, a big group of friends from LA and Miami decided to attend the Defected Croatia festival the following year. In December, I finally warmed enough to the idea of DJing again and bought my first digital DJ controller. Using just my iPhone and a DJ app, I dipped my toe back into DJing and was really enjoying everything that was possible in the digital age.

A few months later, I received an email from the Managing Director of Defected Records, (a major record label in the UK) which was sent to all of the Defected Croatia ticketholders, informing us that they were holding a mix contest for an opportunity to play one of the stages at the festival. I said, “Why not?!” and got my mix together, just barely making the deadline.

A month later, I was informed that I made the shortlist and announced the news on my Facebook page. The response from the Atlanta house community was overwhelming. It’s amazing how welcoming (and surprised) everyone was. No one knew that I DJ’d. They just knew that I liked to dance. And with that announcement, the gates began to open. I was offered guest mix opportunities, a radio show, and interest in having me play at various events.

Atlanta really rolled out the welcome mat to me as a DJ and I will be forever grateful. And I hadn’t even officially won the mix contest yet! That news would come shortly thereafter and I would be playing on the same bill as house music royalty on the Adriatic Sea in September of 2019. When I found out that I won the contest, I took that as a sign from the Universe that I was moving in the right direction and decided to make the most of the opportunity.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
When it comes to DJing, the doors have almost always been open to me. I guess that’s how you know when something chooses YOU. The majority of my struggles have come from myself in times when I’ve needed to get out of my own way. Of course, deciding to pursue DJing the year before COVID hit presented many obstacles, but that just meant that I had to utilize technology to put myself out there.

During that time, I really embraced the podcast and internet radio format, as well as live streaming. While I missed the energy exchange of a live dancefloor, I was still able to connect with people over music in different ways. In fact, I have an entire family of DJ friends all over Europe as a result of the radio connections I made during the Covid period.

Once lockdowns ceased and things got back to the “new normal,” I had the same challenges as any other DJ in this city, which is the fact that the two main underground clubs (Music Room and Sound Table) were closed. There just weren’t any underground club spaces remaining to nurture local talent. I appreciate the many restaurants and gallery spaces that have opened their arms to include DJs and live music, but they’re just not the same as a dedicated nightclub space.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a DJ and an event producer. I’m the creator of a tiki kitsch, tropical disco event called Wahine’s Hideaway where I have brought in national and international DJs that have never played in Atlanta such as Dicky Trisco (Scotland), The Funk District (Mexico), and The Silver Rider (Texas).

I’m also part of the all-female DJ collective, Siren Sounds (second Thursdays at The Basement EAV), and the co-host/resident DJ at the monthly Soul Seek event that I do with DJ Tracy Levine on the first Saturday of every month at Buteco in Grant Park. All of these are house events where I play everything from funk to disco and house, all with a world music lean.

I also do another monthly event called Joy*Ride, which takes place during the day. It is more eclectic and I play a range of world music, jazz, rare groove, reggae, and chill-out. I’m proud of the reputation that I’ve been able to garner as a purveyor of quality music across many genres. I have yet to be pigeonholed into a narrow genre of music and will work diligently to continue to represent all that is good in dance music, regardless of genre.

Because I’m a lifelong dancer and studied world dance at UCLA, this will always inform my approach to DJing. What moves a dancefloor? What moves me personally, as a dancer? How can I expand the audience’s horizon as to what dance music can be while bringing people together? These are the questions that I ask myself as a DJ.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
My husband, Jonathan, has always been my biggest fan and cheerleader on the DJing front since we first met back in 2007. He gently steered me back to DJing at a time when I was desperately in need of joy and a sense of purpose.

Chi Hughes–who recommended me for this feature–and her wife, Edali Pollard are dear friends from the very start of my new life in Atlanta and were always there to talk through dreams, purpose, and desires. They were crucial in the early days of manifesting and becoming. My friend Karen Guerra has always been a massive supporter and has made some important introductions to key people in the Atlanta house scene.

There’s a long list of promoters, venue owners, radio hosts and fellow DJs who have created opportunities and spaces for me to share my talent as a DJ: Goz/Spin City, Le Visiteur, Captains of Revelry, Daryle Ashurst, Ree de la Vega, Vicky Powell, Mike Zarin, Fathom, Cris Kai, Rafa at Buteco, Florista, Omar S at El Malo, MyHouseRadio.fm, NDC Radio… Folks across Atlanta and beyond have really paved the way for me to share the music that I love and I will forever be grateful for the openness and generosity that they have shown.

Pricing:

• Starting rate: $100/hr

Contact Info:

• Website: linktr.ee/wahine_dj
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wahine_dj/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wahinedj/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wahine_dj
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/wahinedj

Image Credits
John MacKinnon