Seen: The Large, Why Delila & Kazabon in Time Out London

Words by Eddie STATS Houghton

Shimmy Shimmy blogger, No Ice Cream Sound editor and Selectress extraordinaire (not to mention LargeUp homegirl) Suze Webb was featured in Time Out London this week, along with her friends and collaborators Siobhan Jones and Karen Cazabon. Known professionally as The Large, Why Delila and Kazabon, respectively, the three female selectors have joined forces into an all-girl army of king fu killers known simply as Style & Swagger. As such they are clearly a force to be reckoned with in the London underground, putting their own distinctive spin on dancehall, soca–and tropical music generally–at club nights like Physically Fit and Hipsters Don’t Dance. Come to find out the three were linked by LargeUp UK correspondent Gabriel Heatwave, a tastemaker (and apparently, Queen-maker) in the UK bashment sphere. We put a few of our favorite quotes after the jump, but read the full article at TOL–and look for more big things from this trio in the near future.

‘Not to bring the female element into it too much, [says Jones] but those house and dubstep nights can be very male dominated. Dancehall nights are quite the opposite. It’s great to be able to dance as you want without feeling like you have someone in your personal space within two seconds. It’s quite funny to watch too: you’ll see loads of women dancing and then a circle of men around them, who are all thinking, “What do I do now?”’

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And, while they don’t brush over the misogynistic and homophobic lyrics of some Jamaican dancehall artists, they do view dancehall’s other booty-obsessed tunes in a refreshing light: ‘Their songs are more about what they want to do to women to celebrate them,’ explains Jones, ‘but in other genres, it’s more about women acting in a certain way and therefore they are “hoes.”’ ‘Women are definitely the focal point of dancehall,’ confirms Webb. ‘Without the women there is no dancehall.’