She’s an icon, she’s a legend and she will forever be the moment—Jyoty Singh solidifies herself as, inarguably, one of the most important DJs of this generation, with her latest headlining world tour, ‘We’ve Been Here Before’

I first stumbled upon Jyoty’s name in August 2019, when she took the stage for her unforgettable debut Boiler Room set. It was a performance that instantly captured my attention and solidified her as a rising star to watch. She graced us with another incredible, more velvety Boiler Room session, this time ‘Streaming from Isolation’ in September 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s when I discovered she also hosted a weekly radio show on Rinse FM, where she would play similar types of music—something I would come to look forward to as a new fan. The first time I experienced her magic live was during her headlining Hot Mess Express Tour in 2022. The energy was everything you could dream of and I knew I had to see her again. Fast forward to the summer of 2023, I caught her set at a daytime Boiler Room event in Burgess Park, nestled within an impressive lineup that included DJ EZ, Jordss and Juls. I’ve had the privilege of watching her perform in intimate venues with just a few hundred people, as well as on grand festival stages in front of several thousand. No matter the crowd size, her mission remains unwavering: to get everyone moving. This year, as she embarked on her captivating ‘We’ve Been Here Before’ world tour, she effortlessly transitioned between venues of all shapes and sizes, leaving a trail of pulsating energy in her wake.

She starts off the European leg with a show at Lab11 in Birmingham—one of the city’s best, most versatile warehouse club-style venues. Her stage setup is simple and intimate: three DJ decks, surrounded by the fluttering flames of multiple incandescent candle lights and a lit incense stick, flooded with a bright orange-gold tone from the light box above. She’s not performed alone the entire tour, she’s on a mission to platform as many DJs and their sounds and skillsets as possible. DJ Izeforshort opens the night with a set that morphs from R&B edits and House remixes to full-on Notting Hill Carnival mode. From being in Jyoty’s Twitch chat during lockdown to sharing multiple lineups, Izeforshort was a no-brainer choice for her. He drew in that growing crowd like a pied piper and got the people warming up from the cold weather outside. Not an hour into his set, his entourage passed out free custom Jyoty tour handheld fans to the crowd—a clever nod from Jyoty that she knows her audience well. After all, who wouldn’t love a little breeze while working up a sweat on the dance floor? The only other time I’ve received a free handheld fan was at Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, and much like the Queen, a Jyoty ticket guarantees an unforgettable experience. In a surprising move, Jyoty played through the middle of the night and saved the coveted closer spot for Tida Kamara, who arguably played the best set of the night. She maintained her conviction that people wouldn’t leave once she finished playing her music; she believes at her core that people shouldn’t care about the DJ, that we should care instead about having fun while they soundtrack our night. Kamara established herself as the next DJ to look out for that night: her musical choices were wide-ranging, and she danced her way through her entire set, playing an hour longer than she was supposed to since the time moved back an hour at midnight. We found ourselves lost in the night, scream-singing our hearts out to Beyoncé’s Sweet Dreams until 3 am. That kind of pure, joyful energy in the air is part of the magic that ensues when you’re in a Jyoty crowd.

One month later, Jyoty finds herself looking up in tears at a banner that says the words ‘sold out’ next to her name in huge block letters, on the face of the O2 Academy Brixton—an internationally renowned, iconic music venue close to a lot of people’s hearts in South London. What was once an art deco cinema in its heyday, is now a thriving entertainment venue that has hosted a roster of some of the most impactful and creatively daring artists of our times, such as Amy Winehouse, The Prodigy, Tyler, The Creator, Missy Elliott and now Geuzenveld’s finest. With tickets selling out in minutes, the hype had built up so much in the run-up to the night that you could feel a buzz in the air when you stepped onto the sloped floor of the O2 Academy. As you enter the venue, you are very quickly reminded that she consistently attracts an incredibly diverse crowd: it ranges from age, race, gender and sex no matter which corner of the globe she plays and her crowds are the best too—I have a theory about why this is but I digress. You also see a huge merch stand towards the back of the ground floor, where her team are selling handheld fans, tote bags and hoodies, alongside t-shirts that say ‘I Bought This T-shirt So Jyoty Could Pay For Her Brixton Show’.

She emphasized to her social media audience that she was not profiting from the show but rather investing in stage design and production and that because of this, she would be losing money across the board. She opposed the idea of using the upper balcony for dancing and kept ticket prices accessible, even though she could have charged more. Everything was thoughtfully planned, with the stage positioned at the back to encourage audience interaction rather than focus on her. Occasionally, tall, rectangular structures blocked the view of Jyoty on the decks, while visuals and animations by Melly helped illustrate Jyoty’s journey over the years to the audience. We saw Jyoty and her clipboard outside of The Nest, as a door girl, clips of her early radio interviews playing back on old-school televisions, Club Jyotiana/Jyoty City visuals and her finally arriving at the O2 Academy Brixton. The lighting perfectly matched the music, and a standout moment was realizing the volume was just right—my ears weren’t ringing.

She starts the night by warming up the crowd to the sounds of Julio Bashmore’s Au Seve, an edit of SZA’s Broken Clocks and FROZT’s rework of Malkit Singh’s Jind Mahi. About 45 minutes into the show, Jyoty picks up the mic and welcomes the crowd to her show. Not to reference the Queen again but I experience yet another Beyoncé-esque moment at her event. Eerily reminiscent of the now-iconic interlude from Mrs Carter’s ‘I Am Yours…’ Vegas residency, Jyoty spontaneously mentions how an ex-partner of hers messaged her a few nights before downplaying her impact. He tells her she only got to this stage because she went viral recently, when, in reality, she’s had multiple viral moments over the past five years now. It’s that level of consistency that gets a venue as huge as the O2 Academy to ask you to party with them. Her crowd screams in adulation as she finishes her story and tells her audience to dance and have fun.

She played too many genres to accurately count: Amapiano, Afrotech, Alté, Afro Swing, UK and US Hip-Hop, R&B/Soul, UK Funky, UK Garage, SWANA Sounds, Dancehall, Rock, Música Tropical, Bailé Funk, House, Jersey Club, Ballroom, Electronic, Techno—you name it. She played whatever got the people moving. She effortlessly blended between sub-genres throughout the night. She also brought out two guests as surprise acts in the middle of her show: Kojey Radical and Bree Runway. They each run out on stage with incredible energy to a hype crowd and perform two songs from their catalogues. Kojey and Jyoty’s friendship goes back seven long years ago, back when she interviewed him for her radio show but she and Bree became friends, as Jyoty so eloquently tells it, over their admiration in how amazing they both looked one night.

In the last hour of the show, Jyoty grabs the mic and starts ringing off some things on her chest, as well as what this space means to her:

“Free Palestine, Free Palestine, Free Palestine! Free Congo, free Sudan! Free the people of West Papua, free the Punjabi Sikh prisoners since 1984–since our genocide! Free us from this motherfucking government! Free us women from men!

If you follow me on social media, you will know that I talk a lot about what I want my ideal clubbing environment to feel like, and I’ll explain to you why: when I’m here, I don’t represent a gender, a sex, a race. I’m not about that. I’m so sorry if that disappoints you. You see, where I come from, it’s a way of thinking. Regardless of where we come from, regardless of what we look like, we respect each other when we’re entering the dance floor and when we enter the club. The dance floor is our safe haven. It’s the one place where you can’t tell who’s who, who has more money than the other person. We don’t do that shit on the dance floor! We jam together, we escape our everyday stress together and we try to make the best out of the couple fuckin hours that we get to get away from real life shit. So, if it wasn’t clear to you, from now, I hope you know that I play for the guys, the girls, the everything in between and on the other sides. I play for the dolls, I play for the drug dealers. I play for us, I play for them. I play for everybody who wants to have a good time and knows how to have a good time. Is that understood?”

She finishes her 4-hour long set with Woka Flocka’s No Hands, as she comes out in front of the decks, bare feet, twerking, dancing and screaming to herself that she just finished performing at the O2 Academy. She blows kisses to the crowd, with a drink in her hand and exits stage left, having just completed a bucket list item of the ages.

There are seldom times you truly feel like you’re in a trance on the dance floor; you’re no longer distracted by the blue light of your phone, you become one with the crowd and all of life’s worries start to float away. I not only guarantee you’ll experience one of these rare moments on her dance floor but that you might find multiple moments as such during her sets. I vividly remember everyone in my section throwing their hands up when the beat to La Makina’s Me Rompió el Corazón dropped. Everyone turned to their neighbour and started grinding when J Capri & Charly Black’s Whine & Kotch played—it was automatic. The crowd erupted when Jyoty played Traffic Blocking by General Degree. She asked “Where’s all my over 30s at?” as we howled the beginning of Maxwell’s Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder). She had people who would’ve only ever listened to Swimming Pool (Drank) at that point, thrashing their heads to Drowning Pool and she lives for these moments. It brings her joy to know that people keep an open mind and broaden their horizons at her shows, carrying on the traditions of yesteryear when you’d go to the club to find new music. This is part of why her crowds are so exceptional. She draws an audience willing to dance to music they might never normally listen to, all because they understand the primal feeling of grooving to a powerful melody as it hits their chests. While you might hear a wide range of songs in her sets, it never feels random. Music is our one constant universal language; it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the lyrics, we all recognize a good bass line when we hear it. In other words, “We’ve been here before.”

Never doubt that she could but Jyoty makes a conscious decision not to play big venues for her headlining performances. She sees her peers Fred Again, Four Tet and Skrillex, as well as her legends like DJ EZ and Honey Dijon pack out venues like The Warehouse Project, Printworks and Drumsheds but Jyoty chooses places like Lab11 because she loves to connect with her crowds. She loves to look out into the small ocean of music lovers and gauge whether or not they’re leaning into the harder-sounding, experimental techno she’s playing or if she’s losing them. She loves spotting voguing circles in her crowd and soundtracking the mini battles happening on her dance floor. It’s in these small ways, she plays for the one and the many, all at the same time.

Days after she left her mark at the O2 Academy Brixton, she finds herself free on a Saturday evening—an anomaly, to say the least, for a DJ of her calibre. She recruits all her 168,000 Instagram followers to help her find a venue, at the last minute, to play an edit-heavy, grown-‘n’-sexy, R&B/Soul set for the ages. She then had her eyes set on achieving an even more impossible dream of hers: playing a set at Rowans Tenpin Bowl. Now a bowling alley seems random at first but while it can’t compare to the O2 Academy in capacity, it does hold a very special place in the heart of native North Londoners. Ultimately, she didn’t get to play there. The manager didn’t think she could handle playing all night long. In all fairness, he didn’t know who she was or what her credentials were and while that looks like a slight on his account, Jyoty loves that he didn’t know her. It means that with all the heights she’s reached, all the brands she’s worked with and all the people she’s touched through her music, she’s not exempt from being humbled. She’s famous enough to be a jet-setting headlining DJ but regular enough that she could buy a ticket to any club event in any part of the world and dance the night away, with her day ones, without anyone disturbing her peace.

This perfectly encapsulates why she’s the people’s DJ because she has been and will always be, one of the people. We see ourselves in her hustle and in her passion for what she does. We have all been that door girl who wants to do something more with their life. We’ve all either been in or are currently in positions where we want to prove to the world and, most importantly, to ourselves that we can achieve what’s been told previously is impossible for us. We see her stand up for her personal and professional ethics over social media and how she demands the same from others around her, and it makes us want to do better. That’s why you see various flags flying at her shows because her name is synonymous with allyship; she is the living embodiment of what a safe space is. Jyoty also exudes a coolness we all aspire to have: she’s the fun, rich aunt that gives you the best career advice and she flaunts her fly fits in the bathroom mirror just like we do, except she’s wearing vintage and custom designer wear and we’ve got on Zara. Her energy is also at 100; she’s not there to be a wallflower and stare at her phone. She’s there to shake ass and have a good time, which emboldens those around her to let loose and do the same, making Jyoty and her events a catalyst for celebration and unabashed dancing. We need more of that. We need more people to bring communities together and provide a space that acts as a form of escapism from the worries of the world; what better way to do that than with global beats and Underground music? Who better to spearhead the movement than Jyoty?