LOS ANGELES — Inside a recording studio, knobs turn, levels rise and sound comes together piece by piece. For Dope Candi, this is where her love for music began.
“I come from a family of music. I started dibbling, dabbling, growing up in the studio, messing around with the equipment,” said Dope Candi, a music engineer and producer. “And so I kind of fell in love with the aspect of producing.”
That passion followed her west, opening doors.
“Once I came to LA, it just opened up, of course, more opportunities with my production, deejaying and pretty much the whole spectrum,” she said.
But she also said it did not come without resistance. The industry was especially rough for a woman working behind the scenes.
“It’s just been a struggle to get recognized,” Dope Candi said. “It’s just now starting to open up, and so the grind is still there.”
Those challenges are one of the reasons the Recording Academy started its Women in the Mix event, designed to help industry members connect and create together. For Grammy-nominated songwriter and filmmaker Grace Potter, that representation extends to both the stage and the audience.
“Just the buzz of having an elevated voice in a space where buzz matters,” Potter said. “You can’t have that buzz if the women aren’t there buzzin‘ around.”
Potter, who has been nominated in both Americana and the heavily male-dominated rock category, said women working together can help change the industry.
“There’s societal structures that are desperate to be broken down, and people like us are here to do that. I do believe that we can help each other crawl out of trouble, crawl out of chaos, and find our way through and into something really, really powerful,” Potter said. “And the more women in the mix, the better.”
That cultural push is also being matched by structural change within the Recording Academy. In 2019, the Academy set out to add more female members.
“We’re so proud that we surpassed our goal of adding 2,500 new women to our voting membership ranks, which was an ambitious objective,” said Kelley Purcell, senior vice president of membership and industry relations. “In total, over these past five years, more than 3,000 music women have joined the Academy.”
Purcell said recruitment efforts included festivals, events and even liner notes.
“With so many talented women working across genres and crafts, it’s so important that we represent the full breadth of the diversity within our industry. So having an inclusive community makes us better in all facets,” Purcell said.
Dope Candi, who is one of those members, said progress ultimately comes down to presence.
“We’re at really the forefront of where this stuff is. And so we have to be in the room and our voice has to be heard,” she said.
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