The Symposium is almost here, and we are so excited to have SHYBOI joining us as a panelist for our discussion on social dance and the underground nightlife community in NYC!

SHYBOI (Yulan Grant) is a Jamaican born, New York-based multidisciplinary artist. SHYBOI is the moniker she uses to cause sonic disruption. As a creative positioned between Caribbean and American culture, she uses sound to interrogate ideas of identity, notions of power, perceived histories and the entanglements that happen within these topics. She is also a member of the queer artist collective #KUNQ whose ethos is centered around the production of multidimensional work through sound, visual and performance art while expanding the discourse surrounding the subcultures and genres that have become diluted or obscured in the name of hybridity. SHYBOI has three Boiler Room sets under her ever-widening belt as well as two performances at MoMA PS1 and is a frequent collaborator of NYC underground staples ranging from Rizzla (Fade to Mind) to Venus X. Recent sounds have been featured in Fact Mag, Thump, Rinse FM, MixMag and the Fader.

SHYBOI is also part of Discwoman, the NYC-based collective of female-identifying DJ’s and booking agency supporting women artists. One of the founders of Discwoman, Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, was featured in the video we shared last week on the JComm Blog, sharing her experience in the fight to repeal the Cabaret Law!

We are thrilled to have someone so deeply rooted in the NYC nightlife community joining our panel discussion, and to hear SHYBOI share her take on the underground nightlife community, the threats and challenges it faces, and the power and value in its continued survival. As SHYBOI stated in an interview with Fact Magazine in 2016, “Nightlife has given me a chance to foster a community of creative, eccentric hardworking queers – but it’s the conversations that happen beyond the club that hold us together” (link to full article below).

You can listen to some of SHYBOI’s tracks and playlists on her Soundcloud. To find out more about Discwoman, please check out their website. For more information about queer artist collective #KUNQ, please click here. And look out for more information about our panel discussion at the Dance/NYC Symposium, coming soon!

Further Reading:

Fact Magazine: Discwoman’s SHYBOI celebrates outlaw bikers and a queer appetite for destruction (Aurora Mitchell, 2016)

Thump (Vice Media): KUNQ Member SHYBØI Deftly Explores Traumas and Power Traps on New Mix (Alexander Iadarola, 2016)