FEATURE:
Saluting the Queens
Jess Kangalee
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MOVING through my…
Saluting the Queens feature, I wanted to spend some time focusing on Jess Kangalee. One big reason why I am a big supporter of what she does is because Kangalee founded the magnificent Good Energy PR. In terms of the roster of talent, there are few that can match the same quality and diversity. Some of my favourite artists and most intriguing rising acts can be found here:
“Founded in 2019 by Jess Kangalee, Good Energy PR is the only QWOC run UK plugging company that prioritises multi-genre queer artists and artists of colour.
With over a decade of experience in radio/TV/festivals/events promotions, Jess has previously worked across a broad range of acts including Angel Olsen, badbadnotgood, Battles, Boards of Canada, Bombay Bicycle Club, Bon Iver, Caribou, Daniel Avery, Dinosaur Jr, Gaika, Grizzly Bear, LUMP, Moses Sumney, Phoebe Bridgers, Run The Jewels, serpentwithfeet, Sleater Kinney, Shame, Sharon Van Etten, Sinkane, Tame Impala, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, The War On Drugs, plus Citadel, Green Man, Lovebox and Wilderness festivals”.
There is some press/interviews that I want to get to. Maybe Jess Kangalee is new to you. You can follow her on Twitter. It is not the case that she has suddenly come to prominence and is someone whose 2023 has defined her. I think this year has been a successful one, though Jess Kangalee has been in the industry for a while now. Doing incredible work talking about equality for women in radio and throughout the industry. Also someone concerned with the mental health and wellbeing of those within music. Kangalee was part of Music Week's Women In Music Roll of Honour.
Maybe a sideways step, I want to illuminate an article from 2021. In it, we learn more about The Meister Series by Jägermeister and how that most recent episode followed Nadia Khan. She is a manager, music consultant and Chair of AIM (Association of Independent Music). Khan was joined by industry peers, including Jess Kangalee:
“At the beginning of her career, Nadia had zero preconceptions of what being a woman in a male-dominated industry was going to be like. “I didn’t think about it,” she tells us, “but I started to notice I was being treated differently a lot of the time.” Nadia explains, “I felt a lot of other managers or men in the industry would talk to me more aggressively, trying to pressurise me to do deals on their term, or talking down to me, or bypassing me completely. I kept my head down and continued to do amazing work. I loved my job and had such incredible opportunities, but one thing I started to realise was that I felt increasingly more invisible.” Nadia has been kicked off festival stages when working with an artist because she was assumed a groupie, her male staff members have been called to confirm she is the manager, and “these things start to knock your confidence”. It made Nadia question, “why do I feel invisible when I’ve achieved so much?”
From women changing their behaviours to how they dress, or having to experience events as Nadia set out, we must acknowledge the disparities. “I started to post on social media and communicate my stories to other women in the industry, and what was really shocking was, everyone I spoke to said that’s how they had been treated too. I thought I was completely alone. That was a big driving force in me to want change.” Women in CTRL grew naturally from the discussions and realisations Nadia was having. “I really wanted to tell these women’s stories. It was about trying to empower women and encourage women to speak out about their journeys, and be honest, because we can’t change things unless we speak honestly.”
The first episode of The Meister Series featured an illuminating insight into Boomtown, with LWE joining the series for the second part. In instalment three of five, Jägermeister continue to explore behind the scenes of the music industry shapers and shakers. Nadia is joined by Laughta, a multi-talented musician, producer and presenter and Women in CTRL Mental Health Advocate, Jess Kangalee, who runs a broadcast media promotions company Good Energy PR, and Claire Rose, an Outreach Manager and Community Manager at Women in CTRL. The four women discuss their experiences of working in the industry and what needs to be done to further conversations, make changes and be a force for good. During their roundtable, Claire says, “Everything is louder together. It doesn’t make me feel so isolated anymore because I’ve got all these other great voices around me.” Women are powerful when we are together.
Being able to talk together openly is the first step, the second, Nadia explains, is how data research plays a part in making change. In July 2020, Women in CTRL released a report which analysed the make up of the team, board members, Chairperson and CEO positions across 12 UK music industry trade bodies. The Seat at the Table report showed women are underrepresented within leadership positions with only 3 Female CEOs, and 1 Female Chair across the 12 music trade organisations and that black women are severely underrepresented across all trade bodies with 5 board seats out of a possible 185 being held by black woman, and only 2 positions out of 122 roles employed within teams are black women.
Following the Women in Radio findings, Nadia explains how we lose women in the industry because we don’t support them. The report states 84% of women feel it’s hard for them to progress their career, 70% feel their appearance has an effect on their job opportunities, 61% have experienced sexist comments about their appearance at work and 59% feel child rearing has had or would have a negative impact on their career progression. In the Gender Disparity in Radio report which concluded 81% of songs in the Top 100 Radio Airplay chart feature men, female songwriters are credited on only 19% of songs in the Top 100 and only 3% of music producers in the Top 100 are women. Nadia states, “The bottom line is we need to make change happen, we should be supporting and encouraging these women”.
We are thankful to women like Nadia, Laughta, Jess Kangalee, and Claire Rose, companies like Jägermeister who offer platforms to their voices, and people working in the industry at any level who are starting conversations and holding others accountable. These are the changemakers and shapeshifters that are paving our future. Now we have to carry on the work, speak up when it is and isn’t our turn, because as Claire said, we are louder together. More change is coming”.
I am going to jump into a new interview from Music Week, who spoke with their recent honouree, Jess Kangalee. I am also keen to point people read this 2021 interview from Music Week. Alongside some other amazing women in an Indie executive position, Kangalee was speaking about inequality and changes need. How there is a lack of representation and equality for women and Black artists through the industry:
“Executives in the independent sector have spoken to Music Week about the need for change as the industry faces up to the fight against racism and inequality.
Nadia Khan, founder of Ctrl Management and Women In Ctrl, said that “everybody in independent music can action change, regardless of their size or resources”.
Khan (above, left) recently published the Seat At The Table report, which investigated 12 music industry bodies and highlighted a lack of female representation in leadership positions, with three female CEOs, and one female chair across the 12 organisations.
While she noted an increase in diversity across recording artists and genres in the indie world, Khan called for organisational change to match.
“As the music industry has moved towards more label services and distribution deals and with many more self-releasing artists in the independent sector, ownership and control has been put back into artists’ and managers’ hands,” she said. “This has led to a greater diversity of music and artists being represented.”
“Diversity needs to also be reflected within the teams managing campaigns at independent labels, all the way through to senior management and board level, and to those that are controlling budgets and spending,” Khan added. “As highlighted in the Women In Ctrl report, the disparity still runs high for women, and especially black women.”
Khan, who helped steer Lethal Bizzle’s breakthrough, called for more industry support for black artists.
“Through my 16-year career as a manager, I struggled to get support, budget and backing for black artist projects, being told the market was too small and restricted to ‘London and maybe Birmingham and Manchester',” she said.
“Support and a welcoming arm into the industry were only offered after I had achieved multiple Top 20 successes independently and grown an international brand. I would like to see that support offered to those in the early stages of their careers.”
Former Secretly Group head of radio & TV in the UK, Jess Kangalee now runs Good Energy PR and is part of the independent arm of the Black Music Coalition. During lockdown, Kangalee (above, centre) conducted online diversity workshops and told Music Week that, in her experience, the indie sector has “massive diversity problems”.
“It’s predominantly a straight, white space with a small fraction of people of colour and openly queer people,” said Kangalee. “I have only met one person in the sector that has a visible disability.”
“At the start of my career, seeing women at all felt like a luxury, so it has been a positive to see more (white) women inhabit these spaces,” she continued. “However, going from seeing one woman of colour to seeing 10 in these spaces over 10 years is hardly any achievement to be proud of, especially when the majority of these women sit in junior and mid-level roles.”
Kangalee went on to say that music companies recognising the need for action is not enough.
“There is more of an air of being able to talk about these problems, but I have still seen people penalised for doing so and no great changes made,” she said. “Acknowledgement is very necessary and important, but it is a completely rudimentary step and I would have hoped that by 2020 more proactive steps would have been taken.”
Kangalee said that “racist behavior is constant” and that “microagressions happen every day”.
“Two examples that have happened frequently to me and that I’ve seen happen to other people of colour are when white people mix up the names of two people of colour that do the same job or work at the same company, even though they look nothing alike and have completely different ethnic backgrounds,” she said. “The other is, at gigs when a white person asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ – translation, ‘You have dark skin so you can’t like guitar music’. No one would go up to a white person at a black music show and ask them why they were there, so why is the reverse deemed acceptable?”
Kangalee added that “tokenism is a problem across the board” and called for “acceptance of wrongdoing and bad treatment, apologies, immediate action, public commitment to change and long-term planning”.
Partisan Records creative director Theresa Adebiyi (above, right) said the independent sector must force itself to make changes.
“We’ve really hit a point in the past few months where visibility of a much more diverse range of people, artists, music is key to genuine change and progression,” she said. “There needs to be pressure on us all to actually do better – not just post about ideology.”
Adebiyi urged the sector to engage in “tough conversations and trust newer creatives with opportunities to grow the pool of people who can execute campaigns”.
“Elevating different voices into positions of real power within companies needs to keep happening,” she said. “Diversity regarding personnel has tended to feel tokenistic and often relegated to more minor jobs within companies, we must work to elevate people beyond supporting roles and into positions that have the power to effect and sustain long-lasting change.”
Khan, Kangalee and Adebiyi were speaking to Music Week for our Indie Takeover special issue. Read the full report on the indie sector in 2020 here. Read AIM’s Gee Davy on the fight for equality here”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Big Joanie are part of the Good Energy PR roster
Before I bring things right up to date, Jess Kangalee was part of an interview by The Independent. This is back in 2020. At the time, there was a furore over the lack of Rock category at the MOBOs – it emphasised and highlighted how Black Brits with guitars are overlooked. The Independent chatted to Nova Twins, Babeheaven, Jess Kangalee and more about making space for Alternative artists:
“Similar experiences were shared by the genre-blurring American musician Moses Sumney, who has spoken previously about the assumption that he makes R&B music based on the colour of his skin. His recent inclusion in the Soul Train Awards – the US’s answer to the Mobos – suggests that, like Hynes said earlier, the US is, on the whole, more accepting of Black artists of all persuasions. Jess Kangalee, director of Good Energy PR, suggests there are structural reasons for America’s comparative openness. “It’s just a bigger market and they have more options for coverage in terms of regional stations, national stations and college radio,” says Kangalee, “whereas in the UK we [only] have the national stations as well as some key regionals that can make a difference to a[n artist’s] campaign.”
According to a recent Pitchfork article, though, the alternative music sphere isn’t any better representation-wise. The piece, titled “What it’s like to be Black in Indie Music”, suggested that Black artists face the same barriers in the supposedly more inclusive indie arena as they would in the pop mainstream. It added that the indie community “discreetly functions to serve white people almost exclusively”. This was certainly true of the alternative music scene in the UK in the past, though more recent platforms like Black Lives Matter have given Black British indie artists a confidence boost and allowed them to open up a conversation on race and representation in underground music. Nova Twins cite the political movement as the inspiration for their open letter and for “giving artists a voice to say how they've felt all these years”. It was also one of the sparks for the creation of Decolonise Fest, a London-based festival I’m involved in which promotes people of colour in punk music. The runaway success of alternative music festivals like Afropunk (of which there is a London iteration), meanwhile, have provided new spaces for Black artists who don’t align with any one genre”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Jess Kangalee alongside the Music Week Women in Music Awards 2023 Roll of Honour winners and honourees
On 20th November, Music Week spoke with a jewel in the Women In Music Roll of Honour 2023. The brilliant Jess Kangalee, as founder of Good Energy PR, and someone always fighting and asking for equality throughout the industry, shared her experiences and words. Looking back at her career and spotlighting those influencing her:
“With 15 years of experience working in promotions across artists, events and festivals, Kangalee founded Good Energy PR in 2019 with a specific ethos – a holistic approach to inclusion, creating space and promoting marginalised artists across broadcast media platforms. Good Energy is the only QPOC-run broadcast media PR company in the UK that prioritises multi-genre artists that are queer and/or people of colour. Its current roster features acts like Big Joanie, Cakes Da Killa, Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul, Grove, Future Bubblers, The Linda Lindas, Moor Mother, Mykki Blanco, Rochelle Jordan, Tokimonsta, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Yazmin Lacey, to name a few.
Throughout her career, Kangalee has worked across a huge variety of acts, including Bombay Bicycle Club, Caribou, M83, Metronomy, Moses Sumney, Phoebe Bridgers, Run The Jewels, Serpentwithfeet and Sharon Van Etten and Lovebox, Green Man, Wilderness and Citadel festivals, amongst others.
In addition to Good Energy, she has also worked in a consulting and supportive capacity across AIM, Black Music Coalition, Women In Ctrl, UK Music and is a mentor via Ilikenetworking and Power Up, and this year she was nominated for AIM’s Music Entrepreneur Of The Year, and was included in She Said So’s 2020 Alt List.
How do you feel about joining the Music Week Women In Music Roll Of Honour?
“It’s brilliant to be included in this year’s Roll of Honour, I’m happy to have the opportunity to celebrate alongside several inductees who have created change in the UK music industry and to follow on from previous inductees who I have long respected. I was nominated by someone who I deeply admire and who has been integral to my journey over the last few years, so it feels good to know that I’ve made them proud.”
How do you look back on your early years getting into the industry?
“I had some amazing experiences during the earlier years of my career – like running the broadcast PR for Lovebox festival – but a lot of my early years were marred by negative and harmful experiences. I never truly had a voice until I decided to create my own company, I was consistently silenced, held back from progression and put down. And the enormous lack of diversity and representation in the sector of the industry I came up in bred a normalised culture of racism, misogyny, sexism, queerphobia, sexual assault and abuse. These experiences now fuel me and it’s become my mission to change the industry culture and standard of practice so that future generations have healthy and safe environments, with better access and routes for progression and equity.
“Because of the exploitative patterns of treatment many women of colour face in the music industry as well as there [being] a lack of visible role models and peers that I could identify with for a large portion of my career, I never thought I could be a business owner. I have managed to move through these experiences though and create a business which has inclusion, representation, holistic strategy and care at the core of its ethos. When I made the decision to start my own company, it allowed me to create something that fully stands for my ethics and morals, and I did it without having to compromise my integrity or beliefs. More than anything I hope that sharing a small part of my story could serve as an example that it is possible to overcome huge adversity and build a successful, completely self-funded business by doing things your own way.”
You’ve spoken previously to Music Week about your experiences around discrimination and inequality in the business. How have your views changed in recent years, in light of a number of organisations that have been launched?
“I’ve worked in various capacities across a lot of organisations, and everyone is doing great and necessary work. This doesn’t change my views though, as the issues I’ve previously spoken about still exist. It takes time and fervent will to unlearn systemic biases and recalibrate from archaic structures, and it will be a long time before we collectively as an industry can change, as it requires an active approach to reforming cultures and perceptions.
“That being said, many amazing things have come from a lot of the organisations and initiatives that have been launched, and it’s been brilliant to see all of these organisations grow and achieve. There are more beacons for representation than ever before and that has been a positive change.”
What’s your biggest achievement so far?
“I view my biggest achievement as being able to create space for the artists I work with across broadcast media. When I started Good Energy PR, I had to change the way I perceived success and what that meant to me. As a plugger, you measure your successes by achieving big promo slots and playlist additions, but to work with the artists I wanted to work with, who in the majority would not have been supported at radio prior to 2020, the goal posts changed for me. I had to unlearn what I had previously used as a measure for success, and the task of trying to find ways to promote these artists who had previously been overlooked and underrepresented was a much bigger one. I wanted to be authentic to myself and my beliefs, so in essence Good Energy PR is an extension of what I want to put out into the world. There are some key people I would like to give thanks to – knowingly or unknowingly due to either their support, encouragement, innovation or progressive spirit – [as] without them I wouldn’t have been able grow and build as I have. Amy Frenchum, Camilla Pia, Jamz Supernova, Kath McDermott, Mary Anne Hobbs and Nadia Khan, my sincerest gratitude for who you are and everything you do.
IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Frenchum/PHOTO CREDIT: Foot Patrol
What advice would you offer young women about enjoying a successful career in music?
“This is a bit of a cliché, but find your people. Having a network of people who understand you on a human level, who have had or are facing similar experiences to you, offers infinite support and collaboration. You’re not lucky to have a job in music, you have skills, you bring value and you deserve to be here, and finally, do things in the most authentic way to you, protect your energy and enforce your professional boundaries.”
Is there a young woman you'd like to shout out who you think is a rising star in the industry?
“I must shout out some great young women in radio – Ella Atcheson at BBC 6 Music, Hana Staddon at 6 Music and Pippa Brown, who is freelance. I would also love to shout out Tayler Ross, who’s also freelance, who was incredibly impressive on campaign management and marketing duties for Grove’s recent Pwr Ply EP.”
Similarly, is there a young woman artist whose music you're enjoying right now?
“I have to mention one of the incredible artists on my roster, Sola, who releases music via Jamz Supernova’s Future Bounce label. She is truly phenomenal, her creativity and composition are utterly transcendent and genre-defying and I feel so lucky to work with an artist whose music connects so directly to my spirit. You can find her on @thisissola across the usual social media platforms and I highly encourage you to watch her amazing visuals!”.
I am a big fan of supporter of Jess Kangalee. As the founder of Good Energy PR – which is the only QWOC-run U.K. plugging company that prioritises multi-genre queer artists and artists of colour -, that alone makes her a queen to salute! In addition, she has spoken passionately and brilliantly about how there needs to be more equality for women and people of colour throughout the industry. The fact that radio is still a sector that is harder for women. There is still a way to go but, with people like Jess Kangalee supporting some brilliant artists and putting her voice and experience out into the world, I know she will help inspire change – and a generation of women coming through too! I wanted to spend some time with a changemaker and incredible human making such a difference…
IN the music industry.