Born Barbara Bonfiglio in Catania, Italy, Misstress Barbara has made an international career for herself with a talent for feeling the mood of a room and knowing what her audiences need. “I have a self-made career,” she tells Beat. “I said in 1996 ‘all right I’m going to be a DJ.’ By 2001 I was already a regular in Europe. I had an apartment in London in 2002. By then I was already very busy. Then I had an apartment in Paris. In 2009 I decided to come back to Montreal.”
This trip to Melbourne is a well-earned break as this woman does a lot more than turn tables. She’s a multi-instrumentalist who has recorded two of her own albums (2012’s Many Shades of Grey is her most recent) and recorded countless EPs and produced squillions for others. Her music has been used in film and advertisements, and her most recent collaboration was with Porsche. “I’ve produced two albums in the past eight years. I play guitar, bass, keyboards, I’ve got a big studio all set up at home. I don’t just make techno. I do work for film, for advertisements. So there’s another part of me as a musician, what I do isn’t just confined to techno. I wrote all the songs on my albums, the music and the lyrics.”
We asked which she preferred, DJing or producing. “When I was a young DJ, when I got asked that question, I was always saying I preferred DJing,” she answers. “Now it’s exactly the opposite – I’ve been round the world 43 times. I’ve been to every club, every festival everywhere.” Barbara doesn’t fit anyone’s mould, being very much into an outdoor life which includes, besides tennis which she plays at Canadian League Level, sailing (she’s a skipper), and motorbike riding. Definitely not your party-all-night-sleep-all-day stereotype, Barbara is living life on her own terms these days, having created a balance between touring and working at home creating and producing music. “I find touring quite tiring and difficult now,’ she admits. “Now I enjoy more being in a studio than travelling all the time. Always said I preferred DJing but it comes with everything else – with tiredness, lack of sleep, long plane trips. My life is in much better balance now. I’m happy. I used to feel so guilty – guilty, guilty, guilty, about refusing gigs when I’d rather be sailing or staying home. It was hard but now I can say no to a gig, if I don’t want to do it or if there’s something more important, a family birthday, or something.”
Although she still loves what she does, it’s a matter of balance in all things. “My dream is to cut down on the necessity to travel and take the gigs I want to take. I’m making it happen.” This trip to Melbourne was a spontaneous one, at the invitation of fellow veteran DJ Carl Cox. “I pretty much decided a last month and a half ago to come here,” she explains. “Carl invited me to come over. Great I thought; I’ll go. I’m a huge tennis fan and so want to see the tennis. Am here for the Piknic Electronik gig, obviously, and I’m very excited by that – it’s a regular thing, at home Barbara adores Roger Federer and getting to see him play is something like a dream come true for her. “I used to come here every year for ten years but never got to see the tennis. I love Melbourne. It’s similar to Montreal. Am enjoying every second here.”
In terms of her music Barbara has returned to her pure techno roots over the last year and a half. Her most recent album is Many Shades of Grey. “My sound now is more mellow, it’s more minimalist; I’m back with techno. I hadn’t produced techno for a while but I’ve come back to it strongly; am in full production mode, full techno mode.”
Is there a big gender gap in money earned by female DJs in comparison to male? “I can’t say,” she answers. “We don’t all earn the same money. It depends where you are in your career. I earn more money than some guys. It’s not like it is in Hollywood where even the most popular women earn less than the men.” Production is where you see the gender differences, according to her. “Why is it always the guys who produce people’s albums? I could produce Rhianna and Beyonce – I’ve got the skills. They have the same guys who produce them; and they actually don’t do much. There are still a lot of challenges for me. Eventually I want to be more recognised as a producer than I have as a DJ. My dream is to be the producer.”
