Chicago OG Jana Rush creates unconventional footwork that's making an Impact

Chicago footwork producer Jana Rush is a certified OG.

At the age of 10, infatuated with the city's house music radio stations, she called WKKC asking how she could get on air to deliver her own version of the life-affirming DJ sets she'd become addicted to. In the WKKC studios, she was taught to mix by Gant-Man, who was the same age as her but already a capable selector. Her interest in DJing quickly evolved into making music of her own and within a couple of years she was knocking, literally, on the door of Paul Johnson. She and friends including Gant-Man, DJ Rashad and DJ Deeon would pile into the kitchen of Johnson's mother's house to watch the Dance Mania star make tracks. The gang would drag whatever chair they could find into the dimly lit room, completely absorbed by what Johnson was doing with his equipment, which was piled up against a wall right next to the stove that his mother would be cooking on. By 15, Jana had put her first track out on Dance Mania and two years later, she nailed a split single with Deeon.

Jana's credentials are impeccable. But although she came up alongside artists who'd go on to become Windy City legends, her own career has taken a different trajectory. in 2000, five years after her Dance Mania debut and just months after Paul Johnson released 'Get Get Down', she took a break from music that would last 13 years. "My mother was not going to support me laying around and making tracks all day. Basically, in her eyes, not doing anything," Jana says of her decision. "I had to go out and make a living." In that time, she became a chemical engineer and CAT scan technologist and even did a stint as a firefighter. But the skills she learned in Johnson's kitchen and during the practice hours at WKKC never went away. Her loved for electronic music never quietened.

Jana started dropping music again in 2013. Although this time round she wasn't making a nascent form of ghetto house. In the decade or so since she last cut a record to wax, she honed in on a form of footwork very much her own. Listen to Jana Rush now and you'll find sleek, spacey 160bpm tracks that sound as if they're about to launch into another galaxy. They're driven by a techno pulse but don't be fooled – her drum rhythms and basslines have a tendency to switch-up in the blink of an eye, unpredictable as quick sand.

On Friday Jana will release 'Pariah', the footwork album of the year. Now in her late 30s, it's her lifetime's work, although she's only just getting started. "The sky's the limit," she says. "From here I want to keep making music, I don’t care how old I get."

Read our interview and hear her exclusive mix below.

Why did you start DJing at such a young age?

I don’t know if you’ve heard WGCI and WBMX, they’re old-skool stations in Chicago. [Through them] I started listening to a lot of house music. I just knew I had an affinity with dance music, electronic music. I started out listening to Julian Jefferson Perez on the radio and I was always intrigued by how he put the music together – was he using sound modules or keyboards or actually mixing records?

When I was 10 years old I called WKKC because they had a mix show and I would call them all the time and one day I just decided to ask them, “How could I become a DJ?” And they started laughing. They said, “Well come up here and audition” and I did and of course that didn’t go very well because I had no idea what I was doing and I had five records and I was supposed to do half an hour. And I was only 10. But they listened to it and they laughed and they offered to teach me how to DJ.

Jam Master K, he was gonna be my DJ mentor. And I went there pretty much every Saturday and that’s where I learned how to mix and that’s where I met Gant Man and he took over and taught me. From there I met Rashad and I grew from there. We hung out and dabbled in making music but nothing really took off until we met Paul Johnson. We would take turns going over to his house and this was a time when Paul Johnson was literally making tracks in his kitchen. We got to witness all of that, driving his mother crazy.

What did these young men think of a teenage girl knocking on their door asking to learn how to DJ and make tracks?

Paul had the same reaction as everyone else. He just laughed and would be like, “Go ahead”. He’d let me on his equipment and I’d learn from watching him. He didn’t say much. Our crew – Gant-Man, Terrance 2 Deep, DJ Rashad, Trackhead Steve, Robert Armani and DJ Deeon – we all learned how to make tracks by watching Paul for hours. He’d always get a new piece of equipment and just play, play, play and he’d figure out a sound he wanted and would keep it and manipulate it even more and we’d watch him push buttons and that’s how we learned how to unzip drum machines – and what I mean by that is learn all there is about a drum machine pretty much overnight.

For a while Paul was working by primitive means. He did what he had to do. He was a stickler for using what means he had. He liked to buy equipment but he wouldn’t buy too much. His whole idea was, if you needed to do something, and you were limited to what you had, then you needed to work out a way to do that. If you were making a track and you had a sound in your head but you couldn't find it in the keyboard or drum machine, you'd make it with your mouth, get a microphone and tweak it and make it how you wanna sound.

How old were you when your record on Dance Mania came out?

My first release was when I was 15. Houz' Mon put out a track of mine on Dance Mania and when I met Deeon, I went through my usual process: I bugged and bugged and bugged him, I kept calling him. First he agreed to a mixtape, he financed that and then he also agreed to do a split record with me and we put that out in 1996. I was like 17 years old at that time.

Were you making ghetto house?

I was going for a ghetto house / techno sound, I was never straight-up ghetto house. I had an affinity for techno. That affinity brought me into contact with Lester Fitzpatrick. I like ghetto music but I have a stronger affinity for techno. Tracks that may have came out on Cajmere’s label. I was making tracks that sound like that.

Lester would also periodically lend me his drum machine and that’s how I’d get things done. I didn’t own machines or anything. He’d come to my house and drop it off. He tried to get me out there back then. It was pretty hard. I don’t want to put a box on it and say that it was a female thing, but it did feel a lot harder for me because I was female and I can’t say if that was true or not, but it was definitely a challenge.

Would people dismiss you?

Yeah. I tried for years to get on Dance Mania and people would dismiss me. They’d say things about my tracks, like they weren’t good enough, but no one would show me how things should be done. It was very difficult. The elephant in the room was, for me, being female. No one would show me. It was frustrating. It still frustrates me today. I don’t know how to ask for help. As an artist, the sky is the limit and I love growing, but it’s hard to grow when no one is willing to show you what’s wrong or how things should be done.

What do you think is holding women artists in Chicago from breaking into the kind of music you’re making?

Number one, which is one of my biggest issues too, is the commitment it entails. Committing to learning about the scene, how to make tracks, drum sounds, the equipment you have. Two, not taking responsibility for your craft or the skill that you’re trying to attain. Yes you need a mentor, I’d strongly suggest that, but if that’s not what’s going on with you, you have to keep going. You have to be accountable. You can’t say, “Well if I can’t hook up with certain people, I can’t make tracks.” You’re supposed to find a way. With today’s technology it’s so much easier. There’s no excuse. You need help, but you need to be independent - you need to be enough of a bitch to go and get it.

You were on 'Gyal Fyah' Vol 2, a compilation of women footwork producers.

We had females from all around [on the compilation]. But what I seem to notice is there’s no consistency. We make one or two tracks here and there but the guys put out tracks like they going out of style. You have to drop more than one track every other month. You have to be serious about it. Getting a fanbase is not that easy in the first place. Rashad used to tell me, “No one listens to your tracks because you don’t come around”. Lately I’ve been going to parties and a lot of these girls ain’t around. Rashad said, “You’re not around for the footworkers to meet you, for other people to meet you, to see what’s going on at the party. You need to come around more.”

What is it that draws you to techno?

Techno is a lot more forgiving. Ghetto house, footwork, you have to follow a recipe or else nobody likes your tracks. Techno, you have a basic recipe, but it seems like the fanbase and crowd is more open minded. They’ll give it a try. With footwork, that’s not true.

So if you’re experimental, you’re shunned?

Pretty much. If you experiment, yes, you’re shunned. I understand there has to be rules but we need fresh updates to those rules if the genre wants to go anywhere. We want this genre to work out, it’s time to grow, to be more flexible. Whatever music you make has to be dancable, but it has to work both ways.

So this idea of your music being a little bit different, is that why you called your album ‘Pariah’?

Pretty much, that’s where it came from. I am a pariah. I got most of my support from Rashad, Boylan and DJ Hank. They been my cheerleaders for years, no matter what. They’ll be real with me sometimes and be like, “that’s not a footwork track” and we all agree on that, but all in all they still feel like, “Hey, you make good music, you should not stop making good music. So what if it’s not footwork, you should still put it out.” That’s another issue with females: we need encouragement, even when we may not be doing what the guys feel like we should be doing. There still needs to be encouragement. Just because you’re not fitting in, doesn’t mean it’s completely wrong, it just means you’re different. That’s where ‘Pariah’ came from. I’m gonna go ahead and own that title, own that name for myself. For sure I don’t make songs in the conventional way and I guess I’m pretty proud of that – I’m not gonna feel bad about that.

Where does the vibe you create come from?

I wasn’t aware I had too much of a vibe. Basically what I’m attracted to in music is stuff like Venetian Snares, glitchy, off-metre type music. I like 4x4 beats but I like to experiment with metre and tempo. I like to play around with time and space, with the samples and the sounds. That really excites me about music. It’s what excites me about Ableton, because it enables me to do so much more with time – time stretching and stuff. It’s all math, if you understand the implications of the metre and you use a little bit of math, you can do some crazy shit.

'Pariah' is out on July 14 via Objects LTD. Buy it here

Seb Wheeler is Mixmag's Head Of Digital. Follow him on Twitter