BIANCA ANGELICA ESTRELLA MACK
“I see my role in this resistance as someone who’s bringing joy to it.”
Name: Bianca Angelica Estrella Mack
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Background: Black creole trans woman from New Orleans. Three-year veteran DJ.
Medium of choice: music, DJ
Music on repeat: Smooth Operator by Sade has been a song constantly in my head lately. Listen to more Sade!
Karaoke jam: Tainted Love by Soft Cell. My karaoke secret is: always pick short songs.
Local artists you’re excited about: Karma Rivera in hip-hop, Emilly Prado as a DJ and author, Amaranta Colindres in visual arts, Hobbs Waters in dance and murals, Evan Atwood, M. Martinez, and Danni Mar all in photography, Masyn Wade in fashion, the good folks at thenumberz.fm for their work in radio, of course my UwU DJ collective squad, goodness there are so many. This is a city loaded with talent!
LINK
linktr.ee/tallbianca to find me elsewhere on the web
VENMO/CASHAPP
venmo: @user3 – cashapp: $ussudio
Bianca Angelica Estrella Mack is a New Orleans-born DJ and community organizer based in Portland. As DJ NO.Bi.ES, she shares her passion and deep musical knowledge through a masterful mixing style, flawlessly blending the likes of Sade, DJ Krush, Luther Vandross, Patti LaBelle, TLC, and Basement Jaxx—to name some of her faves.
Mack is one of many Black trans women who relentlessly show up for the community. You will find her leading the march, cooking meals at events, and DJing at communal healing events around town. Mack’s brilliance and humor, dedication and selflessness, and unapologetic honesty have brought us so much joy and hope to our city. In this interview, Mack opens up about her roots, what shaped her into the woman she is today, and visions for our future.
You are originally from New Orleans. How did its culture help build who you are today?
What I think about New Orleans is that it’s so cool that we’re always either planning a party, at a party, or recovering from a party. It’s a place where the number one industry is tourism. It’s showing people a good time. As a bartender, but also as a person who genuinely loves people, it was very easy then to adapt that as a spirit that would travel with me. I remember doing gatherings on campus for friends and still having food left over and just inviting any person who’s walking by, “Hey, you wanna hot meal? You want some snacks? We got some things inside.” “My mom is visiting and she made a nice big pot of food or something.” It’s always been this very communal, very shared, civic pride that we have collectively. Another friend puts it thusly.
“My hope is that we get to the point where equity and genuinely earnest sharing becomes the pillars of who we are as a world, who we are as a society, who we are as neighbors, friends as lovers.”
If another world is possible, what does it look like for you?
My hope is that we get to the point where equity and genuinely earnest sharing becomes the pillars of who we are as a world, who we are as a society, who we are as neighbors, friends as lovers. My hope for a post-Covid world is that we look around and we see all of these mutual aid efforts that popped up as a result of people’s needs increasing so sizably. And that we just keep that energy going.
So much of my desire to be in these organizing and community building spaces is just about everyone else. It’s about the people who need to receive those things. It’s about doing it not for the feel good. I do feel good at the end of the day, but that’s not my motivation. My motivation is “someone needs help. Let’s help them.”
You are an extremely skilled DJ with quite an expansive music collection. I’ve seen you rock any type of dance floor around town. What do you value the most in this profession?
There’s all these ways in which music is the great equalizer. You might not speak the same language. You might not come from the same cultural origins. We don’t know much about each other, but we can unify through music. We can unify through dancing. We can unify through rhythm. It’s a position I don’t take lightly in terms of trying not to be super homogeneous in what I play, how I get down, so forth and so on. It’s essential to me that I go in, able to touch multiple corners musically.
I was playing a thing recently and I had the shades on and yet, I was still managing to make eye contact with people and connecting with them on their grooving to the music. When you can do something like that, when you can capture these moments, when you can reach people despite, they’d be like, “A trans person DJing? This will be interesting” and, they see it’s interesting but in a good way. They’ve shed that miscast stereotype or whatever of me that they might have held previously. And everyone will just kick back and enjoy themselves. That’s all I want to do. I see my role in this resistance as someone who’s bringing joy to it.
Again, the fight is necessary. It’s essential. We’ve got to advocate. We’ve got to be better people, but you’ve also got to remind ourselves to have fun too. I put a great value on that capacity for fun and on that capacity to just relax and dance and enjoy the rhythm. Without it you know we’ll all be pouring from empty.
I hope anyone reading or hearing this can take away that this is a life that will not despair for its own sake. This is a life that, despite all of the things thrown at it, is still gonna find the smile, and the joke. We’re still gonna find the happy in a world that wants so badly to deprive me of it. If a plea should be made, it is that people start joining me in that pursuit for the joy, for the smile, for the laugh with a joke, for the happy… as opposed to attempting to make me bad because I ain’t gonna land and it just looks bad. There’s definitely means of getting in and getting down with what I got going on. It’s just as simple as showing up. I don’t ask much of anything from people because y’all are gonna be who you’re and we’re gonna find a way we won’t, but we’re gonna try to find a way at least. But, open that heart. Open that mind. Open those eyes. Give your trans people in your life a try. Never know what comes from it.
Many of us in the community are inspired by the way you carry yourself with true confidence. Will you tell me a bit about what your gender awakening journey has been like?
The confidence thing, that’s ongoing. I feel good about myself as an individual. At the same time, it’s always, what else could I be doing? How else can I be showing up as my most authentic self? I was having a conversation with a friend while I was back home. We kind of moved away from the concept of “the best self.” Because I don’t know what my best self is. Was I better yesterday than I am today? Will I be better tomorrow? Who am I calling best, really? So what she presented was, “Are you your favorite self?” Shout out to you Dominique. That was a wonderful conversation. It is a constant search for my favorite self.I’m able to present to the world as a person who has made a decision, is sticking with it, and is confident about it. I love the woman I became. I truly, truly, truly love the woman I became, the one I’m still becoming. That’s despite the deep voice. That’s despite the height that I cannot avoid. That’s despite all of the things that I can’t change.Things that I don’t wish to change and the things that I have changed—they all work together. And they made this, me. I’m able to look in the mirror every day and say, “Girl, I’m proud of you.”
I think it's so powerful that you embody this phrase: “I want to be my favorite self.” Do you have any words for your younger self?
This is always one of the more difficult for vulnerabilities to express. I was one of those people who knew from a really young age that something about me was different. I also had the sense of mind in the sense of society enough to know that, that thing I felt was also something that could be construed as wrong. So I tried to let it pass. While holding that disappointment that I let the world get the better of me. There’s also the feeling of, what if I had come out in a more hostile world? Will I still be here today? They say our [life expectancy] age is 35. I’m 37 now. Statistically, only for the fact that I came out much later in life, must have been here. If I came out at 27 or 17, I can’t guarantee it. They say live a life without regrets and I can’t do that. I greatly regret not being able to advocate for myself much stronger, much younger. Which is why I do it now.
I want everybody who’s feeling it, feeling trans, feeling gender non conforming or some way, to know that they can talk to me. Whether it’s that you’re ten years younger or 30 years older, you can talk to me. We can figure out together how to make a world that you can land safely and consistently. I think that’s my gift to my younger self, is to make sure that those who follow we’re doing it in a much more optimistic world, thankfully. Still not great, but much more optimistic at least.
Thank you, Bianca.
This work was made possible in part to a Make | Learn | Build Grant from the Regional Arts and Cultural Council.
