During the sunny Memorial day Weekend in Chicago, Windy City Events hosted the inaugural Forever Mine Festival, which highlighted Chicago’s historical roots in house music and its connection to R & B. Headlined by Keyshia Cole on Saturday and Kaytranada on Sunday, the festival was also an ode to the early 2000s, a time period where a lot of the festival attendees, the millennial generation came of age.
Attendees could switch between the main stage, where the headlining acts performed, and the second stage, which featured prominent house DJs. The festival also included activities that highlighted local Chicago culture, such as the Sounds of Chicago, a silent disco where local Chicago DJs played, sponsored by Red Bull, and a Hennessy social club, which included performances by emerging Chicago artists such as Lil Mu. The festival also spotlighted local Chicago businesses such as Jerk Yard, Mimi's Craft Kitchen, and Harold's.
During the 2-day festival, Earmilk got to sit down with three prominent and instrumental Chicago House DJs: Terry Hunter, a three-time Grammy-nominated producer who’s worked with Beyonce, DJ Lady D, who is referred to as the Queen of Chicago House, and DJ Slugo, one of the pioneers of Ghetto House music and one of the founders of the famous 90s label Dancemania. Stay tuned to learn about their experience at the first Forever Mine Festival, their personal relationship to House music, and their thoughts on the future of house music.
Experience at Forever Mine
For Terry Hunter, he hopes that Forever Mine becomes a regular part of the Chicago Festival season, “Listen, Forever Mine is.. I hope they're here to stay. The experience was amazing, just from how they took care of business. They told me the new concept they got with my team, and I was like, " Oh, this is gonna be amazing. And so then to come here for them to try to put R and B and House together, I thought that was phenomenal. So I love the fact of good music being in one festival, you can go get some great house, RNB, hip hop, live musicianship. So, I think they did it right, they got.”
For DJ Lady D, she expressed how seamlessly R&B and house music go together.
“Forever Mine was actually like a new favorite. I'm serious, because first of all, as a, you know, Chicagoan, a black woman who loves R&B music, I feel like R and B and house are a perfect fit. I feel like they really go together, not because it's, you know, mainly urban or mainly black, but because the sensibilities of R and B, which are love and soulfulness, are also part of house music. So I think they go together perfectly, and I hope that they do this again and again and again. I feel like it was an awesome first start.”
For DJ Slugo, he appreciates the representation of Black dance music in the festival, which is often overlooked and not represented in electronic dance music spaces.
“Man, great. How can I say it? These are the festivals that believe in the DJs that play the music that I play, so you don't very often hear my sound at the festivals, so Forever Manifest is one of those big ones that believe in what we play.”
Personal Relationship To Music
In terms of his personal relationship to House music, love is at the center for Terry Hunter.
“My answer is gonna sound a little cliche, but love, like it's that's what house music is about. When you're hearing all of the songs, if it's from the disco era, that morphs into house, it's really about love.”
He also reflects on a story of seeing Frankie Knuckles, the Godfather of House Music, play live as a young boy.
“So with my cousin, me being named after him, he took me to this event on Belmont, and I was hearing all of these records that I knew from him playing it, but at that time I couldn't grasp it, but they were seamlessly mixing in one after another. The music didn't stop, it was just the flow, kept going, kept going, kept going, and I was like, " Oh my god, and then I'm looking, and I'm seeing this sea of people praising this one DJ, and I'm like, "My God. So, my cousin, like, "You're all right, and I'm like, "Man, he's incredible, like. And people, I've never, at that point, heard people scream a DJ's name. People are hands in the air, crying. I mean, you hit black, white, Asian, Spanish, gay, straight, gangbangers. Bangers, it was all about the music, and that DJ was Frankie Knuckles, who was responsible for the term house music. And so that's what house music means to me. It's my childhood, it's my upbringing, it's my youth, it's something that I was able to make a living with to take care of my wife, to take care and raise my two kids, and put one through college. My youngest is now a pressman, or will be a sophomore in college. So, house music is love, life, is everything, it's air.”
For DJ Lady D , House Music represents her coming-of-age story.
“Yeah, it exploded when I was in high school, and so not only were we listening to it all the time, seven days a week, but every weekend was spent in a house music party. Whether it was on the radio, like if you were on punishment, you couldn't go to the party, your parents were like, "No, you're not going anywhere this weekend, or you were able to go hang out with your friends at the local high school soul food restaurant, wherever they were throwing the house parties, we were there. So, down on, you know, 22nd and Michigan, listening to Ron Hardy, or at the warehouse, people listening to Frankie Knuckles, or at your sock hop at your high school, where I went, Whitney Young, we had sock ops all the time, and they would have the hot mix five, and I would see Steve Hurley and folks like that coming into my, you know, into the doors of my auditorium, so and my gymnasiums, and it was just an amazing time to be in Chicago. And to be alive, like listening to house music, it's for us, by us, for real, in a real sense, like we were young kids, and they were going out, enterprising, entrepreneurial, doing their thing.
I like finding out how I can collaborate with people, how I can make a party happen, make people feel something, buy the best DJs, buy the best venue, buy the best sound, and create something that people would like, love, and house music is all that. So, yes, it is a coming of age for me, and if I can make a movie about it, write a book about it. I would, because hip hop has those stories and hip hop has those movies, but House doesn't really have that, and so that's one of the things that I really want to do.”
For DJ Slugo, he reflects on how he innovated his own genre of house, “Ghetto House” in the 90s.
"House Music, born and raised in it, Chicago is in my blood. I started out playing nothing but just house music, then it, you know, my lifestyle and the guys that came up with me, our lifestyle is different from the house music guys, so we decided to make a sound that fit the lifestyle we were living, that's when we became Ghetto Housemates. "
Future of House Music
In terms of the future of House, Terry Hunter reflects on how people doubted the longevity of the genre and how the popularity of house music in the 2020s proved them wrong.
“I remember years ago people were like, well, if it doesn't, you know, get passed down to the younger generation, it's gonna die off, and it was a big thing. Maybe 10 years ago, people were like, " Oh, house music is over. It's dead. The youth, the youth is here. Younger artists are tapped into the sound, and I feel like it's never going anywhere, like R&B is never going anywhere, like hip hop is never going anywhere. So, I look at.. I talked with one of my friends, and before we used to have to go to. Europe commands really big fees for getting the same fees in my home country now, so I still travel abroad to Europe, but I don't have to. I can make a living in America if I wanted to, you know what I mean. And so I am just really happy about that, and it doesn't have an age limit to it, because people before tried to put an age limit on every genre, Music, hip hop, Country, Western, R&B, whatever, and so people just want to hear good music. If you're relevant, if you're staying busy, house music is here to stay.”
For DJ Lady D, she discusses her excitement about the movement to create space for more women DJs and the good feelings emitted from House Music.
“Yes, I mentor so many young women that are DJs and want to be producers or are now producing, and that's like one of my favorite things in the whole world, like if my legacy, you know, when I leave this place is that I taught many, many women the sacredness of house music and how to DJ, that I would be happy with that. I would be in the universe, in the cosmos, just smiling like I am today, like I think that I train up the best people to do the job before them, and that is music is medicine, and we are here as therapeutic ministers for the soul, and we are for you to elevate yourself and to feel better about your world when you leave us than when you came in, that's really what we're here to do. I don't consider myself a preacher or a minister, whatever, in that sense, but I know that what we do is real, and it's like it is, it's effective, so house music does that. It's inspirational, it lifts you up.
For DJ Slugo, he discusses how Hip hop edged out House, and wants more recognition for House, specifically Ghetto House, a music genre he is responsible for pioneering.
“I love it. I wouldn't say there's a resurgence here in Chicago, which is kind of crazy to me, because this is the birthplace of it. But overseas, they, you know, they were always vibing to it, so it just went here, went over there, and then came back, so it never went anywhere. I've been in the 2000s when I made a lot of my records, so outside of 95 I did 90, maybe from 92 to 97 I did a lot of records on Dance Mania. Then things slowed down a little bit, and then in the 2000s, we started back doing it like crazy. I actually released a DVD in 2000, 2001, and 2002. That's still to this day the only Juke DVD ever done. So, yeah, so you know it never really went anywhere. It's just that hip hop came in, and everybody wanted, instead of being a dancer and dancing preppy with preppy shoes, and everybody went from that to Timberlands and starter jackets, and then drill came, you know, then somebody said, "Hey, let's mix drill with you. I'm saying, and now we have the juke drill era, so that's what gave us its resurgence, like the younger people start rapping over the juke beats, you know, and they gave us resurgence. It's a whole full circle game. We're back.”
“I would love to see a category in the Grammys for House music. If we could get that, I'll be, I'll be happy, like recognizes. I would like to see Ghetto House as a genre as well. So do those two things, and I'm good with it. It's just being.. I may not live to see the recognition, but I want the recognition for the work that we put in, you know? I mean, so I see it going there already, you know, because I see a lot of big acts starting to take the sound and use the sound.”
Overall, Windy City events did a phenomenal job at the inaugural Forever Mine Festival. In an industry where Black dance artists lack opportunity and representation, Forever Mine was one of the spaces that truly made them feel seen and celebrated. Be on the lookout for when Windy City Events announces the 2027 lineup, because Forever Mine will be here to stay!
