Dare To Disrupt: Amanda Keisha Ang

One of the founders of the Attagirl collective, Amanda Keisha Ang (@akasounds) is a designer by training, life-long illustrator, DJ, and tattoo artist in apprenticeship. The multi-hyphenate creative has become a party favourite because of the platform her collective is giving to varied musical genres and talents. 

I first touched a turntable set when I was 17 and still in Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and I realised I had some sort of affinity with the equipment. But acquiring the system at the time was so expensive so I left it for a while until 2012 when I took an all-girl DJ bootcamp.

My very first gig was with the bootcamp. There was a graduation show at Wine Bar so we could showcase and display what we learned. That was my first proper gig playing to friends and an audience with proper programming and a lineup. I’ve been in some bands before but DJ-ing was my first experience of playing to an audience. The great thing is I don’t need to sing. 

The truth is there’s not a lot of people playing grime, footwork or drum and bass music. Even hip hop’s difficult to find here. With Attagirl, there was an acknowledgement that we should try pushing genres that were under-represented in any possible way and manner. 

Have you seen hip hop crowds? They’re crazy, man. The parties can get quite crazy. 

Attagirl isn’t exclusively for women but we want to elevate the presence of women in the scene and industry. We’re just a bunch of easy-going girls who want to talk about and play music with everybody. 

There are people who come up to me when I’m playing with really ridiculous song requests. If I can play it at the party it’s no problem because it’s enjoyable to think that people are listening to what you’re playing. But I was at this Bandwagon boat party – and they’re obviously more curated and underground – and this guy asked me to play Taylor Swift. 

Get to know our pick of ten rule-breaking creatives in the March 2017 issue of L'Officiel Singapore.