DX: I want to talk about Global Mixx but I don’t want to glaze over your accomplishments specifically as a woman. What obstacles or challenges are there in terms of being a woman in what most consider a male-dominated industry?
Mary Datcher: When I started out doing street marketing, I didn’t think about myself as a woman doing this. I thought of myself as someone who loves the music and who was going to do whatever it takes to promote it and do my job. There were a lot more females when I started. Now, I’m more conscientious about my gender then I was 10 years ago. It’s a lot more male-dominated. It’s more of a secret-society of men. Half of them know that they’re not as experienced as their female counterparts, but they don’t care. It’s all about keeping it within their click. That’s the sad part about the business that we’re in. You see people that you know are negligent in their profession. They don’t pick up the phone, they don’t return phone calls, they drop the ball… But somehow they end up from one job to the next because they happen to have a colleague who’s their boss who makes a phone call to his colleague to make sure that his boy eats. If it was a woman who did the same thing, we’d be blacklisted and thrown to the curb and forced to find a job outside of our industry. So there is definitely a bias there.

DX: How has Global Mixx changed over the course of the last four years?
Mary Datcher: It really has changed. I can see it from an economic standpoint. The amount of conferences in smaller markets have sprouted out from the fact that Global Mixx has been happening and from the fact that the Core DJs Retreat the TJ’s DJ’s and Ozone conference, etc. These are major retreats that the industry looks at. Then you have the smaller ones in markets like Gainesville or Jacksonville, Florida or Jackson, Mississippi. They’re seeing that people are traveling far and beyond to meet major people at conferences like ours who are contributing or making influences on the music and entertainment side. What I’ve seen is the growth of the intimate level of deejays that we personally invite and going from not really doing promotions and media partnerships to now, us really having to fight for the attendance and credibility. Always proving ourselves every year to the same people that we are stepping to to make sure that they still have a job. And that’s the difference. Each year we’re building up, which should be easier.

DX: What can we expect for this years’ event?
Mary Datcher: This year is interest. One thing we’ve been building from last year is to evolve from just having a bunch of showcases and kicking it with a bunch of deejays to really embracing a broader range of people in the industry. We’ve expanded our panel and seminar portion of the conference. We are really trying to acknowledge key people that do their thing whether on the production, songwriting, media, marketing sides and really embrace other areas that allow us on the music side to function and become more credible and vice versa. So what’s different this year is that the music seminars are a lot more detailed and informative. The political process of the election year has really influenced what we’re doing with Global Mixx. We have a presidential candidate from our home state and our home city. That was one important aspect too, to make sure that our honorary co-chairs were apart of the political process as well. I’m really excited to have Alderman Walter Burnett, who is not only an alderman in Chicago but is also chairman of the mayor’s office of special events. He hosts a great deal of entertainment events throughout the city throughout the year. He’s the chair of the cultural affairs department which really engages the arts and entertainment community here. So he’s a very important figure here in our backyard. As well as Congressman Danny Davis of the 7th District, the largest congressional district in the state of Illinois. So these two gentlemen have been very gracious and supportive of what we’re doing. They see the importance of how the music and entertainment industry influences the youth movement and the credibility and connection between politics and mass media. And those are some of the things that we’re going to address at the retreat this year, as well as a last-minute voter registration drive on Saturday.

DX: What’s next for Mary Datcher?
Mary Datcher: Building up a multimedia company that focuses on the empowerment and education of the music and entertainment industry. Aligning myself with more and more on the divisional side of things. I love marketing. I love creating and building from the ground up and seeing once we create that brand and watching it grow long term. Hopefully providing a lot more opportunities for people whether young or old. If they have the same passion for the business as I do it allows me to be more of a mentor and provide some job stability for folks who are trying to stay in this business.