Interviewing EJ Kempson: a chat with the founder of Queenz Sounds, a charity empowering women and LGBTQIA+ musicians worldwide

In this interview, I sit down with the founder of Queenz Sounds, EJ Kempson, to discuss their charity. Throughout this interview EJ shed light on the current climate of the music industry, emphasising the important work charities like Queenz Sounds do in helping musicians receive proper recognition and fair compensation. Further, we explore what exciting projects Queenz Sounds has in store, as well as delve into the early days of the charity, taking a look at the amazing team that has made Queenz Sounds possible.

Would you like to tell me a bit about Queenz Sounds, yourself and your team?

Queenz Sounds is essentially my passion project. It started because I noticed a lot of discrimination in the music industry, many friends had to either give up music or hide their authentic selves just to survive. I didn’t think that was right. That’s where the idea for Queenz Sounds came from—it started off as a master’s project. During lockdown, it was kind of a one-woman team; it was just me doing everything. My main goals were getting to know the people we wanted to help and empower. Most of the lockdown was spent doing Zoom calls and prepping for when restrictions were lifted, so people could perform gigs again. Then it evolved into a collective—there were only three of us at first, and now it’s a fully-fledged Scottish charity. We have five key trustees and many volunteers across different teams: marketing, social media, tech, collaborations and more.

What were your influences that made you want to start Queenz Sounds?

Honestly, it started with my inner circle. What really began to bother me was seeing some of my Black friends and some of my trans friends struggling much more than I was. That’s what really sparked something in me—there weren’t any major external influences at that point; those came later. Once the idea started to take shape, I had the opportunity to speak with Skin from Skunk Anansie, which was huge for me. Later on, we began speaking with activists and others doing similar work in the industry, and every single conversation has shaped how we operate—what we focus on and what we see as necessary going forward. But in the beginning, it was just my own experiences and those of the people around me that motivated it.

Do you have much experience in working in Scotland in the industry? Do you think there's a need for these kind of spaces that Queenz Sounds is providing?

Scotland is interesting because it's been a bit of an escape for me. getting away from London, I’ve fallen in love with the place, but the music industry is really  interesting up here as well, it's so much further than what I've experienced elsewhere and there is like a massive community. Most of the other trustees are based in London at the moment, so they're having a lot more issues in terms of, like diversity in the industry and stuff that they're doing than I have up here for instance. They (artists) will have 20-30 gigs in a month and other times there will be nothing, especially around Christmas time.

What did you study at university and what pushed you to choose this career path? Would you recommend this path to aspiring musicians and industry’s professionals?

It's unfortunately one of those things where there isn't a correct path. Everyone is on a different journey and it's not necessarily right for everyone. I was really, really lucky with my sphere, they love Queenz Sounds. They still collab with us to this day and I wasn't so lucky when I did my degree. My degree put out my spark when it came to my music and everything that I was doing and it wasn't the learning journey or anything. It was just the people that I ended up surrounded by and often. Especially when you come to like the commercial side of music, they think that there is a formula to success which honestly  I wish everything was so black and white. I wish there was a formula.

What's the most stressful part of the charity? Do you have any anecdotes from that experience?

I would say the hardest part of Queenz Sounds is navigating the kind of connections and solutions for stuff. So again, now we have a collaborations team, but it was really strange for me to see the different types of personalities and stuff that were being like enticed by the idea of the charity. There were quite a lot of music retailers, for example, who really wanted to use our name, claiming they were doing a lot for women in the music industry. I think the hardest part for me has been the number of people who pretend to be inclusive and try to — I guess the word would be pinkwash — their branding, without genuinely engaging in activism. Their ethics and morals just aren’t aligned. This has been a trend since we first started: people offering the world, but doing it for reasons that don’t reflect why we actually exist. Does that make sense?

What are some upcoming projects or goals you and your team have planned?

We've just started a collaboration with Pirate Studios, which is great. So it means that we can also get our artists into the studio, across the country and they get certain discounts and stuff. The other thing that we're looking to do at the moment is to start a podcast with Soho Radio. So very excited to try that soon. We are looking to do stuff in the future as well that we are planning. We're looking to do conferences and we're looking to do some larger festivals too, but we're just kind of trying to pace ourselves. Because we have all of the day-to-day that we need to do with all of the artists and then we have like these big projects and everyone in the team is just as passionate as I am.

In what ways do you work with/support artists through your charity and how do you find them?

We haven't actually like spent anytime searching for people to add to our roster, that's never been something that we've done. It only happened a couple of times where we've reached out to an artist and we're like we love you, we can help. Do you want to have a chat? So yeah, most of it is just completely just networking and a lot of our stuff does actually come through social media. Obviously, we're here for the artist, but I think we're here for the volunteers as well, and that's how I like to view it. So like you'll see on our social media as well, we share stuff that the volunteers are doing 'cause they're still part of our network and I don't see it as a conflict of interest at all. People working with each other either.

You can follow Queenz Sounds here to keep up with their latest projects!