By Cat Lewis
It’s midnight in Mozambique. Sparklers are going off on the dance floor. Oscar Mbo, one of South Africa’s biggest DJs, just played, and Double Drop, named by Mixmag as a DJ to watch in 2026, is waiting to go B2B with the next act, London-based DJ and budding producer Siân Herbert, playing under the new name Sian’s Music Box.
Speaking on the crowd, Siân Herbert tells me: “I think they are really confused.”
“I have no idea if anyone here knows about me. I think they wonder who’s this foreign girl who speaks Portuguese in Mozambique? Oh, she’s a DJ.”
Siân Herbert comes prepared after “hours of research,” days of finding tunes.
I talk to her some time later: “It was so unreal,” she says about the Mozambique party. “I didn’t have that much local knowledge, I just dropped tunes, then suddenly everyone was singing along because, for them, it was a classic tune!”
Later, I sit with Siân over sushi and drinks in North London, watching videos from that night on her phone. The gig is an example of what she does often. She walks into spaces where she’s not the anticipated act and surprises the crowd.
Siân Herbert has spent the better part of a decade building a reputation for surprising sets on the London circuit, but her story spans the globe.
Tell me about childhood. Where did you grow up?
She grew up in Essex. Her Irish mum and Welsh Dad, both with a strong dislike for the English, brought her up with an outsider sense of identity.
“My parents made me a seeker of the world. I have a complex identity. I’ve never felt like I’m entirely British or English.”
Siân was born at the end of The Troubles, a thirty-year conflict between those who wanted a united Ireland and those who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK, marked by sustained violence until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Siân grew up spending summers in Ireland and became fascinated by it. She wanted to understand the violence she saw and heard about and make sense of it.
“I spent summers in Ireland with my family. It was amazing. We’d drive the car over from Essex. A lot of the tracks coming out from bands like Kneecap resonate with me now.”
How did you start in music?
At nine, she took up the flute. “I loved it. We had a small house, and I played the whole time. My siblings hated it, but my mum was very supportive and let me play whenever I wanted.”
The family had music running through it. Her great uncle in Ireland played the accordion and sang old Irish rebel songs, her father played a little bit of piano, and her grandmother (who Siân sadly never met) was a church organist.
“I grew up being told the history of Ireland through its music.”
What about school?
Siân Herbert attended an all-girls Catholic school. It was “not the easiest time.”
“I’m very boyish. I think if I’d been in a mixed school with boys, my life trajectory might have been very different.”
Here, Siân clarifies that she uses both she/her and they/them pronouns, but is happy to use “she/her” for this interview.
In Catholic school, she got funneled into orchestra, wind band, and flute choir. It was her first introduction to being truly busy and keeping a schedule.
“I had to arrive on time, wait for my part, and play my part. It just didn’t suit my personality. It’s a tragedy. I think one of the inequalities of life is having options open to you and knowing people who do stuff. That’s one reason why inequality is so persistent.”
Before becoming a DJ, Siân Herbert’s first career was as a researcher at a university where she wrote about gender-based violence and inequality, so that’s something I ask her about.
“Inequality is intersectional. It’s about many things like income, assets, and wealth. It’s about access to education and ideas. And sometimes, it’s also about access to eudcation and ideas.”
How did she come to realize that working as a DJ was something she wanted to do? I sense it’s not the easiest question. She sighs:
“Growing up, I’d never heard of a DJ or considered being one. Never in my life had I seen a female DJ. I didn’t know I could.”
I know you love Latin music and culture. Where does that come from?
One day, Siân went traveling and tells me she “ended up” in Latin America “unexpectedly” for six months. She arrived “totally unprepared.”
“To be really honest, I’d never really heard of Latin America. At that time, the internet wasn’t like it is now. I got there and was obsessed.”
Argentina came first. She arrived during mass protests across the country against George Bush’s planned visit to Buenos Aires. The protesting was, she learned, called Cacerolazo, the Argentine tradition of taking to the streets to bang pots and pans.
“I had to get a police escort to move between hostels. I remember looking outside the window and thinking, ‘I need to come back. Political action is alive here.'”
She did return, but next: Brazil. “Brazil changed me.”
She tells me she feels “an affinity with Latin America because of my Irishness.” And, she says:
“Brazilian party culture is next level. It’s fun. There’s music everywhere. It’s happening all the time. Everywhere you go, people pump out music from little speakers. It’s a loud culture, and I’m a loud-culture person.”
She decided to return to Argentina to pursue a university degree there. When she arrived a second time, the country was in the midst of Kirchnerismo, a left-wing movement built around former presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The movement was defined by state intervention in the economy, expanded social spending, and prosecutions for crimes committed under the military dictatorship. She arrived right as it started to shift daily life.
With no student loan or funding available, she hustled.
“I couldn’t get a student loan. It’s not common for a British person to study a master’s in Argentina. There was no funding available.”
How did Argentina shape you?
“Argentina showed me what I want from life. I grew up knowing about the stark inequality and poverty my mum grew up in. All my family experienced the backside of conflict, not the direct impact, but the economic stagnation that comes with it.”
She tells me that, at the time, Argentina’s foreign policy was centered on the actions by the British government in the Falkland Islands.
“Everyone I knew had opinions on colonialism and neocolonialism. They strengthened my worldview and empathy, and, living there, I started to get a real understanding of violence.”
“There’s so much more violence in Latin America than Europeans are accustomed to. You have to think about it every day, every step. It’s the choice between walking down this street or that one, whether you’re getting a taxi or not, or who you’re calling for the taxi.”
Let’s talk about gender.
Argentina changed more than her view on politics. Siân came out as bisexual while living there. She found her closest community not in female-gendered spaces (“way too female for me,” she says) but among queer men, and among people on the middle ground of the gender spectrum.
“In Argentina, I honed my understanding of gender as a spectrum. I grew up in Essex and had no idea about these concepts.”
“Argentina was the next stage of my life where I became a different person, and my sense of sexual and gender identity changed with it.”
Language was part of it. Speaking Spanish and Portuguese opened doors that speaking English could not have.
“By speaking other languages, I got more global. It changed my sense of identity in the world, and my ability to move through it.”
How did Argentina change your music?
“A close friend, Henrique, gave me an entire back catalog of 500 Brazilian classics and introduced me to the music of Jorge Ben.”
She then started learning about the history of Brazil and its music, she tells me, is laden with political action. One thing she learned: Brazil may now be known as the Samba capital of the world, but in the late 1920s, Samba was effectively criminalized, with musicians arrested and persecuted for it. At that time, Samba was deemed immoral, “too Black,” and associated with crime. The 1960s also saw the birth of Tropicalia, a politically charged genre and creative movement celebrating Brazilian culture and people who protested the oppressive military regime.
While Siân Herbert tells me she does not draw a direct line between this music and the political bend in her own sets, she says she works hard to create sets that show this music to the world in a way that is thoughtfully done and not extractive.
How did you begin DJing?
She started six years ago. Before she officially started playing gigs, she’d spent years organizing parties.
“I used to organise DIY raves and parties and found I was constantly programming male DJs, and some weren’t very good. I never considered I could be a DJ, which is madness to me now.”
This understanding finally hit her when she started dating a male DJ. Before that, she’d been “clueless”. She laughs now in our talk as she remembers not knowing how to plug anything in. But after he showed her the basics, something in her kicked into a new gear. “Seeing that he could do it made me know I could do it.”
Now, women come up to her after gigs and say they feel inspired to DJ themselves.
“I’m proud that women ask me about learning to DJ. It’s easy to forget how much it matters, being a woman and doing something women don’t usually do. That tells me this is actually changing the world.”
How does all this feed into your research?
As a researcher of gender studies, she knows how deep this all goes.
“The more we have representation of men, women, and nonbinary people in every section of society, not just DJs but also having more more male carers, male primary school teachers and women CEOs, the more we can choose to do what we want according to our skills and interests. And the opposite is true. More gender segregation means more power imbalances, and more violence.”
Everything is connected, she says. Her research just lets her see the patterns.
What do you feel about production?
“I have this conversation with male promoters. They say there just aren’t enough women artists of quality to book. They have a point: There are indeed more female DJs than female producers. We do need more female producers, but how does that happen? You generally don’t become a producer first. Most people start with DJing, then start producing.”
This is a subject Siân’s passionate about. “I tell them they have to think 20 years ahead. If you program more women who may have less experience now, you’ll see a lot more women producing great music in 20 years.”
“I feel annoyed when I see and hear resistance to women artists from men. Especially in straight spaces, women get pigeonholed. That’s why there are so many women DJ collectives. It seems the best way to navigate nightlife as a woman, because nightlife is about who you know. The DJ market is saturated. People just book their friends.”
Have you ever experienced sexism?
“Of course. It’s a boys’ club. But of course, it’s not just about DJs.”
Here’s what she means:
“We see DJs. They’re very public. But what people might not know is that most promoters are male. Many venues are run by men. Sound engineers tend to be male. Lighting engineers too. This is an environment. These are all things women can do, but they don’t because it’s harder for a woman to get into this work. They have to prove themselves in ways men don’t have to.”
The numbers prove it. Fewer than one in ten DJs are women, and the figure drops to 5% among electronic music producers.
Women account for between 5% and 7% of audio engineers across the industry. In live music more broadly, men hold 63% of senior roles. A 2024 report by the UK Women and Equalities Committee found misogyny to be endemic across the industry.
Siân shares examples of the “casual sexism” she’s experienced:
“I played a gig recently. There were five DJs. I was the only woman. I was outside and one of the male bar staff asked if I was friends with the DJ. I was like, ‘No, I’m playing.’ In that moment, I felt huge imposter syndrome. Casual sexism like that makes us feel like we don’t belong.”
You changed your artist name recently. Why?
Siân Herbert’s been known on the London scene as Siânageddon. That former name, she says, “matched my music and energy into the perfect metaphor for the times.”
“I like long slots, and I like to close. I like to lead everyone to the end. That’s where the name came from, and it still represents my energy and personality. However, at some point, I realized it doesn’t match my music.”
Names matter. Since “Siânageddon” suggests End Times, “people expected donk, drum and bass, and loud bass sounds,” she says, but her sets tend to go somewhere else.
“I collect Bossa jazz to hard groove. I love disco, Brazilian boogie, new disco, classic disco, classic house. Everything tends to be Latin, Afro, and jazz-influenced. I play broken beat, and I’ve got a harder side where I’ll go into hardgroove and Baile funk. I’ve got a big spectrum.”
An example is her Tropical Soul set, a fusion of Latin and Afro rhythms, disco house, and Global Bass. It’s among my favorites of her music.
In an industry where names carry instant associations, that ambiguity has a cost, so she decided this year—shortly before this interview, actually—to change her artist name.
She’s now Sian’s Music Box, with the circumflex (â) removed (“I had to change it, sadly, since it doesn’t work for Google searching”).
“It broke my heart to leave Siânageddon, but it’s the right move. I want to get a radio show, and this name matches that.”
Talk about your sound?
Sian’s Music Box is shaped by her years living in Latin America.
“I see it as a British girl’s take on Afro-Latin music. My whole sonic world is Afro-Latin-dominated because I love the music. We don’t have much of this music here in the U.K., and I love bringing it to the crowds.”
She always adds her own twist: “I play fusion. I don’t play just a whole set of Afro-Latin stuff. I think everyone should share all music, but also respect where it comes from and the people whose culture you’re representing. Buy their music, don’t download it for free. Follow them. Support it in a different way. Don’t just extract it.”
As our chat ends, Siân pulls out her phone and shares some playlists of her recent favorite artists she thinks the world isn’t paying enough attention to, at least, not yet.
Her top three: Bronka, Bejuco, and Bosq.
Other big current favorites include Manybeat, Ghetto Kumbé, DJ Hiphoppapotamus, Double Drop, Gabriele Poso, Captain Planet, and WOST. “Go listen to all of them!”
She’s still researching gender-based violence, still DJing, and is also a photographer, and she is enjoying how these three paths are interweaving. She says they “cross over more than they compete,” and all three, she says, are vital to who she is.
“Through my research, photography, and DJing, I’m trying to understand history, make sense of the world, and tell stories. That’s what I do.”
Siân Herbert is a London-based DJ, photographer, and researcher. Follow Siân Herbert on Instagram, listen to her music on SoundCloud, and check out her photography on her website.
Cat Lewis writes on culture, creativity, and the unseen characters of nightlife. Drawn to the subversive, quirky, and queer, her writing champions those not usually seen and tells their stories loud and clear.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Words: Cat Lewis
Edits: Alexander Cheves
Images: Courtesy of the artist, except where otherwise noted
