We caught up with the brilliant and insightful April Fulstone, aka Agile One, a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, April thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

In the summer of 2014, I entered a conversation with Regina Martinez (a sound artist and dear friend now based in Chicago) and Angelina Fasano (a fiber artist and dear friend who is now based in Brussels, Belgium) which organically became an event series called the clothesline. The concept was a one-night-only installation that involved sound and visual artists collaborating to create an interactive art experience. This happened at a venue called Blank Space in St. Louis, which was a community-oriented and run music venue and bar on Cherokee Street on the South Side. This monthly event continued through the end of 2019 due to Regina and Angelina both needing to relocate. In those four years, we tapped into an incredible wave of creative energy and community. We had dinners each month with the artists involved and a core group of friends who had supported the event from the beginning. My own sons were greatly shaped by this amazing community of artists.

April, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a deejay and event organizer. I got into music at an early age but my entry into deejaying was in college radio. It was my introduction to vinyl records and turntables. I hosted a show on KWUR (Washington University) focusing on independent label rap on Wednesday nights from 11pm – 2 am, which eventually became a hangout spot for local hip hop deejays. From there, I moved into community and commercial radio, then the club scene.

I went to grad school to become a teacher and did my student teaching in Detroit, where I spent a year and was nurtured by a warm and welcoming music scene along with a strong network of female DJs, MCs, dancers, and artists that I met there. Once I returned to St. Louis, I got married to my husband Rob, DJ Crucial, who runs an independent record label called F5 Records and is now semi-retired from deejaying. We had twin boys, and being a full time middle school teacher while parenting took most of my energy during my kids’ early years, but I never completely abandoned deejaying.

Currently, I am a resident DJ for Sophie’s Artist Lounge alongside two incredible DJs, Makeda Kravitz and Nico Marie. As a trio, we go by Sage Babes. This stemmed from our Friday nights which we call Sage at Sophie’s – we wanted it to be a cleansing entry into the weekend for folks. We mainly play new rap, R&B, soul, house, remixes and edits. I also spin First Fridays with my husband at a spot called The Gramophone, which is super chill and mostly classic and new hip hop and r&b. A gig I really enjoyed last summer was spinning alongside Carozilla and Sunny Cheeba at Dante’s HiFi in Miami. I also spin at several Chicago spots throughout the year.

I think what sets me apart from others is my longevity as a DJ and my ability to maintain relevancy and adapt and evolve with the times. I also thrive on collaboration and will rarely spin by myself – there is an alchemy to mixing music alongside someone you really vibe with and trust.

I am proud of my integrity as an artist who knows what she wants and what she’s worth. I don’t play for audiences that expect a predictable playlist and I don’t play venues where the DJ is not prioritized as an artist. I almost never take requests. But I am very successful in fulfilling an audience that is open to a musical journey.

I can play vinyl, I can play on a controller with a USB, I can spin on Serato. I spent a lot of time in my earlier years learning how to match beats on vinyl, and I think that foundation is helpful no matter what genre I’m playing. I love rap, r&b, and deep house, but I crossover into many genres.

I think being a great DJ has a lot to do with reading the energy in the room. The music I mix for my audience is a communication of the frequency of my soul, and it can be quite medicinal in communion with others. I don’t know much about my ancestors, but I like to believe that there were mudangs somewhere in my lineage. These are Korean women who are like shamans, and perform ceremonies with percussion instruments, dancing and chanting to expel evil forces.

As I stated earlier, I am highly adaptable and a learner – maybe this is due to my childhood as a Korean immigrant in the midwest – I had to learn how to navigate uncomfortable and many times hostile environments. I think this upbringing made me super resliient.
I view my creative life not as a hobby, but as a necessary force that keeps me alive and well.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

A time I had to pivot is when I injured my vertebra (L5) during the Covid shutdown. I was practically immobile for several weeks – it was so scary and painful. This made me reevaluate my relationship with my body. We are taught to worship grind culture, and I embodied that in my early career as a teacher, while at the same time going hard on a lot of weekends with DJ gigs. After giving birth naturally to twins (they were 6 and 7 pounds!) my body was wrecked but no one told me how to take care of it postpartum. I was also really young so I wasn’t thinking about long-term effects.

When we shut down, I had to teach on Zoom everyday and I couldn’t go to my hot yoga studio. I also had an extremely stressful situation with a parent who was examining all of my lessons and trying to get me fired because she didn’t want her white daughter to have to think about her racial identity and we were reading the book Stamped (young adult version) by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi.

Eventually my spine gave out and I had to go to physical therapy and chiropractor several times a week. I was still doing gigs (in the strangest, distanced, masked settings, of course) and couldn’t lift anything so I had to have all this help (thanks to my husband!)

Fortunately, I’m stronger than ever now, but it’s because I pay attention to my physical needs much more than ever before.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

The mission of my creative journey is to share my humanity authentically and honestly with folks who can vibe with my frequency. Growing up, I became selectively mute in public spaces because there was a relentless message from society that I was an outsider or unwanted pest – I had a green card until I got my citizenship in 2008 that said “Permanent Alien”. The feeling of not belonging anywhere was the worst for me from middle to high school because I grew up in Iowa City and was completely disconnected from any Korean history or culture – it was just me, my parents, and my little brother trying to make it in the middle of Iowa. Despite that, I have always had a strong sense of self-love and knowledge that helped me build a hard shell around me. Deejaying became a safe form of communicating to the public world, and through it, among other things like my relationship with my partner and children, I grew to become more confident and vocal in other ways. The strength and solidarity of hip hop culture and Black culture also inspired me to work on decolonizing my mindset and seek out deeper connections to my own lineage. I’m still putting together the puzzle of who I am and who/where I come from.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @agile.one
• Soundcloud: @agile_one

Image Credits
Carly Faye Jessica Page Martell Stepney Brooke Davanzo