Smokin’ Jo’s life story isn’t the usual glossy superstar DJ biography

But what you probably don’t know about Joanne Joseph is that she was placed in care alongside her older sister Deanna at just 7 months old, then at 5 years old moved into a children’s home where both suffered the worst kinds of mental, physical and especially racial abuse. Jo remembers how difficult it was just to survive at Hambro House children’s home in Putney, West London, in the ’70s. “It was just destructive because I didn’t feel like I belonged or that I meant anything. I was told every day that I was no good: firstly because I was Black, secondly because I was female and thirdly because nobody wanted me. ‘Your parents don’t want you’ was always thrown at me, as if I was a piece of shit on the floor. So I had very low self-esteem.”

Jo continues, “I didn’t know that I was Black, for one; I mean I’m mixed, I’m Brown. My mum was very fair-skinned and she did come to visit us. So my identity was all over the shop. I thought I was white, then realised I wasn’t. Then I wanted to be white and didn’t want to be Black. So I was a bit of a mess,” she laughs, covering her pain with self-deprecation in a very British way, just as she was taught in the quasi-military environs of Hambro House, where beds had to be made for inspection every morning or punishments (often involving beatings and forced nudity) would be handed out. In this prison-like structure the values of a British society that had no place for Jo were hammered into her anyway. Small wonder, then, that she would grow up into an adult who, even when succeeding as an up-and-coming DJ, would seek validation in abusive relationships and excessive drug use.

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But that’s to skip ahead a little. Things get better for Jo after that traumatic first chapter. Now nine, she and her sister are rescued by their mother, who takes them to live with her in Notting Hill. Late ’70s multicultural Notting Hill would be a thrilling experience. “My eyes were opened and I thought, ‘Yeah, I can get with this now!’” But one of the few pleasures in Jo’s life had been her Roehampton primary school, which was now to change. “That was quite annoying because my new school just wasn’t as good. The attitude was that you’re going to be stupid anyway so we won’t even bother. I think what was good about growing up in that white suburban place was that I had a good education and I became more confident because of that. So I felt like I could say what I needed to say.” This is something that becomes clear throughout the book and especially to Mixmag as we speak. These stories, as painful as they can often be, are things she’s worked through before – in rehab for what she calls ‘habitual’ drug use as part of her DJ life and in therapy too. Indeed the book opens very entertainingly with Jo’s journey to rehab, which becomes the root to her life becoming a lot happier in general.

One of the prime sources of this happiness is music. From the first time she hears house music at a nightclub, we see Jo, who was a model at the time and already no stranger to London nightlife thanks to the ’80s not being much for photo ID, have her life taken over by it — first as a committed raver and then eventually as a DJ in her own right. So Mixmag has to ask Jo why dancefloors can seem so white nowadays and if that was always the case? She replies: “Well, England is a majority white place and most Black people will go to a hip hop or R&B party or whatever. But we were there in the beginning. All the clubs I went to, like [queer club] Jungle and [Nicky Trax’s] Confusion, plus anywhere guys like Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson, who sadly died of cancer in 2018, and Kid Bachelor played. There was a strong presence at the big M25 raves and at the more underground parties too.” Jo also shares her thoughts about why such pioneers never got the success that she did: “They played an underground Black, soulful sound. And I played more across the board, which I think is why I got through in the end. But they definitely didn’t get the credit that many white DJs of that era did.”