From being abused and belittled by her ex to a successful DJ career. The life of Iin Dahlia, or dj iAne, has great extremes. With a new highlight this month: winning a big DJ competition in Ibiza. “It’s a dream come true.”
Life is smiling again at the now 37-year-old Iin with Indonesian roots. But that was different a few years ago. In 2012, she lived just across the border in Koch, Germany, together with her then-husband and two young children aged 3 and 1. But it’s not a good time. “He was very aggressive towards me,” she recalls.
She finds it difficult to talk about it. “I slept in a separate room with the door locked. I couldn’t warn someone, he had cut my phone’s cable.”
“He pushed kisses on my face to choke me.”
Iin and her children suffer from the physical and mental abuse. “He threw the plate when he thought I hadn’t cooked well. He also put the kids outside in the snow if I didn’t listen to him. And he put a pillow on my face to make me choke.”
A good friend of Iin, Rody, secretly gives her a small phone call that she can use to sound the alarm if things go wrong again. That happens, but neither the authorities in Germany nor in the Netherlands can do anything for her.
“If I ever see you walking down the street, I’ll kill you.”
Rody decides to pick up her and the children and drops them off at the door of a lawyer in the Netherlands. They end up in a Stay-of-my-body house in Eindhoven. “I had a special alarm on so I could warn someone. Because my ex said: If I ever see you walking down the street, I’ll kill you.”
Iin decides not to give up. “Many women there remain depressed for too long. I have seen terrible things in the shelter: young women without teeth or missing fingers, but also suicide,” she says.
“I wanted to show that I matter.”
“I wanted to show that I can do it, that I matter. I needed something positive, so I started singing.” She participated in Idols, but without success. Two years later, in 2014, she fell in love with DJing. “It was singing and spinning.” Thus vocal DJ iAne was born.
“My first masterclass was given by Lady Aïda,” she says. “That was really great.” The Eindhoven DJ was the mother of techno music. She passed away a year ago. “She has always followed and supported me.”
Her breakthrough comes when she decides to enter a DJ competition in Ibiza. She takes the plunge and sends in a mix. After the summer, she will receive a message via Instagram that she had won. “I didn’t believe it and thought it was a fake account. Could it be real?” she asked herself. “oh my god. I was so proud.”
She was the winner of 350 entries and a few weeks ago she was allowed to play in the café Mambo in Ibiza, where big names such as Steve Aoki, Carl Cox and Swedish House Mafia perform regularly. “A dream came true. We were treated like real VIPs there.”
Dj iAne hopes that she can come back to Ibiza in the summer to play. But secretly she has another dream closer to home: “Run once in Eindhoven, my home city. That has never happened before.”
Listen here the winning mixtape by dj iAne.
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