During Oakland Pride last month, a diverse crowd of mostly women packed into the New Parish for Soulovely, a daytime party that takes place on second Sundays during the summer. Though the dance floor in the venue’s courtyard was completely full, people of different ages and ethnicities unselfconsciously got down in the aisles, on top of the benches, and in the bathroom line. As DJs Lady Ryan and Emancipacion mixed house beats with African rhythms and hip-hop classics, enthusiastic partygoers joined Aima the Dreamer, the party’s host, in chanting “Black lives matter” over the music.

Lady Ryan, Aima the Dreamer, and Emancipacion began throwing Soulovely in 2011, though the three of them agreed that the party truly began to flourish this summer after four years of growing their following through word of mouth. Because this year’s series was so well attended, they have extended Soulovely through November and are considering making it year-round.

The three performers are longtime friends who have been active in Oakland’s various nightlife enclaves since the early Aughts. Soulovely doubles as the name of the party and their music collective, which they forged as an alliance of queer women of color amid the city’s largely male-dominated DJ scene. While they don’t explicitly advertise the event as a queer party, their longtime involvement in the LGBTQ community draws a mostly queer crowd — though they emphasized that straight allies are also welcome.

“There’s a large queer people of color community that has stepped up to say, ‘Soulovely is ours,'” said Aima in an interview. “There’s such a beauty in that. … And when we also create space for all of our allies to come in, in all their different forms, then that safe space and mutual respect creates an opportunity for dialogue.”

That cross-pollination of various Oakland communities is something that the three musicians strive for across their collaborative and individual projects, and, in our conversation, they all stressed that they don’t want identity politics to limit where they perform. For instance, Lady Ryan regularly spins at LGBTQ parties, including Ships in the Night, which also takes place at the New Parish, and Swagger Like Us at El Rio in San Francisco. And though she has many supporters in the queer scene, she also frequently throws events outside of it, such as her new party, Tongue, which takes place on second Fridays at the Senegalese restaurant Bissap Baobab in downtown Oakland and features live drummers and music of the African diaspora.

Emancipacion got her start DJing Bay Area queer parties in the early 2000s, as well, but has also found an audience in the local Middle Eastern community, in which she is also involved. House music is Emancipacion’s passion and she seeks out events where she can play club beats with international influences rooted in her Egyptian heritage. She frequently performs at special events — such as the closing party of San Francisco’s Arab Film Festival taking place later this month.

As a rapper and singer, Aima the Dreamer is also involved in a spectrum of music projects. She is a vocalist in the Oakland hip-hop-jazz-funk fusion bands J-Boogie’s Dubtronic Science and Jazz Mafia and recently performed at Oakland Music Festival and Symbiosis Gathering. She also released an album earlier this summer with her hip-hop duo, Femme Deadly Venoms.

“I’m really lucky as a queer woman to play in so many different scenes. It’s super easy to get pigeonholed,” said Aima. “We happen to be three women who really break these boundaries, and that’s something I’m really interested in in general: having these places where [different kinds of people] can meet and be respectful and be safe and really celebrate one another.”

Though they enjoy playing for different kinds of audiences, Ryan, Emancipacion, and Aima agreed that Soulovely is special because it provides a place for them to connect with other queer women of color, many of whom are also activists and creative professionals. Some frequent attendees are longtime pillars of the LGBTQ community — such as Chaney Turner, a promoter who runs Social Life Productions, and Christiana Remington, who throws the long-running queer party Butta. Because it attracts an intergenerational audience, Soulovely has become a place for folks who have been in the scene for ten or twenty years to mingle with newcomers.

Each month’s Soulovely features guest performers, and Aima, Ryan, and Emancipacion have used the event as a platform for booking female DJs, drum troupes, and dancers. Aima boasted that in the party’s four years, they’ve never repeated the same guest artist. “It just goes to show how thick the female DJ scene is,” she said, recalling how promoters in male-dominated spaces have told her that they don’t book female performers because they don’t know any. “I get told all the time, ‘You’re the only female MC I know,'” Aima continued. “I’m like, ‘Have you turned on a computer?'”

Aima, Ryan, and Emancipacion seek to make Soulovely an uplifting experience for partygoers, and the music they play in their sets is thoughtfully curated to create an atmosphere that fosters community building. While Emancipacion enjoys mixing Arabic house music with songs by more mainstream artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Ryan specializes in dancehall, funk, and hip-hop and R&B throwbacks with feminist leanings. “It’s a place where you get a chance to listen to music that really feeds you,” Aima explained. “You’re not gonna be abused by the music at Soulovely. You’re not gonna hear the b-word all the time.”

“The integrity of the music allows us to play across that large generational gap. Some people bring their moms to the party,” Ryan added.

“And you’re not gonna hear any top forty,” Emancipacion emphasized.

“And if you do, Ryan probably did it,” Ryan joked, finishing her sentence.

“And I probably rapped over it and reclaimed it in the name of the goddess,” Aima laughed.

Drummer Susie Leni and singer Aimee Belden of the punk band Quaaludes sat in a cramped practice space above the storied gay bar Aunt Charlie’s in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. As the sounds of another band’s rehearsal drifted in from down the hall, the bandmates cracked open beer cans and passed around a bag of cherry tomatoes, which Leni had brought from the farmers’ market.

Belden offered me a button that she had made with a photo of a desecrated doll head on it, similar to the ones pinned to her and Leni’s shirts. As I stuck it through the fabric of my jacket, Quaaludes’ guitarist, Morgan Liggera, entered the room carrying a skateboard with the words “Too Many Dudes” scrawled on it in thick, black letters. Belden was wearing a tattered T-shirt that said “Spank Patriarchy.” The bandmates exchanged remarks of approval. “[The band] Other Jesus from Vancouver played here and had this shirt,” Belden said, turning to me. “I cut it in some weird ways. I was looking on YouTube, ‘Interesting styles for punk,'” she added, laughing sarcastically.

Belden, Liggera, and Leni have been penning punchy, high-energy feminist anthems as Quaaludes for the past three years. They brought on bassist Courtney Dragge to join the band in 2013. The four-piece is a regular fixture of the underground house show circuit in San Francisco and the East Bay. Lately, it has performed in Oakland with increasing frequency as San Francisco’s DIY venues and punk houses shutter amid skyrocketing rents and property values. The members of Quaaludes lamented that they’re among the city’s few young punk bands still hanging on.

Quaaludes’ last EP, 2014’s Nothing New, features short, intense spurts of relentless guitar riffs and confrontational lyrics that deal with street harassment, consent, and gender violence. While the band’s upbeat rhythm section lends a pop sensibility to the music, Belden’s histrionic singing style — with its guttural adlibs and bursts of high-pitched, maniacal laughter — conveys the vocalist’s unbridled rage.

Describing Quaaludes’ songwriting process, Belden said, “We’ll get to practice and hang out for a few minutes and we’ll be talking about random shit that’s in our day — like, Morgan will be talking about X-Files or random misogyny — and I’ll put that in a song.”

The band members exchanged knowing glances and shared several anecdotes about men assaulting them at punk shows or aggressively staring them down on public transit. Liggera recalled a recent incident in which a man berated her at a concert after he pushed her repeatedly and she asserted her personal space. Belden replied with her own tale of another man hassling her when she went to a bar by herself — a scenario that has become fodder for a track Quaaludes is currently working on.

“Aimee has a really good side-eye,” said Leni, directing her attention to Belden. “You should do that Muni face that you do sometimes.” Belden immediately got into character and pretended to catch the eye of a leering stranger on the bus. She looked down and let out a deep huff filled with supreme disgust and disappointment. “Hopefully they see me doing that and feel embarrassed and never look at me again,” she said.

Quaaludes has released several EPs on vinyl, but its current live set consists of mostly unpublished material. Last winter, the band laid down tracks for a seven-inch record that the Oregon punk label Jonny Cat Records was supposed to put out earlier this year. However, the label delayed its release date and hasn’t confirmed a new one.

The fact that the project is still floating in limbo doesn’t seem to bother the members of Quaaludes, who have been busy writing new tracks to incorporate into their performances. Later this month, they will embark on a West Coast tour. The bandmembers agreed that they prefer that fans experience their music through their live shows than through other formats. The four musicians frequently attend other bands’ concerts themselves, and looking up people’s music online — or uploading their own tracks to Bandcamp — seems to be an afterthought.

Though they often play at bars and clubs, such as Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco and the Night Light in Oakland’s Jack London district, Leni, Liggera, and Belden agreed that they enjoy performing in DIY spaces more than traditional venues because it affords them more control over their environment. Some club-goers, they said, think being punk gives them license to disrespect the people around them, and they explained that they tend to encounter entitled behavior at venues more frequently than at house shows. “House shows feel more personal, like someone intentionally created the space,” Liggera explained. “Instead of just like, ‘We’re at this bar and there’s already a crowd of people here that might be weird.'”

Using its stage presence to set the tone for safe and inclusive environments at its shows is one of the ways Quaaludes pushes back against instances of day-to-day sexism. While the bandmates said that they encourage audience participation, they concurred that those who wish to mosh aggressively shouldn’t take up so much space that they put people, especially women, in the way of harm.

Belden said that her new strategy has been to call out disrespectful behavior on the mic instead of waiting to discuss it after it happens. “It sucks that at punk shows women have to hang out in the back because they don’t wanna be hurt,” she said.

“I like people participating and showing that they’re having a good time,” added Leni. “But there’s a line, and sometimes they’re lacking self-awareness and blame that lack of self-awareness on that people around them are uptight or not punk.”