How DOMii Is Transforming Charlotte’s House Music Scene

An Instagram video clip from late April captures DJ, musician and event promoter Ariel Dominguez doing what she does best: creating music to captivate a crowd and set bodies in motion.

Manning the decks at Novelty House in Uptown, Dominguez, who deejays and composes as DOMii, lays down a steady four-on-the-floor foundation, then sets 120 beats per minute skittering like flocks of metallic birds.

Honking syncopated stabs of synths like synthetic funk horns blare as the crowd buckles, sways and grooves.

The club scene resembles a shifting dialogue between DJ and dancers — sometimes literally. One clubgoer, a wide grin spread across his face, leans in towards the DJ booth and speaks to DOMii.

“I know that shit!” he says, sending her a heart shape with his hands. DOMii lifts her arms and the crowd responds, waving their hands in the air.

“It’s a fun challenge [for a DJ] to get people to listen to you,” DOMii tells Queen City Nerve. “You’re communicating with the crowd and the crowd is also communicating with you.”

DOMii has been DJing in Charlotte and across the US for over a decade, becoming a fixture in the Southeast dance music scene. She’s dropped tracks on labels including Insomniac, Ghetto Ghetto, Brooklyn Fire, and Hau5trap.

“I work with labels that accept my music as an independent artist,” DOMii says.

In addition, DOMii has branched out into promoting events, founding and curating Housework Charlotte, an underground dance party connecting house-music DJs in the city’s music scene; and Girls Room, a movable dance party series that celebrates and provides safe spaces for queer women in music and art.

A Champion for queer and BIPOC artists

This spring, Girls Room was awarded Best Underground Promoter by Femme House, a Charlotte nonprofit that creates opportunities for women, gender-expansive, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ creatives in the technical and behind-the-scenes areas of the music industry.

Preston Abernathy, founder of local event production company Yopresto Projects, says he met DOMii on the dance floor in 2010. The two became friends and Abernathy started booking shows for DOMii at The Music Yard, Breakaway Festival and other venues and events.

“In my 15 years as an event producer I’ve never met a better DJ,” Abernathy says. “Ariel has an insane ability to move a dance floor in any situation.”

“I try to absorb everything around me and just communicate with people,” says DOMii, who values imparting uplifting messages with her music. “It’s a welcoming energy.”

With a sound that couples raw energy with technical precision, DOMii considers herself an eclectic artist. That said, she squarely places her music in the house genre, which she describes as “a club vibe for people to dance to.”

“[House] opens you and draws you to dance,” DOMii offers. “That’s why it’s repetitive. It forces people to put their phones down, get involved and actually dance with their friends.”

By being so addictively danceable, house music breaks down barriers and creates a communal space, she insists.
“House brings different kinds of people from all backgrounds together,” she says. “It’s worldly music.”

Music moves from SoHo to Housework

Dominguez believes she caught the travel bug because her family moved so often when she was growing up. Due to her father’s government job, she’s lived in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Romania.

At Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, she studied graphic design and played soccer. Both were eclipsed in 2012, when she spent a year abroad studying in London. Exploring the city, she fell in love with dance music.

“In Soho there were amazing music spaces for the LGBTQ community,” DOMii remembers. “I would go out and get inspired [by] this interesting mix of cool people and high-energy house music in this safe space.”

Back in the states, Dominguez completed college in Hickory while making trips to Charlotte to DJ at parties. In 2014, she moved to the Queen City. Though she has shifted her focus from graphic design to music, DOMii draws on her arts skills to create all of her flyer designs, video edits, visuals and everything else associated with her brand as a DJ.

Early struggles in a male-dominated industry

Early in her career, DOMii encountered the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle sexism that permeates the music industry. Part of the prejudicial culture stemmed from lack of representation — they’re weren’t that many women, much less queer women, in the electronic music scene.

“I did get treated differently, especially in the DJ realm, because you’re not surrounded by many women in charge or onstage,” DOMii says. “Women were … expected to be in the crowd, not in the important director roles [like] … the DJ, which is the main role in those shows.”

As a result, DOMii felt she couldn’t communicate with people the way she wanted.

“I felt like I wasn’t being heard,” she says.

For instance, DOMii recalls men coming up to her when she was deejaying and getting in her personal space, seemingly unaware that she was a professional doing a job.

“They’d ask questions like what style I use for Ableton,” she says, referencing a digital audio workstation she uses for composing, recording, arranging, mixing and performing. “I’m like, ‘I can’t answer all your questions to prove [to you] that I know what I’m doing.’”

Initially, encounters like this unnerved her, DOMii says. She felt that people were judging her and making erroneous assumptions about her, but she soon got over it.

“Once I [accepted] the fact that I was unique, I [realized] it was my super power,” she notes.

DOMii fully embraced her super power when she started throwing her own parties, securing the venues, booking the talent and creating the branding.

“Once I decided to do that, to be in charge of everything, it was a great decision, because I had all this confidence that I could do it,” she remembers.

As her confidence rose, she noticed that attitudes toward her changed. People started respecting her and wanting to hear her play more and more.

“Ariel is absolutely fearless,” Abernathy says.

Around 2017, DOMii launched Housework, a series of monthly parties designed to shake up the city’s dance music scene, which was dominated by electronic dance music (EDM) and techno.

At the time, house music was a worldwide phenomenon, but it had not yet caught hold in the Queen City. The first Housework took place in the basement of SIP Bar & Cellar near The Spectrum Center.

“I wanted to bring house music in this space, because they were playing the same music in all these spaces in Uptown,” DOMii says.

The event caught fire, so she moved it to a larger venue: Trio Nightclub in South End, where she continues to curate and promote the event. While she’s happy with Trio, she’s now exploring the possibility of moving Housework to a smaller venue.

“I want to move it back to an underground space, because that’s where I started out,” she says, citing Jack’s Live, the music venue next to Jackalope Jack’s in Plaza Midwood, as a possible Housework location for the summer.

Creating a safe space for LQBTQ and BIPOC women

Even with the success of Housework under her belt, DOMii still saw something missing from Charlotte’s EDM and house scene. In her travels, she had seen safe spaces with women DJs playing music for women and sometimes specifically for queer women, but not at home.

In 2018 she decided to fill the void with Girls Room, a series of parties curated and booked by DOMii, hosted by queer women and showcasing women and nonbinary musicians and DJs. DOMii felt it was time to put the power in the hands of women in the dance music scene.

“I decided I was in the right position to start doing it,” she says. “It was fun to plan something that hadn’t been done before.”

Noting that the city’s nightlife, including LGBTQ spaces, can be segregated, DOMii decided that Girls Room should be diverse. For the first iteration she booked DJ Fannie Mae, a Black artist who has since co-founded SAINTED Trap Choir.

Meanwhile, DOMii had been doing shows with Abernathy. She asked the event producer to manage her and Abernathy accepted.

“We have a natural chemistry when it comes to working together,” says Abernathy, who has helped DOMii book international talent for Girls Room, including artists like Honeyluv, Maya Jane Coles, Nala, VNSSA, Aluna, Coco & Breezy, Syreeta and DJ Minx.

“We have a very similar passion for producing live events, music taste and creativity,” Abernathy says.

Despite his role in booking talent, Abernathy stresses that Girls Room is 100% DOMii’s brand.

“I just provide a safe space for her to produce her events at The Music Yard,” he notes.

The next Girls Room event is scheduled at The Music Yard on June 13, with DOMii opening for Welsh electronic, R&B, pop and dance artist Aluna at the outdoor venue.

“She’s a really cool vocalist, artist, DJ and producer, and I’m excited to have her,” DOMii says.

Recognition from Femme House

In the meantime, the Girls Room parties as well as DOMii’s DJ shows and music, had started drawing the attention of pro-women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ nonprofit Femme House.

The nonprofit’s program coordinator Bianca Santalla Terán is also a DJ. She came across some of DOMii’s releases in 2019, liked them and started following her on social media. When Girls Room announced a party featuring HoneyLuv, Terán realized it was a project led by queer women in Charlotte.

“It wasn’t surprising to learn that Ariel was involved,” writes Terán in an email. “I’ve been a fan of Girls Room and have really enjoyed watching it grow over time.”

Terán also attended a Girls Room Pride Party, where she says she saw the crowd come alive with queer joy.

“Her ability to bring a room together with a dynamic range of sounds is exciting,” she says.

The respect was mutual; DOMii appreciated the mixes she heard that were released by Femme House as well as the music made by Leah “LP Giobbi” Chisholm, a high-profile DJ, musician and co-founder and artist-in-chief of Femme House.

“With what I wanted to do with Girls Room — our mission and Femme House’s mission kind of aligned,” DOMii says.

In 2021, DOMii appeared on episode 73 of Femme House Radio, which is hosted by Chisolm. That episode was then played on Diplo’s Revolution, a Sirius XM Radio hosted by the hugely popular international DJ and rapper Diplo.

Despite all the musical cross-pollination, DOMii was happily surprised to learn that Femme House was honoring her work with Girls Room.

“Girls Room was highlighted because it’s a clear, vibrant celebration of queer women, nonbinary artists, and BIPOC talent,” Terán says. “[It] Intentionally offers a platform for underrepresented voices across small to large events.”

“The community [DOMii has] built speaks for itself; it’s so special,” Abernathy adds. “As a person, she has a heart of gold and is deeply passionate for what she does.”

Femme House’s inaugural Femmy Awards took place during Miami Music Week in March. Girls Room and DOMii earned the award for Best Underground Promoter.

“Ariel’s kind, grounded, and genuinely cares about lifting others up,” Terán says. “She’s not just a great artist, she’s also an authentic organizer and focuses on bringing together the community.

“At Femme House, we value sonic diversity, visual representation and building intentional community,” she continues. “Ariel’s work aligns with those values.”

Although DOMii wasn’t able to attend the Femmy Awards ceremony in Miami, she will travel to Florida this fall to play Hulaween at the Suwannee Music Park. Before that, she will open for London-based DJ and electronic music duo Eli & Fur on June 20 at the Music Yard.

Unlike the June 13 Aluna show, this gig will not be a Girls Room event. DOMii has shared stages with Eli & Fur four times previously.

“They have this great deep house sound that I can relate to. I love playing that kind of music,” she says.

Looking ahead: more music, more movement

There’s no doubt that, regardless of where her success as a DJ, musician and groundbreaking producer of safe-space events take her, DOMii’s love for house remains the foundation for everything she’s built.

“I’m just trying to be authentic and make something unique,” she says. “Every situation you get put in as a DJ is pretty [exciting] and that’s why I love it. It’s almost impossible to predict how the night will go and you’re the director of that.”

Read more: Dennis Reed, DJ Fannie Mae Bring Sainted Trap Choir to the National Stage (2023)

Despite her mastery on the decks, DOMii says she can’t pick a track or tracks that she’d like to be remembered by.

“I haven’t made that song yet,” she says. ‘After [making] music for so long, I want people to go home [from a show] in such a good mood that they don’t even remember that I was the DJ until later on. They’ll go home and be like, ‘Man, who was that DJ?’”

With her energy, rhythm and innovation, DOMii is working her way into people’s bodies, hearts and minds — and they may not even know it.