Can DJ school make you famous? Anu Ambasna’s hand-painted comic explores

Did you know DJ School was a thing? No, neither did we. And neither did the illustrator and DJ Anu Ambasna, that is, until they stumbled across one on Google Maps after a fateful night in Leeds back in early 2023. “I was ordering an Uber after my set and saw on the map that there was a DJ School round the corner,” says Anu. “It made me laugh so I took a screenshot of it.” Little did they know, this screenshot would become the seed of inspiration for one of their latest comics, DJ School, a satirical, hand-painted foray into the music industry, its cliches, and the issues of inaccessibility that sit at its core.

Anu gravitates toward the comic format because it taps into her inner child and the imaginative world-building that comes part-in-package. Beginning a new one is a process she sees as very similar to that of a writer – creating the characters, the world they exist in and the details that will make it unique – and she often kicks things off by developing the storyline. In DJ School, we meet Ian, a sous-chef who’s unhappy at work, something his ‘Chef Boss’ realises and forces him to go on extended leave. Luckily, this ‘freedom’ allows Ian to realise his life-long dream – and he enrols in DJ school. “Upon graduating, he gets an offer to play the closing set at BroFest which he accepts,” says Anu. “The day of the festival comes around, he’s nervous as hell and is given some psychedelics to ‘help’ him.” Ian nearly forgets how to DJ, but – in a great strike of luck – he remembers everything DJ school taught him, “and the rest is history”.

While DJ School is certainly funny, there’s an important message at its core; it speaks to Anu’s own experiences in the music industry, especially the imbalance of accessibility she’s perceived. “All DJ Ian had to do to get a headline set at BroFest was graduate from DJ School,” they say. “It often feels like anyone who’s not a cis-man within music has to jump through so many more hoops to get to the same place. Then add being an ethnic minority and queer onto that and you’ve got several more hoops to jump through. I also think that some male DJs are so far up their own arses that they may as well be DJing with their dicks.” Essentially, DJ School is about advocating for what DJing should really be: “fun, playful and inclusive”, says Anu. “It’s an artform that’s capable of being a form of pure expression, of being political and cultural, and it can also be used as a tool to educate yourself and others.”

The comic is entirely hand painted, which, as you can imagine, is a “loooong process”. Or, as Anu also more fondly puts it more “a labour of love”. At one point Anu considered using pencils for ease, but eventually decided against it because of how much she likes the way watercolours make her “weird” characters look: “they almost soften them,” they say, “and hopefully make them slightly more palatable to a wider audience.” It’s true, one of the best thing about DJ School (and the rest of Anu’s work) is her round-faced characters; while they might look like strange aliens, she still manages to conjure recognisable mannerisms and facial expressions you’ve seen probably seen in your mum or on your mate’s face. This analogue approach does mean there isn’t much room for error – the storyline, words and dialogue need to be nailed before starting. This was something that David from kuš! Comics – the Latvian comic publishers with which Anu first began developing DJ School – helped with during her month-long residency there, turning a vast idea into a 48-page story.

Still, when Anu got round to painting they still felt a sense of trepidation, and it shifted the way they worked. “It’s probably the first time I’ve been incredibly considerate towards my work environment and the way I store my artwork, as I was so scared of anything spilling on them,” says Anu. “I kept having nightmares of glasses of water spilling all over my finished pages and having to re-do them.” But, the process did also help Anu to embrace imperfections, something that always inspired her about the visible smudges and pencil lines in Tommi Parrish’s comics.

This combination of paying close attention to detail while also allowing for the evidence of the analogue approach to shine through has resulted in a first-rate comic, one with a funny story and distinctive visual world that all the while engages, to pack in an astute critique of an industry riddled with issues (and egos). Now, alongside their art-making and Tuesday morning NTS show, Anu is embarking on an exciting upcoming project which takes their love of comics one step further – a debut graphic novel. Watch this space!