Marbs Talks New Techno Sublabel Desert Hearts Black, L.A.'s City Hearts, Looking Up To Dubfire & More – The GRAMMYs

Marbs & Evan Casey
Photo: Myles Heidenreich/2nd Nature Photography
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Along with his best friends, the San Diego-bred DJ/producer is helping keep dance music, dancefloors and DJ booths fun
Meet Marbs, one of the five founding members of Desert Hearts, an ever-growing electronic music label/collective that throws ridiculously fun parties and festivals. He is the resident deep house/dark techno aficionado of the welcoming core crew of lifelong friends. This summer, along with another close friend (and a DH regular), Evan Casey, he launched a brand-new “darker sounds” sublabel, Desert Hearts Black.
Just seven years ago, Mikey Lion, Marbs, Porky, Lee Reynolds and Kristoff McKay held their first DH Festival in the Mojave, a very cold and minimalist party that longtime members of their community refer to as “Frozen Hearts.” While they’ve all helped Desert Hearts grow momentously since its humble beginnings—enhancing the fest each iteration, launching the main record label in 2014 and the sublabel this August, taking City Hearts events across the country and building a loyal fan base—the core of it has never changed.
“As long as we focus on the people and creating a place where incredibly talented, creative people want to come together and connect, then I think the things we create will be in flow with that,” Marbs recently told us over the phone. Read on to learn more about their inspirational story, his kick-off collab release on Desert Hearts Black, what’s in store for the major November City Hearts Festival in Downtown L.A. (happening on Nov. 9 and 10) and more.
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Next month you guys are bringing back City Hearts Festival to L.A. What are you most looking forward to with this iteration of the event?
I’m most looking forward to us doing new things and expanding the City Hearts experience. The whole idea for the City Hearts Festival is to bring that similar experience as the [flagship] festival at Los Coyotes to an urban setting that’s more accessible for our direct community. Los Angeles is probably our strongest market, and the location is literally across the street from the train station so for people who are coming from San Diego or Santa Barbara or even farther north, they can hop on the train and as soon as they get off the train at Union Station they walk about 50 feet and they’re at the party.
We really want to start doing this all over the nation and eventually the world, bringing the festival experience to other settings throughout the whole country and all the markets that we’ve been building with the tour. That’s the main goal of the tour, to build our communities in large sections around the world and once those get strong enough for us to be able to do festivals in those locations. So this is a really exciting moment for us because we’re finally taking the steps to get to that in place and L.A. is the first place that we want to do it.
Also, we’ve started working with this wonderful human being who goes by BlakeShine. She works with Dirtybird and Electric Forest and specializes in immersive experiences, where you might not even know you’re in a theatrical space, it might just look like it’s part of the festival and all of a sudden people in character will start interacting with you. They won’t break character and will lure you into this experience and take you into this space. She has a lot of surprises for City Hearts Festival. She did the Forgotten Fort at Desert Hearts [spring 2019] Festival, so it’s building off of that.
It really took you out of the festival and made you feel like you were at a theater or circus and they had all kinds of comedy, performances and interactive experiences. That I’m really looking forward to, because another thing with City Hearts Festival is we want to push the experience of festivals to a new place. There’s so much saturation, especially in Los Angeles right now, with all the different events and festivals and DJ nights and there’s something every day. To break that mold, we are really trying to think of ways to differentiate and create and build off of our community experience. We think that happens with immersive experiences, more art, more interactivity. All the things that we love in the Desert Hearts Festival, we’re trying to bring in to our urban events as well.
The people that are going to keep people interested are the ones that are going to really be focusing on the experience and the community, and that’s something we’ve always held close to the heart.
I love that. It reminds me a lot of the conversation with the Meow Wolf founders. I think it’s really cool for the future of event experiences.
We love the Meow Wolf team, we want to work more closely with them. We played their Taos Vortex festival this year and we would love to work more with them.
And then with expanding City Hearts Fest, do you have a shortlist of where you guys want to go?
Just like with most of the stuff we do, we kind of want to go with the flow. The first one makes sense in L.A., that’s where our strongest community hub is, even though we started in San Diego. We’d love to do New York, I think that’s on the horizon. And Denver; we’ve really resonated with Colorado over the last however many years we’ve toured over there, it’s really grown every single time we go there. So working towards maybe doing one there. San Francisco is a definite, we’ve already done a block party with the Great Northern club. So to do more stuff like that and build off of it, that’s kind of the whole idea behind the City Hearts experience. Then onward, to Mexico, and we’re starting to dip our toes into Europe so hopefully on the horizon we’ll see it over there as well.
Just like in life, the more you pay attention to the little things and the more people you meet and all that, the more experience you get so that’s what we’re trying to bring. And it’s not a V.I.P. [experience] or anything, it’s more like trying to spark everyone’s curiosity and get people exploring a little bit more.
What will the Desert Hearts Black experience at the City Hearts L.A. look and feel like?
Since it’s mostly a day event, it’ll go into the night, but not late. We’re doing a special thing this event that we’ve never done before where instead of the core four—me, Mikey, Lee and Porky—playing individual sets, we’ve paired off with our favorite people that we’ve been working with over the years. So we’re going to go back-to-back with some of our favorite DJs, which we’ll announce later. And for the first time, we’ll have a special Desert Heart Blacks set. While there isn’t a whole block, there will be sections of the day that people will get to experience the deeper, more melodic side that we are diving into with Desert Hearts Black.
Going into the future, we’ve been talking about Desert Hearts Black holding a space for the after parties after a Desert Hearts day festival or day party. It’s not something we have planned right now, but it’s something we’re talking about as a cool structure for how these two will be symbiotic with each other in a single bite.
It’s only been a few months since you and Evan Casey officially launched Desert Hearts Black and dropped the debut release, the Torus EP. How has it felt for you so far?
It’s been incredible. None of us anticipated the response. We believed in our music, of course, and we were so proud of the Torus EP, but for it to hit number one on overall releases on Beatport was something I wasn’t imagining I would see yet in my career. It was a really amazing day when that happened and it really opened our eyes that we’re on the right path and that trusting our hearts is going really well. And then the second release we put out is from Arude, Apophenia. It’s getting played by people like [Berlin techno DJ/producer] Kevin de Vrise at Afterlife [events], which is just crazy.
It’s really cool to see the response on this side of our Desert Hearts umbrella really flourishing and taking off. We have some cool releases lined up, we’re really excited, and we’re scheduled all the way through February or March of 2020. We’re thankful for the people that are willing to work with us on this thing, especially with it being such a new off-branch of Desert Hearts.
A lot of people who resonate with the Desert Hearts experience and are part of the community are talented musicians and producers, but maybe what they produce didn’t quite fit on our Desert Hearts Records primary label, as it’s tech house and house focused. Now have this outlet that’s giving the community a platform to express themselves in the community with the music that they make, like melodic house and techno or deep house or psychedelic more chill, down tempo stuff. We’ve seen a good response of people feeling like they have a place and a voice that they can creatively speak through now for Desert Hearts which is really, really cool.
Do you feel like everything with the Black label is moving faster than you imagined, or is exceeding your hopes so far?
A hundred percent. When we first had the idea of Desert Hearts Black, I was talking to my management like, “Well, if this thing goes well, let’s talk about tour dates.” Everyone was like, “Let’s get there when we get there. Let’s first get the label launched and set up. But the second we launched the label, the first EP went to number one and people came to us for tour dates.
We just played in Seattle and Portland this last weekend, both shows were incredible. They were small rooms but there were 300 people at each or so; a really good vibe, everyone smiling and dancing real hard and appreciative. It was the whole Desert Hearts vibe but curated to the sound that we’re trying to push with Desert Hearts Black and I think that was another huge sign that we’re on the right track and we’re doing this in the right way. It means a lot.
We’re going to Denver for Halloween, there’s a Desert Hearts Black takeover, it has support from Charlotte DeWitte and Solardo and we’re doing the side room. It’s going to be a massive show, we also have some other dates that I can’t announce yet that are really exciting so it’s off and running.
“One of my favorite things from the beginning to now with Desert Hearts, has been traveling around with my best friends. We started as DJs before we ever had the festival or anything, we just wanted to play the music that we loved with the people that we loved.”
Reflecting on the success so far, what are you most excited right now with the future of Desert Hearts Black?
One of my favorite things, from the beginning to now with Desert Hearts, has been traveling around with my best friends. We started as DJs before we ever had the festival or anything, we just wanted to play the music that we loved with the people that we loved. That’s where all of this came from. I’ve never been on the road with Evan, who is one of my best friends, and neither with Mike [Rinzen], and to do that this last weekend was a really cool thing.
I’m very blessed and very humbled by all of this. I’m also looking forward to all of the music that’s coming in. It’s cool to be in a place now in the American market where melodic house and techno is being more digested on dancefloors. Compared to tech house which, five, six years ago was still being introduced and was still pretty underground as far as the places that we were touring. Now tech house is the norm. And now melodic house is opening a space for these other genres to come through, for people that are looking for a different experience but something similar, are getting hooked by it. I’m excited to see how that scene grows and where we’re going to sit in that scene.
Read: Jan Blomqvist Talks Playing Coachella, Berlin Techno & Covering The Rolling Stones
What do you think the state of electronic or dance music feels like right now?
When I first started DJing and was going on Beatport, the stuff on the front page was not tech house. It was a lot of EDM and it was a whole different place. I think it’s a direct reflection of what the market is because it’s what people are buying. Now, all of the front page is tech house. So it shows that that genre has really taken a huge hold on the market, but what you’re also seeing is new genres popping up. Melodic house and techno wasn’t even a genre on Beatport a couple of years ago but now it is and it’s doing really well. So 10 years from now, who knows what’s going to be on the front page, but I do know that music is an organism that’s constantly evolving. Everyone that loves music is always looking for that new music that they haven’t heard yet that makes them feel the way that they do when they hear music that they love.
“Everyone that loves music is always looking for that new music that they haven’t heard yet that makes them feel the way that they do when they hear music that they love.”
Do you feel like the Torus EP is sort of the thesis statement of Desert Hearts Black?
Totally. The idea of Desert Hearts Black came from the synergy between the three of us [Marbs, Evan Casey and Rinzen] making that EP. When we first started the first track, we were just getting in the studio to try and make music together and see what happens, we had never done it before, all three of us. “Torus” [the title track] was made in two or three sessions and we were blown away at how stoked we were on that track and we were like, “We’ve got to keep to it.”
We busted out two more tracks in another handful of sessions and I got that the sound doesn’t really fit on Desert Hearts records but it’s totally into the Desert Hearts festival experience. It would fit perfectly at the late hours of the festival and so the idea of creating the label came from that. I was like, “Well maybe I’ll ask the boys what they think about a sister side label. I was a little nervous bringing it up to them because I didn’t want it to sound like it was separation or anything like that. I just wanted it to be building off of what we had already done. Everyone was like “F**k yeah, you should definitely do that!”
It was totally received well and it meant a lot to me to have the support from the group. So that’s when we decided the EP is a perfect statement of what we want Desert Hearts Black to push. We don’t want it to be limited to that [sound] because it’s very progressive, it’s completely in the melodic house and techno sound. Desert Hearts Black is more going to be a range, you’ll see it in the next couple of weeks as [releases] come out. It’s supposed to reflect the experience you have at the Desert Hearts festival in the late hours into the mornings. So some of those sunrise sets that get really trippy and weird and tribal, maybe a little bit more eclectic, there’s going to be releases that hit that note. If you sit it next to Torus it’s going to sound like two totally different sounds.
That’s what we want, we want to hit all of the other sounds that Desert Hearts community loves that maybe don’t have a place on the primary label and that way between the two labels we hit the full spectrum of what people enjoy at the festival.
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font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;”> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style=”padding: 12.5% 0;”></div> <div style=”display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;”><div> <div style=”background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);”></div> <div style=”background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;”></div> <div style=”background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);”></div></div><div style=”margin-left: 8px;”> <div style=” background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;”></div> <div style=” width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)”></div></div><div style=”margin-left: auto;”> <div style=” width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);”></div> <div style=” background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);”></div> <div style=” width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);”></div></div></div></a> <p style=” margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;”> <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/Bys9_5Nh6Ms/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading” style=” color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;” target=”_blank”>All the feels this Friday with @dale_howard new EP now out on @desertheartsrecords (link in bio) + the crew is in the UK right now gearing up for @egg_club_london tomorrow! And we’ve got another badass album from the DH festival up on our Facebook shot by the talented @gettiny #tagyourfriends</a></p> <p style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”>A post shared by <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/deserthearts/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading” style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;” target=”_blank”> DESERT HEARTS</a> (@deserthearts) on <time style=” font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;” datetime=”2019-06-14T19:54:17+00:00″>Jun 14, 2019 at 12:54pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote><script async src=”//www.instagram.com/embed.js”></script>
For the uninitiated, how would you explain Desert Hearts and then Desert Hearts Black?
Desert Hearts has always been about love, acceptance, being yourself, radical expression, radical inclusion, a lot of the things we’ve learned from Burning Man. To know that whether you’re coming by yourself for the first time or with a group for the first time, that this is a safe place for you to express yourself and be your true self and enjoy some really good music along the way. To build off of that, Desert Hearts Black is that same space for people that resonate maybe with more moody, dark, progressive music. And because that music is a little bit more journey-driven, it makes people go a little deeper.
We want people to have the same experience that they have at any Desert Hearts event, the feeling of acceptance and love and smiles everywhere and the freedom to express themselves how they want. If that means being decked out in black or being however you want to be, that is a space for you and it’s just as much Desert Hearts as anything else, and we want people to feel that way no matter what.
As you know, there’s the stereotype of the “real techno DJ”; he wears all black, he’s a guy, he’s very serious and not dancing. What’s your view on that idea? I’m going to say that you are one of the people doing your part to break the mold and keep the dancefloor fun.
I think it really matters what space you’re having an experience in. In the European techno market, there’s so much good music and so many people doing it, that it’s so competitive. I feel like maybe that’s where that culture comes from. Don’t get me wrong, I fell in love with techno because of Ritchie Hawtin and because of all these incredible people that normally are very stoic. I mean you’ll see Ritchie loosen up a little bit and have a smile here and there but for the most part it’s pretty serious.
One person I love to say as an example that does it right is Dubfire. Ali [Shirazinia a.k.a. Dubfire] plays the same music as all those guys, but when you see him behind the booth he’s having fun, he’s interacting with people in there. He’s having fun but still active and DJing very heavily, not just playing a track and f**king around. He’s really taking in the experience around him and that’s something I know we do at Desert Hearts. Just look at the booth and see how the mayhem in there.
We have a joke: in their rider most DJs will say, “No people in the booth.” They need their space. We’re the opposite. We feel really weird when there’s no one in there with us. It’s really what we want to push as far as this melodic house and techno project, and the experience on the dancefloor and in the booth. We want it to be like Ali and how he represents himself, it might sound harder and a little bit more serious, but we want people to be having fun.
In our mind, if you’re enjoying the music it shouldn’t make any difference on how you are expressing your enjoyment of it. And so we want to push that and we want to push not taking things so seriously. We’re all here just trying to have fun, play and make music, and have a cool experience. As we learned from Burning Man, to take these experiences home, to treat people the way that you are treated. The music that’s playing shouldn’t change how you treat people at these experiences or throughout every day of your life.
“We have a joke: in their rider most DJs will say, ‘No people in the booth.’ They need their space. We’re the opposite. We feel really weird when there’s no one in there with us.”
I love that we’ve been seeing more diversity, especially with gender, in the international techno and house space. It’s nice to see more variety because when people are like, “No, DJs do this,” it’s like, “Well what about this guy? What about this woman?”
It is for sure. Just like with anything in life—I say that a lot but everything’s connected—the more labels and constraints we put on anything, the worse it is. The less freedom there is, less creative expression there is. So all of the labels and constraints that we put on DJs; how they should act or what they should play or what the right experience is, it doesn’t matter. It should be a matter of flow and experience and however that magnet connects people and brings them in.
If I’m a goofy techno DJ and there’s a serious techno DJ, that serious techno DJ is going to attract the people that like that experience and that’s great for them. Good for it. I’m going to express myself the way that I do and the people that resonate with that are going to come, like a magnet. There’s no need for the labels, just let everyone do what they want. Some things are going to do better than others. Some are going to get fizzled out and some are going to flourish and it’s just about going with the flow and letting people do what they want to do.
Yes! Desert Hearts has grown so much in just seven years. What do you think is the biggest thing that keeps you true to the core values of House, Techno & Love, and that inclusive experience that you were talking about?
It’s 100% the community and the people, that’s the biggest backbone of this whole thing; our focus on people being who they truly want to be and expressing themselves the way they want. We could play good music all day, we can bring the best sound, but without the community and the people that come to these events, it would not be anything like what it is. This whole thing’s a big ship—with me, Mikey, Lee and Porks are driving the thing—it’s not going to work without all the people working. It’s not going to do anything, it’ll just be four guys on a boat. I could be Djing in my room to a wall, playing the best music that anyone’s ever heard or we could be doing what we’re doing with the people that we’re doing it with. That’s the whole thing.
If as long as we focus on the people and creating a place where incredible talented, creative people want to come together and connect, then I think the things we create will be in flow with that. And so we get signs and we have ideas for new projects, and as long as the intention of those projects is to build that community, everything has always been successful. From the beginning of us saying we just want to get out of the bars and go to the desert, we want to go and have an experience with our friends and play the music that we love and that’s it, no other constraints. The whole idea was to create an experience for the people that we love and for us and I think that’s why it just snowballed; the first one was 300 [people], the next one was 1000, the next one was 2000. I think it will keep everything glued together as long as we keep doing that.
When did you first start DJing and making music? Did you have a professional “Plan B”?
I got into DJing about 10, 12 years ago and started doing it at bars about nine, 10 years ago. Music production came much later. I’ve been producing music for the last five years. Now I’m in a place where I’m comfortable releasing my music, so it’s been a long road to get to that point. Back when I first started to DJ, I was helping my father with his repair and maintenance construction business. He does commercial repairs for places like Home Depot, JC Penney, big corporate accounts. I started off swinging the hammer, fixing tile and drywall and dealing with electrical and plumbing and stuff. I worked my way up to managing construction jobs, being an account manager for Home Depot through his business and helping him with some of the behind the scenes stuff.
I was working with that, 40 hours a week when I was DJing shows on the weekends, when we were doing our jungle parties. We used to throw these little bar parties in San Diego called “Jungle” that we’d bring a bunch of palm fronds and plants and make the whole booth look like a little jungle and play tech house and take over little dive bars. That’s what we were doing before we went to Burning Man and decided we wanted to start doing stuff out in the desert.
I actually had that job through the first two years of Desert Hearts, so it was hard. It was what I had to be doing as far as being sustainable as an adult, paying the bills and living on my own but also trying to chase my dream. I was burning the candle at both ends; I wasn’t sleeping much, I was going into work after doing shows until 4 a.m. But it was a great experience because it really taught me how to follow your dream and to work really hard in the beginnings of that phase. When I finally decided I was going to stop working for my father’s business, it was a hard decision. I was very happy to help my dad with his business that he grew from an idea that he had when he was 16.
I’ll never forget looking my dad in the eyes and saying, “Look, I don’t think this is for me, I’m going to go do this Desert Hearts thing and throw parties.” He looked right back at me and supported me and said okay, but you could see in his eyes, he was like, “You crazy f**k.”
But he was so supportive and we brought him and my mom out to Desert Hearts a couple of years later when it was at Los Coyotes and was really growing and flourishing. I will never forget that, because it was them finally realizing that I didn’t quit that job to go DJ, but that I really created something really special with four of my best friends. That was the day I feel like everything shifted for me.
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Photo: James King
feature
For his 15th album, Machinedrum drew inspiration from his early productions and ventured into the Joshua Tree desert. There, he collaborated with Tinashe, Mick Jenkins, Duckwrth and more, alongside his longtime friend and collaborator Jesse Boykins III.
“If you were able to go back and hang out or collaborate with your younger self, what would you say to them? What advice would you give them?”
That question fueled Machinedrum’s new album, 3FOR82, out May 24. 
Unlike most people, the prominent electronic producer, real name Travis Stewart, has a direct line to his younger self through the music he’s made. He still has hard drives with productions from his teenage years, and on his new album, he sought to create with that same spirit. He wanted to hang with his younger self who was nothing but a kid who loved music with big dreams.
“In that early period where everything is just so free, there's nothing like it,” Stewart said. “I think, as creatives, we all try to find different ways to tap back into that.” 
By tapping back into that freedom, Stewart made 3FOR82 into a diverse and exciting body of work. On his 41st birthday (the album title 3FOR82 reflects Stewart’s birthday of March 4, 1982), he started exploring his older recordings, collaborating with his younger self. The result is an album that is more than the sum of its parts. Weaving a wide palette of genres together, including alternative hip-hop, drum & bass, and UK garage — along with a long list of collaborators — it has an experimental hunger to it as well.
Stewart worked with more vocal collaborators than on any past album, featuring artists including Tinashe, Mick Jenkins, and Topaz Jones on 11 of the 12 tracks. With this stronger external input, each track has a unique identity. While “HON3Y,” the only solo production, harbors Stewart's talent for erratic sonic motion, “KILL_U” with Tanerélle is a minimalist soul tune.
Clearly, when Stewart was just starting he wanted to make anything and everything. He started releasing music as Machinedrum in 2000. Since then, he has shared 15 albums and launched various aliases including Tstewart, his atmospheric side project, J-E-T-S, the club-focused collaboration with the respected house artist, Jimmy Edgar, and Sepalcure, his duo with Praveen Sharma that focuses on dubstep and UK garage.
After so much experience, he knows the music industry very well. The good parts and the bad. 
“Once you've released a few projects, this new pressure comes along with what your fans expect from you,” Stewart said. Conversely, his early recordings offered a window into an era without any pressure or expectations. 
Read on to learn more about where he found the biggest inspiration when he took a trip down musical memory lane during the making of 3FOR82. 
Every artist has to start somewhere, and Machinedrum started with Impulse Tracker, the music production software released in 1995. Stewart is now using industry-standard programs like Abelton, but when he was using Impulse Tracker during his early days, his music was imbued with a kind of youthful optimism that only comes when you’re starting something new. 
"For me it was going into these old Impulse Tracker sessions and finding these little nuggets of ideas that I didn't really know what to do with at the time."
When he was working in Impulse Tracker, he only had the skills to make cursory musical ideas, but when he listened back he was really proud of those ideas. “I was just so excited about music. Not to say that I'm not now, but when I listen to electronic music now, I can't help but think about how it was made. Think about what kind of numbers they're doing. Who produced it? What label released it?” Stewart said. “Whereas back then, I would listen to things for the pure sake of listening to them and just be so inspired.”
Stewart often suffers from what he likes to call “choice paralysis.” If there are too many options it can be difficult for him to make a decision. Well, music production presents endless choices. How much reverb to use? Whether or not to use samples? What plugins will make this track sound its best? So, when he was making 3FOR82 he laid down specific parameters to limit his choices.

First, he was only allowed to use sounds that he drew from his Impulse Tracker recordings. He spent a month going through the old pieces of music and created a sound library from them. Those sounds became the album. “That whole process of creating the sound library was incredibly inspiring. Being a digital archaeologist,” Stewart said.

He had two rules if he wanted to sample something outside those old files. One, he had to run the sound through Impulse Tracker so it maintained the same aesthetic. Two, he had to sample music from his birth year of 1982.

“That was one of the parameters that actually made it a lot of fun to explore what music came out the year of my birth and see what things resonated with me. I was finding a lot of interesting synchronicities of stuff that I didn't realize came out in 1982 that I'm actually a huge fan of,” Stewart said. 
Plenty of artists have found musical inspiration in the vast deserts of Joshua Tree National Park. Josh Homme founded The Desert Sessions there back in 1997. RÜFÜS DU SOL recorded their live album, aptly titled Live From Joshua Tree among the desert rocks in 2019. Now Machinedrum has joined the musical legacy of Joshua Tree by making 3FOR82 there as well.

He always had a great time there when he visited with friends and family in the past, but he also found a profound sense of clarity during those trips.

“Ideas come to me. I just feel so separated from the chaos of the world,” Stewart said. “I had always wanted to come to Joshua Tree for the pure reason of doing something creative.”

He set up a mobile studio in an Airbnb and invited myriad guest artists to join him in this temporary creative atmosphere and share in the clarifying experience.
Jesse Boykins III is a vocalist who has collaborated with Stewart since the 2000s. He was also a groomsman at Stewart’s wedding. When Stewart was out in Joshua Tree, he spent an hour on the phone with Boykins discussing his idea of revisiting the past to make the album. During that conversation, he realized their long history together could further fuel the creative process.
Stewart made Boykins a co-executive producer, and Boykins brought in numerous vocalists Stewart had never worked with such as Duckwrth and aja monet. Stewart instructed Boykins to find seasoned artists when he was courting collaborators so they could bring their own past into the music. 
He asked each of the collaborators the guiding question at the beginning of each session: “If you were able to go back and hang out or collaborate with your younger self, what would you say to them? What advice would you give them?”
Sometimes Stewart sampled their responses and added them to the music like with Mick Jenkins’ track, “WEARY.” Other times, the question was meant to inspire trust between Stewart and the collaborators Boykins introduced to him.

“Just having him there, understanding the concept behind the album, and making sure that we're all keeping within the theme, whether literally, or in more of an abstract way, that was super important,” Stewart said of Boykins. “I'm super grateful for his involvement on the album and all the inspiration he gave me. Being there along my side throughout the process. It's very cool working like that with someone. I had never done that with an album in the past.”
When Stewart was producing 3FOR82 from songs he made as a teenager it was just as spiritual for him as it was technical. During those early years as an artist, Stewart felt very isolated. There was no community around the music he loved growing up in North Carolina in the 90s. Even when his preferred sounds migrated from the UK to the US, it was in cities like Miami and New York, far away from him. In his loneliness, he struggled to believe his dream of being a professional electronic musician was possible.

Well, over two decades later, Stewart has accomplished his dream and then some. By working with music from his past, he was assuring his younger self that everything was going to be OK. “This whole process of collaborating with my younger self on these new songs was so healing for me. It was like a way of me sending a message to my younger self. ‘You're gonna do all these amazing things. You're going to travel the world. You're gonna work with amazing artists. So keep your chin up. Don't worry so much about the future.  Just keep going. Keep doing what you're doing,’” Stewart said.
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list
Electronic sounds can be heard throughout Latin music and will be recognized in a new Field and Category at the 2024 Latin GRAMMYs. In honor of the new Best Latin Electronic Music Performance award, read on for eight Latin electronic music essentials.
Electronic music is embedded within the diverse world of Latin music and, for the first time, will be recognized in a new Field and Category at the 2024 Latin GRAMMYs. Within that field, the award for Best Latin Electronic Music Performance was created to shine a light on DJs, producers, and artists blending proudly blending electronic music with the sounds of their cultures.
Electronic music embodies various subgenres like house music, techno, trance, electronica, and many others rooted that have been popularized by DJs and producers. Latin artists have long enriched those subgenres: Mexico's Belanova globalized the electro-pop wave, while Bomba Estéreo blended cumbia with electronica in Colombia. 
The explosion of EDM in the 2010s also allowed the careers of Latinx DJs to flourish. Mexican American DJ Deorro has showcased both cultures during sets at music festivals like EDC, Coachella, Tomorrowland, and more. Arca's music pushes the boundaries of electronic music through a Venezuelan and Latin American lens. More recently, Colombian producer Víctor Cárdenas bridged the gap between EDM and reggaeton with the global hit "Pepas" by Farruko. Since then, electronic music has seeped through the work of Latin hit-makers like Tainy, Caleb Calloway, Bizarrap and Diego Raposo. "Pepas" and many of Bizarrap's music sessions crossed over onto Billboard's Hot Dance/Electronic Songs.
"That’s something that’s very big for us," Deorro tells GRAMMY.com about the new category. "How beautiful that this is happening, because it shows that what we’re doing is working, we’re breaking down doors, and we’re creating more opportunities for artists like us in the future." 
In honor of the Latin Recording Academy's new Field and Category, here are eight must-hear Latin electronic music essentials.
Belanova revolutionized the Latin music space with their 2003 debut album Cocktail, an atmospheric LP that seamlessly blends Latin pop with electronic music. In the dreamy deep house of "Tu Ojos," singer Denisse Guerrero sang about getting lost in her lover's eyes. The trippy techno of "Barco De Papel" was reminiscent of the music from Madonna's Ray of Light album. Electronic music on the ambient level wasn’t common in Latin music until Belenova changed the game in Mexico, which later reverberated into the rest of Latin America and the U.S. 
The trio — which includes guitarist Ricardo Arreol and keyboardist Edgar Huerta — later delved into electro-pop on 2007's Fantasía Pop, which won a Latin GRAMMY for Best Pop Album by a Group or Duo the following year. 
Venezuelan producer/artist Arca is a pioneer in the Latin electronic music space. Arca first began producing her experimental electronica in Spanish with her 2017 self-titled album.
Arca then masterfully mixed the diverse sounds of Latin America and beyond with EDM throughout her Kick album series. 
For Kick I, she combined Venezuelan gaita music and reggaeton with a cyberpunk edge in "KLK" featuring Spanish pop star Rosalía. Arca then blended electronica with neo-perreo on Kick II's "Prada" and "Rakata." Both albums garnered Arca GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY nominations. 
As a trans and non-binary artist, she is also breaking boundaries for the LGBTQ+ community in the genre. Arca is just not creating more space for queer artists in Latin music, but also in EDM at large by embracing the totality of herself in song.  
Bomba Estéreo, which is comprised of core members Simón Mejía and Liliana "Li" Saumet, has masterfully melded the music of Colombia’s Caribbean coast with electronic music. Since breaking out in 2008 with their sophomore album, the group has often reimagined the African and Indigenous rhythms of their country like cumbia through dance music. Bomba Estéreo’s folkloric approach to EDM has led to collaborations with Bad Bunny, Tainy, and Sofi Tukker.    
In 2021, Bomba Estéreo released its most ambitious album Deja, which garnered a GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY nominations. The title track put a funky spin on the band's signature electro-tropical sound. House music collided with the Afro-Colombian rhythms of champeta in "Conexión Total" featuring Nigerian singer Yemi Alade. Their album that was based on the four classical elements was a breath of fresh air in the Latin music scene. 
Argentine producer Bizarrap launched the BZRP Music Sessions on YouTube in 2018, first remaining behind the console for freestyle rapping sessions with local acts. The sessions quickly went viral, and have featured increasingly larger names in music.
Over the past five years, Bizarrap worked elements of electronic music into his hip-hop productions. In 2022, he fully delved into EDM with his global hit "BZRP Music Sessions #52" featuring Spanish singer Quevedo. The traptronica banger peaked at No. 4 on Billboard's Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and earned Bizarrap his first Latin GRAMMY Award. 
Since then, his music sessions have become a global event. Bizarrap later infused electro-pop with a trap breakdown in "BZRP Music Sessions #53" with Shakira, which garnered him two more Latin GRAMMY awards. 
Javiera Mena first debuted as an indie act in 2006 with Esquemas Juveniles. With that freedom as a producer and artist, the Chilean star pushed Latin music into the electronic space with her 2010 album Mena. 
She fully immersed herself into Latin electronica on her latest album, 2022's Nocturna — an album filled with nighttime club bangers that invite everyone to dance with her. Mena also proudly sings about being part of the LGBTQ+ community in the alluring "La Isla de Lesbos" and the fierce house music of "Diva" featuring Chico Blanco. Considering the influence of queer artists in the formation of electronic genres like house, it’s refreshing to see an artist like Mena remind people of those roots and bring that into Latin music.  
Mexican American producer Deorro has established himself as one of the world's top DJs, and is known for mixing both of his cultures into his music festival sets. Even before the música mexicana explosion last year, he was one of the first mainstream EDM acts to bring the genre to music festivals around the world through his songs and remixes.   
With his debut album, 2022's Orro, Deorro fully bridged música mexicana with house music. He collaborated with Latin acts like Mexico's Los Tucanes De Tijuana and Maffio in "Yo Las Pongo," which blended the band's norteño sound with EDM. Deorro also explored cumbia with deep house in the sweeping "Dime" featuring Los Ángeles Azules and Lauri Garcia. In his recent sets, he is spinning a fiery remix of "Ella Baila Sola" by Eslabon Armado and Peso Pluma
Sinego first broke through in 2019 thanks to his house bolero sound like in "Verte Triste," which put a refreshing spin on an age-old Cuban genre. With traditional genres within the Latin diaspora often falling to the wayside as the years go on, he is reintroducing them to new audiences through EDM reimaginings.   
For his debut album, 2023's Alterego, the Colombian producer pushed his electronic music to another level. Sinego traveled to different Latin American countries and Spain to record with local musicians, reimagining genres like cumbia, tango, and mambo through Sinego's EDM lens. With the sultry "Mala," he blended Venezuela's variation of calypso with house music. He also gave Brazilian samba a house music makeover in "Boa Noite" featuring Tonina. 
Dominican producer Diego Raposo has helped Latin acts like Danny Ocean, Blue Rojo, and Letón Pé embrace elements of electronic music. In 2018, Raposo released his debut album Caribe Express, which demonstrated his knack for mixing the sounds of the Caribbean with EDM. 
Raposo took that inventive mix into overdrive with last year's Yo No Era Así Pero De Ahora En Adelante Sí. The otherworldly "Si Supieras" featuring Okeiflou blended house music with reggaeton, while "Al Contrario" with Akrilla aggressively mixes drum 'n 'bass with dembow. Rapaso also channels Dance Dance Revolution-esque electronica in the spellbinding "Quédate" with Kablito. 
7 Latin DJs To Watch In 2023: Gordo, Arca, The Martinez Brothers & More
Photo: Matt Jelonek/WireImage
interview
As Green Velvet and Cajmere, DJ/producer Curtis Jones celebrates everything from Chicago to acid house. With a new party and revived record label, Jones says he wants to "shine a light on those who sacrificed so much to keep house music alive."
Curtis Jones is a dance music legend, whose multiple monikers only begin to demonstrate his deep and varied influence in the genre.
Jones has been active as a producer and DJ for decades, and is among a cadre of dance music acts forging a connection between the genre's origins and its modern iterations. Crucially, he  joined Chicago house legends Honey Dijon and Terry Hunter on Beyoncé's house-infused RENAISSANCE, providing a sample for "Cozy." He’s also produced tracks with house favorites Chris Lake and Oliver Heldens, and DJed with Dom Dolla and John Summit.
Jones contributed to the aforementioned collaborations, young and old, as Green Velvet. He’s been releasing dance hits like "Flash" and "Answering Machine" under that name since the mid- '90s. He is also currently a staple of the live circuit, his signature green mohawk vibing in clubs and festivals around the globe — including at his own La La Land parties in Los Angeles, Denver, Orlando, and elsewhere.
Green Velvet is appropriately braggadocious, even releasing the popular "Bigger Than Prince" in 2013. But by the time Jones had released the heavy-grooving tech house track, his artistry had been percolating for decades as Cajmere.
Where Green Velvet releases lean into acid house and Detroit techno, Cajmere is all about the traditional house sound of Jones’ hometown of Chicago. When Jones first debuted Cajmere in 1991, Chicago’s now-historic reputation for house music was still developing. Decades after the original release, Cajmere tracks like "Percolator,” have sustained the Windy City sound via remixes by prominent house artists like Will Clarke, Jamie Jones, and Claude VonStroke.
"I love doing music under both of my aliases, so it’s great when fans discover the truth,” Jones tells GRAMMY.com over email. Often, Jones performs as Cajmere to open his La La Land parties, and closes as Green Velvet. 
But beyond a few scattered performances and new tracks, Cajmere has remained dormant while Green Velvet became a worldwide headliner, topping bills in Mexico City, Toronto, Bogotá and other international dance destinations. He’s only shared two original releases as Cajmere since 2016: "Baby Talk,” and "Love Foundation,” a co-production with fellow veteran Chicago producer/DJ Gene Farris.
This year, Jones is reviving Cajmere to headliner status with his new live event series, Legends. First held in March in Miami, Jones' Legends aims to highlight other dance music legends, from Detroit techno pioneers Stacey Pullen and Carl Craig, to Chicago house maven Marshall Jefferson. 
"My intention is to shine a light on those who sacrificed so much to keep house music alive," Jones writes. "The sad reality is that most of the legendary artists aren’t celebrated or compensated as well as they should be."
Given that dance music came into the popular music zeitgeist relatively recently, the originators of the genre — like the artists Jones booked for his Legends party — are still in their prime. Giving them space to perform allows them to apply the same innovation they had in the early '90s in 2024.
Jones says the Miami Legends launch was an amazing success."Seeing the passion everyone, young and old, displayed was so inspiring."
Curtis Jones, center, DJs at the Miami Legends party ┃Courtesy of the artist
The first Legends party also served as a celebration of Cajual Records, the label Jones launched in 1992 as a home for his Cajmere music. Over the past three decades, Cajual has also released tracks from dance music veterans such as Riva Starr, as well as contemporary tastemakers like Sonny Fodera and DJ E-Clyps. 
Furthermore, Jones’ partnership with revered singers such as Russoul and Dajae (the latter of whom still performs with him to this day) on Cajual releases like "Say U Will” and "Waterfall” helped to define the vocal-house style.
Like the Cajmere project, Cajual Records has been moving slower in recent years. The label has only shared four releases since 2018. True to form, though, Jones started another label; Relief Records, the home of Green Velvet's music, shared 10 releases in 2023 alone.
Jones says he's been particularly prolific as Green Velvet because "the genres of tech house and techno have allowed me the creative freedom I require as an artist."
Now Jones is making "loads of music” as Cajmere again and recently signed a new distribution deal for Cajual Records. The true sound of Chicago is resonating with audiences in 2024, Jones says, adding "it's nice that house is making a comeback."
Jones remembers when house music was especially unpopular. He used to call radio stations in the '80s to play tracks like Jamie Principle's underground classic "Waiting On My Angel,” only to be told they didn’t play house music whatsoever. In 2024, house music records like FISHER’s "Losing It” were certified gold, and received nominations for Best Dance Recording at the 66th GRAMMY Awards. Jones is embracing this popularity with open arms.
Read more: The Rise Of Underground House: How Artists Like Fisher & Acraze Have Taken Tech House, Other Electronic Genres From Indie To EDC
"The new audience it’s attracting is excited to hear unique underground-style house records now. This is perfect for my Cajmere sets,” Jones says. "I never saw Green Velvet being more popular than Cajmere, and both sounds being as popular as they are even today.” 
While Jones is finding success in his own artistic endeavors, he points to a general lack of appreciation for Black dance artists in festival bookings. Looking at the run-of-show for ARC Festival, a festival in Chicago dedicated to house and techno music, legendary artists play some of the earliest slots. 
For the 2023 edition, Carl Craig played at 3 p.m on Saturday while the young, white John Summit, closed the festival the same night. In 2021, the acid house inventor, Chicago’s DJ Pierre, played the opening set at 2 p.m. on Saturday, while FISHER, another younger white artist, was the headliner.
In 2020, Marshall Jefferson penned an op-ed in Mixmag about the losing battle he is fighting as a Black DJ from the '90s. He mentions that younger white artists often receive upwards of $250,000 for one gig, whereas he receives around $2,000, despite the fact that he still DJs to packed crowds 30 years after he started.
Jones is doing his part to even the playing field with Legends, and according to him, things are going well after the first edition. "Seeing how much respect the fans have for the Legends was so special,” Jones says. "Hopefully they become trendy again.” 
The story of Curtis Jones is already one of legend, but it is far from over. "I feel it’s my duty to continue to make creative and innovative tracks as well as musical events. I love shining the light on new upcoming and emerging artists as well as giving the originators their proper dues,” Jones says. 
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Photo: Courtesy of Elyanna
news
Elyanna's distinctive new album, 'Woledto,' combines the sounds of her Palestinian and Chilean heritage with an appetite for powerful pop songstresses.
Elyanna is every bit an artist of our specific moment. The 22-year-old Los Angeles-based singer weaves together global influences, merging sounds from her personal history with a wider pop sensibility. 
With hints of Rihanna’s sultriness and Astrud Gilberto's effortless cool, Elyanna's music is often accompanied by a pulsating beat and traditional Middle Eastern instruments. 
By uniting musical traditions from the Palestinian and Chilean sides of her family, she creates songs that are at once sweetly enticing and bracing. "Al Sham," for example, opens with ethereal, floating vocals before morphing to incorporate aggressive synths and drums. The result is a growing, idiosyncratic body of work made for both crying on the dancefloor and rump-shaking. 
Paradoxical? Sure, but there are no contradictions in Elyanna’s art, only unexpected connections that make sense as soon as she starts talking about how they fit together. Of her forthcoming album, Woledto (in English, I Am Born), Elyanna explains that she and her brother/co-composer/producer Feras wanted to create music with unusual depth. "I want people to find these clues, because that’s the kind of art I like, when it’s deep and not always on the surface," she tells GRAMMY.com.
She knows Woledto is a big swing, and relishes the feeling of freedom and self-determination that comes with that kind of risk. "I really put my heart and all my emotions, everything I feel in it, and what I love about it is that I think that it's ahead of its time."  
In 2023, Elyanna notched a unique milestone as the first Arab artist to perform in Arabic at Coachella. Her subsequent debut tour sold out every date, and her next performance in the U.S. is set for April 27 at Los Angeles’ storied Wiltern Theater. The singer/songwriter takes it all in stride, with a natural self-possession; Elyanna is an energetic, curious young woman who’s as at ease on the road as she is in the living room studio she maintains at her parents’ home. 
With Woledto out April 12, Elyanna sat down with GRAMMY.com to chat about writing authentic bangers, repping every facet of her identities at Coachella and beyond, and her seamless approach to sound and vision. 
This conversation has been condensed and edited.
Woledto is out this week – congratulations! How are you feeling about it?
I'm excited – it feels so cool! I really took my time with this one, because I was able to figure out this new layer of myself and was able to connect with my roots more than ever. 
I know that not everyone's gonna get it right away, and I believe that when you want to create art that feels timeless, you have to make sure that you don't rush it. It's fine if it takes its time. I just wanted to create something that felt outside of the world, and had its own feeling and world. 
Can you expand a bit about pouring your whole self into this album? You mentioned your feelings, your identity, and you have such an interesting, multinational identity as a Palestinian-Chilean woman who now lives in Los Angeles. How did you incorporate all of that – and other aspects of yourself – into Woledto?
I come from two different backgrounds, and it's always very natural for me to put those together; I was born and raised in Nazareth, Palestine, and I am also part Chilean, so this is my world. I love to dig deeper into culture, and find more inspirations — there's so many hidden gems in my cultures, and I feel like it's time for the world to see it and to hear about it. 
I took inspiration from my grandfather — he’s the only featured performer on this album. I saw this video of him singing in a wedding; he was a singer and a poet, and he was doing a freestyle in Arabic. I sampled that video in a song called "Sad in Pali" — me and my brother were in Palestine for a visit after a few years away, and we felt very disconnected from everything there. This album has a lot of intentional inspirations that I want people to find.
Your music videos feed into that goal, too — they’re very arty, the imagery is so distinctive. The song that leaps to mind first is "Gheneni", which opens with a male vocal — I thought maybe it was a call to worship — and then channels Rihanna in your vocal, while the visuals are a hybrid of belly dance and you and your girls all hanging out in the desert. How do you weave all of those things together into a song that means "Drive Me Crazy"?
So my studio is at home in the living room, super humble, and it’s always full of friends and family sitting around while me and my brother [Feras] are working there. 
One day my dad was watching a very dramatic Arabic show, and my brother heard this music in the back that felt so powerful, so spiritual. So my brother took that and sampled it, and that’s the vocal that opens the song. Then he made a beat that feels like tribal fusion to follow. I always say "Gheneni" is spiritual, and also reminds me of "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee, because it’s got so much swag. I’m rapping and just doing my thing on it, it’s a rollercoaster of emotions and very sassy. I love it. 
You look so free in that video, and I noticed that in most of your videos, there’s at least a few big moments of you being surrounded by other women. It’s really memorable in "Mama Eh," too. Tell me a little bit about the aesthetic and approach you use when you’re making these videos?
I really love to collab with people — I try my best, always, to be open to ideas. Usually how it starts is with my brother, we make the music and take care of the visual creativity of it. He’s my creative director, so we always keep sharing ideas together, brainstorming, and we save it all in this little folder to use whenever the time’s right. I love to always come in ready for my videos, live performances, but I never want to forget to be natural, and I don't want to be too ready, sometimes I want to be free. Sometimes all you need is just to be you, singing on camera, and that's enough. 
I love having a lot of female empowerment around me, too. I was raised that way — my mom is a very strong woman, my grandma is a very strong woman, my sister is a very strong woman, and I find so much power, if I'm feeling down, to talk to my sister and to talk to my girlfriends. So especially as an Arab woman, I want to make sure that I lift this female energy up for all the girls out there, and all the girls in the Middle East to feel that they can dream big, and they don't have to be always so soft. 
That’s really who I am, sometimes aggressive, very passionate and on fire. I feel like every human, we have a little bit of both, and I don't want to hide any of them. I want to be real and honest.
It seems like another throughline in your music is its cinematic quality. Woledto’s title track is also the album opener, and it sounds like it could as easily have been something you wrote for a film. If you could pick any film scene for your music to play over, what would it be?
I'm such a movie nerd! Right now, the film that felt so much like the world that I create in my music is Dune, Part Two or The Black Swan. There's so many scenes that I love, but it makes so much sense from what we were just talking about the different, changing parts of our personalities that I feel like the last performance where Natalie Portman had to perform as both the white swan and the black swan would be perfect for the outros of "Kon Nafsak" or "Sad in Pali." 
I understand you had a really special experience meeting Lana del Rey on one of your music videos. It makes sense that you’d love her, her work is so cinematic and she has such a recognizable style. 
Yes! Lana’s sister Chuck is an amazing director, and she shot one of my videos, for "La Vie en Rose." It’s a cover of the Edith Piaf song, and Chuck has such a beautiful vision. 
So Lana was there for the whole shoot, and she picked my dresses, and gifted them to me! She was an angel, just the coolest, and she did not disappoint. I've been listening to Lana since I was 10, and was obsessed with her. She was literally on my phone case. Meeting her and working with her and fully trusting what she says — I cried at the end, it was amazing. 
How great to have an experience that disproves the advice never to meet your heroes. In your cover, do you sing in French, English, or Arabic? 
It’s in Arabic, the title for my version is "Al Kawn Janni Maak." I actually co-wrote that translation with my mom and my brother; I’d always wanted to hear it in Arabic. 
That's really cool. It sounds like your work is very rooted in your family, not just having them with you at home or on tour, but they’re a big part of your music itself, too. 
It was always this way, even when I was little — I was 7 years old, 10 years old, and just dreaming of being an artist. My brother is the one who discovered my talent — he’s a pianist, and he would sit next to me for hours while I'm singing with a big mic, saying "Yo, you can do this note better." 
My mom writes my music with me, and it’s very powerful and so interesting. My sister Tali is part of it, too; she’s always been very good with fashion and is my stylist. We’d always be doing fashion shoots in our backyard, where my sister would dress me and my brother would take the pictures. I don't think anything’s changed since then, it’s just on another level, a bigger scale. We complete each other. 
Let’s talk about your influences and how you find your way to them. You’ve got this great playlist on Spotify that includes such a diverse group of artists, including ones that were delightful surprises: Pink Floyd, Nancy Sinatra, Chris Isaac, and Sadé. How do you discover artists who have a long history but are new to you?
I grew up listening to and singing jazz, I used to be obsessed with it. And it was very rare in Nazareth, but I must have found videos on YouTube. Etta James’ songs feel so real and timeless. There’s a lot of live instruments, it’s very detailed and very raw. It’s so beautiful! The lyrics, the production, even the fashion —it’s a world that I just really, really love.
I am very open when it comes to music. The best thing is to have conversations with people and meet new people, they bring you so much knowledge that you can bring into your own world. 
Speaking of sharing worlds, you did that on a massive scale by playing at Coachella last year. You’re the first Arab artist to perform in Arabic at that festival, and it’s kind of shocking that it took so long for that milestone to happen. What does that experience mean to you?
I like to look at the bigger picture; you know, it was very exciting, and it's not only for me, it's for our culture, for our people. It was an honor singing at an iconic festival, and I do not want to be the last person that performs there in Arabic. 
It was a moment that I feel like we needed for our culture, and I was surprised by how many people saw that performance — I didn’t expect it, so many people were there from completely different cultures, probably not knowing what I was saying, but they still loved it. 
That mirrors your interest in and embrace of always experiencing and looking for something new, giving that to the audience, too. 
Exactly. It was new to me, too, because Coachella was really my first real performance. I'm there thinking that's a lot of responsibility on me now, so I have to make it work, to make it the best I can. I was able to bring the belly dancing, the tribal fusion dancing, all these elements that we have in our culture, like the coins on my hips — it means a lot to me that people took it in like that. 
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