The Promised Land

The first is The Halluci Nation, formerly A Tribe Called Red, who I discovered while watching Reservation Dogs. Their work has consistently focused on resisting the appropriation of Indigenous imagery and decolonizing whatever space they occupy. I chose them to make a more fundamental point: before house, before techno, before America and its music, there was Indigenous music. The Halluci Nation are from Canada; 2oolman is Mohawk of the Six Nations of the Grand River, and Bear Witness is Cayuga Six Nations. Their presence is Takaki's argument made literal: they are not asserting citizenship from within the American border - they are contesting the legitimacy of that border itself, speaking from a position of pre-settler national sovereignty that predates racial formation entirely, while still having to contend with racial formation in the present. They are the "foreigners in their native land," but in this case, both formally and substantively. Their music is a testament to a living people who incorporate both tradition and the future in an ever-evolving culture.

Honey Dijon is a Black trans woman, raised on the South Side of Chicago and later in New York. Her parents held basement parties when she was young and would let her DJ for an hour before bed - she was basically born into house music. She's also my intersectionality argument made flesh: she has spoken extensively about being bullied for her race and her queer identity simultaneously. Andersen and Collins's matrix of domination explains why house music and clubs were places of community, information, and healing that made them both a necessary site of intersectionality and vulnerable to hegemonic extraction. You may not have heard of her, but you've definitely heard her work - she co-produced two tracks on Beyoncé's Renaissance.

My headliners are The Martinez Brothers, two Nuyorican brothers from the Bronx who were raised on everything the Bronx had to offer musically by their father, who was himself part of the New York scene. They are currently heavy hitters in house and tech-house and have continuously credited their Latino heritage as part of what differentiates their sound. I chose them because they are proof that Latino communities didn't just listen to house - they co-created it, a story that's sometimes forgotten in the recent rush to reclaim Chicago and Detroit. The brothers have also put their beliefs into practice, co-founding Tuskegee Records, a label that explicitly platforms Black and Latino artists. I think they embody Omi and Winant's racial formation in both directions: first as a community extracted from, and then as powerful, conscious reclaimers. Their featured track is an unreleased ID, which means you can only hear it in sets like this or live - it's also salsa-influenced, and you can hear the iconic clave every so often in place of a hi-hat.

Honey Dijon is a Black trans woman, raised on the South Side of Chicago and later in New York. Her parents held basement parties when she was young and would let her DJ for an hour before bed - she was basically born into house music. She's also my intersectionality argument made flesh: she has spoken extensively about being bullied for her race and her queer identity simultaneously. Andersen and Collins's matrix of domination explains why house music and clubs were places of community, information, and healing that made them both a necessary site of intersectionality and vulnerable to hegemonic extraction. You may not have heard of her, but you've definitely heard her work - she co-produced two tracks on Beyoncé's Renaissance.