Step into a world where music becomes the vessel that carries emotions, where beats and melodies weave intricate stories of liberation and healing. In this interview, we have the privilege of delving into the mesmerizing universe of the exceptional DJ and artist known as DREEEMY.
With a profound connection to the vibrant Afro House genre and a deep understanding of music's transformative power, DREEEMY has elevated her craft to an art form that resonates far beyond the dance floor. Join us on a captivating journey as we unravel the tapestry of her artistic expression, exploring how she infuses cultural influences, harnesses sonic energies, and orchestrates sonic experiences that touch hearts and ignite movements. Together we'll traverse the realms of Afro House, artistic collaboration, and the profound impact of music on societal change. The sonic journey begins now, and it's bound to resonate with your soul.
How does music service a vessel for your emotions and how do you translate those feelings into your DJ sets in production and in productions?
"Music is a vessel for my emotions. It is a vessel for emotions. Music is a vibrational technology, so it is a carrier of energetic information That's that's music's magic and music, medicine and music's power.
That's its function. And so being able to tap into its design and allow it to harness and carry and move my emotion, my feeling is a activation of music's inherent ancestral code.
Music says what words cannot. It conveys what any other language can't even hold a candle to any language. How I translate those feelings to my deejay sets and productions, my main guide and vehicle is a deep presence. So that means that I have got to be deeply and incredibly present with my emotions, my own inner landscape in order to authentically and honestly transmit the truth of my experience and presence is a practice.
So the deeper I can be in a meditative and flow like state with my music creation, the more it will more honestly translate and transmit the wisdom and intelligence of my emotional body and that kind of exchange with myself as the creator and the listener as a dancer in this co-creation is us all having access and the ability to harness this very potent ancestral technology.
Long story short, yeah, Music says what I cannot with words, it moves invisible and intangible, energetic information in a way that allows me to feel the depth and the breadth of my emotion more than if I just spoke about it. Even now, you can hear me getting speechless because, yeah, the energy starting to rise."
Can you share a transformative experience with a piece of music or a particular genre that opened your mind to a new creative possibilities?
"I think that very specifically Afro House as a genre really burst open not just creative possibility for me, but my my energy and my emotional body. Relating back to that first question. I was preparing actually to play a conscious dance experience and I was preparing the music and this was years ago, and I realized that a lot of the music I was pulling was a lot of the music that I was listening to lately, and a lot of it is by artists that I love and admire and sometimes get the chance to play with.
Like I'm thinking specifically of OSUNLADE and OVEOUS yes, who are incredible artists. Terry Hunter. I mean, these are the guys that are bedrocks for Tambor right? I was playing the music and I was just preparing the music for the set and listening, and I started to cry. Knowing that I was that the emotion and the energetic movement that was happening for me in that moment, I was feeling only a fraction of what was going to happen on the dance floor.
That's when it kind of really struck the power and the potency of the genre, because I could it was almost like a time capsule. Those rhythms were like a portal to the past, the ancient, and also to the future that the experience that was to come, the encounter I was about to have, the experience I was about to create and generate for others I could see into the future how it was going to land and how it was going to activate that dance floor, how it was going to liberate the spirits in the souls on that dance floor and that kind of like a most time traveling encounter with Afro House cemented it for me as a genre that, when tuned into, is capable of transporting us unlike any other sonic palette. And I've played and produced them, most of them, most of them from ambient healing music and sub frequency by neuro beats to tribal downtempo electronica to techno. Nothing is like this genre. Nothing. Nothing has moved me like it."
As an artist with a global reach. What cultural elements from different regions inspire your musical journey and how do you infuse them into your sound?
"I love this question! Well, firstly, I am a daughter of the diaspora. My roots are African. My people are indigenous Egyptian. But I am a child of migrants and immigrants and I am a product of the mix, the beautiful land that is the United States and New York City in particular.
That already has served as the bedrock of my relationship with music, just having heard it, so much of it and so many different kinds of it, and every iteration of its expression from the club to the like food carts on the streets, that's burst open my possibility for what sounds are in relationship with one another, what cultures are constantly exchanging with one another day to day, just like person to person.
I think with this question is really interesting. I think that so much of my life has been spent working inside the spirit realms, working inside aid, meditation, technology and transformational technologies, music and sound included, but really studying kind of ancient spiritual systems and very unique in every ancient culture, right? Like, the yogic system is different from African spirituality is different from South American spirituality and mythology, and each culture has its own unique kind of cosmology and Cosmo vision. But there's a golden thread that runs through and the sound is the unifier. So I'm just thinking about the question.
The question so interesting, because I don't necessarily try to intentionally infuse them into my sound. It's like these seemingly disparate cultural humans want to be connected together in the sound. The golden thread is the sound is the music. And so they call to each other like smells and history call to each other or spirits on a sidewalk, call to each other, or birds call to each other. They call to each other and it's been both a product and the process of my being who I am in relationship with so many cultural wisdoms and to come from a place in my lineage, to be descended from a place that considers itself a mother of the world. So I see that. I see that reflected in me naturally, and I'm so grateful for it. I don't take it for granted any day.
I bow in such deep respect to the gift that I've been given to be able to be a carrier and a keeper of those sounds and allow them to flow through me. I don't have to keep them too tight so they can cycle and circle back."
As a deejay, I have the ability to create sonic experiences for my audience. What message or feeling do I hope to convey through my sets and how do I curate a journey that resonates with your listeners?
"So first, I curate a journey that resonates with my listeners by curating a journey that resonates with me, by curating a journey that is honest and intentional about the process that I am in and that I am going through and that I am devoted to my own healing, my own liberation.
That's primarily why I am moved to music, because it is healing and because it is facilitate liberation, my liberation least. So if I can be honest about my process and my intentions, the ripple impact and kind of the like, resonant vibration, the resonance of that work will happen naturally. The experience, the message, the feeling that I'm hoping to convey through my sets are the same that I am calling in and cultivating from my own self in the privacy of my own spaces.
It is a liberation, it is a healing. So I choose sounds and textures and and voices and invocations and and rhythms that awaken liberation on every level. We have our physical body a looseness, a softness, and the joints, right? The hips, the neck, the wrists and the emotional, the emotional body. A looseness, a softness in the thoughts, a free flow, a looseness, a softness, a liberation of the mental body looseness a softness, a freedom, a liberation, a healing in the creative body and the spiritual body, a full free flow of the energy.
That's the intention, and that's the way the set is designed and built so that it can move intelligently through the system of the body. I mentioned I'm inspired by and moved by and a student of and a teacher of the the ancient systems, the energy centers of the body, the energy centers of of any living body, including the earth body and designing sets that can really travel intentionally and intelligently through a living body.
If it's the human body I'm thinking about sounds that open, that thing that's start at the root, that begin at the base level, deep frequencies, long frequencies, low frequencies, slow tempos, slower rhythms, building the energy in a way so that it can travel up through the vessel, the receiver of the sound, so that it doesn't just the sound doesn't just bounce back, right?
So that it can land and percolate and simmer and stew and and repair and rejuvenate the cellular system of the living bodies that are listening. And then it can be processed and filtered and sent back to me in this beautiful reciprocal circle and cycle of reciprocity. Right. Of like co-creation of the creator, the musician, the artist, the deejay and the dancer, the listener."
Music has the power to inspire movements and social change. Have you ever been moved by your audience's response to a particular track or set? And how did it influence your perspective on your role as a deejay?
"Yes, I think that I am always moved by and audiences response to a set. I am always moved by an audience's response to my set.
Always. I'm always moved. Whether that response is big and bold and really like momentous or is subtle. I am moved and I am honored that I could have that impact in the first place.
Sometimes when the impact is subtle, right, when a response is really just people having a good time enjoying, it's not like, you know, a massive public rally or public arts experience, which I love doing, but it's more subtle. I am still floored by the way we can speak this other language and not speak-- speaks not the right word, but we can communicate through this other language and be fluent in it.
Whether that's from my side as a deejay or from the dancer listener side. There is a fluency there. And so that has really widened my perspective as a deejay. It's like really deepening into this notion of reciprocity and co-creation with the listeners and the dancers. It's like understanding my power in that relationship because I'm creating the most kind of the loudest vibration in the room, right? Or the most not subtle. Just really seeing and feeling the effect a DJ has on a space and the beings and the bodies in it and it's completely elevated understanding that in a in an energetic way, in a way that's curious about kind of the universal principles of harmonious vibration, it's elevated this the role of the DJ for me, it's made me more aware of the potential for impact and transformation through music.
I feel myself on the very at the very beginning edges of what is possible with this technology and with this creative role. I think playing and creating music now for many years, not as many as some of the other incredible people I look up to, but enough to and not enough to still be humbled by by the power it has."
Do you have any collaborative integration projects that allowed you to merge your musical expertise with another creative field such as art, fashion or film?
"I am for ever seeking to merge my music with other creative fields. I approach most everything interdisciplinarity and am constantly seeking the ways in which worlds can be woven. That's my M.O. That's the way I was designed. It's led to some incredible and unexpected collaborations that serve also with integrations. Integration means to bring parts into a whole and understanding that music is a part of a whole ecosystem of medicinal technologies, healing technologies that can transform.
There is a project I'm currently working on called The Priestess of Twerk. It is a ritual performance theater project, written and produced and led by an incredible Ph.D. in social healing justice. Playwright, singer, sound healer named Maya Weatherspoon, incredible artist who has brought me on as a priestess and the priest as a temple, and also a sound designer for the space, pulling libraries, designing libraries of sampled ancestors who are speaking on liberation and eroticism and grief and relationship.
From Alice Walker to Maya Angelou to cradle Medusa to shamans and sages across time and space, our ancestors, and weaving those over healing frequencies and ancient instruments and creating new kind of sonic landscapes with a collective of other incredible musicians from violinist cellists, keys and voice.
This is probably the most latest project, interdisciplinary project, where not just the music and the theater are coming together and what I call art and music, but also the fashion and eventually the film, but also kind of just like the esthetic of the sonic environment and what that looks like visually and understanding everything is kind of like a vibrational imprint of the center intention."
If I were to import in part a piece of wisdom to aspiring deejays and musicians, what advice would I give them to stay true to their passionate and pursue their dreams fearlessly?
"If I were to impart a piece of wisdom, well, I would say exactly that. I mean, stay true to your passion and pursue your dreams fearlessly. But I will say I would say that it takes time. I would say trust the process. I would say put in the work, but surrender to the divine force that constitutes everything.
I would say meditate deep inside a meditation practice that can make you present with your own body, your own receiver, your own vibrational being, so that you know exactly how and what to transmit to a roomful of however many open, trusting receivers that are listening dancing to you.
Prioritize your well-being. I think that's probably one of the most important things. I would say prioritize your well-being. Make that a priority because it is the basis for the care that you can provide others through your sonic creations. Because the sound doesn't lie. It transmits honestly whatever is happening in the internal landscape. And so if you are here to harness the power of music and make a ripple impact through the sound that you generate and create and mixture for that, that vibration that you are sending, that ripple is clear and strong. It's nourished, it's hydrated. Because remember, everything is a receiver.
Send out exactly what you want to get back."
Want to know more about DREEEMY?
Check out the links below to listen to her music, connect with her on social and see her during upcoming live performances!
SEE DREEEMY LIVE DURING THE 2023 TAMBOR CRUISE HOUSE MUSIC EXPERIENCE IN EGYPT (ALMOST SOLD OUT): https://www.tamborcruise.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreeemy/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/dreeemy
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dreeemy