Tune on Saturday, March 23rd @ 4:30pm to hear Frontal Lobe speak with Peruvian-born, Berlin-based DJ and record producer, Sofia Kourtesis, on the eve of her recent February 2024 DJ set at San Francisco’s storied dance music venue, 1015 Folsom.
During the conversation, Kourtesis speaks to the sources of bravery she has tapped into to navigate both the homophobia of her youth, as well as the pitfalls of the present-day music industry. She also touches on the everlasting influence that her parents continue to have on her music projects, and how she takes production inspiration from her favorite filmmakers.
Her debut album, Madres, released October 2023, is an irresistibly dance-able meditation on family and gratitude, interwoven with the processing of the pain of caregiving. Madres sweeps down the path of acclaim carved by her previous EPs : 2021’s Fresia Magdalena, 2020’s Sarita Colonia, and 2019’s Sofia Kourtesis.
Sofia credits her many collaborators as being vital to her creative process and success. From amongst that group, she shouts out David Krasemann, a co-producer for Madres, as someone who “made me very brave…. he pushed me to my boundaries. He’s a very beautiful human and an activist. I always try to surround myself with beautiful, brave people; they teach me how not to just make music, but to reach [out], in a very human way, to other people.”
