DJ MONI (extended set)
with DJ John Kong and host I.James.Jones. Fri, May 22. Supermarket, 268 Augusta Av. $10.
“Everything that inspired me early on was music I could dance to. Now, I’m at my highest joy when I’m playing,” Moni Pineda tells me over the phone from NYC. But she didn’t take the most obvious route to becoming DJ Moni.
Born in Cartagena, Colombia, Pineda moved with her family to Orlando, Florida at age eight. As they bounced between Texas, Oklahoma and finally back to Florida for Pineda’s high school days, she grew “obsessed” with music, soaking up Afro, Latin and Caribbean sounds alongside American influences including jazz, soul, hip-hop and house. Her DJ days began on college radio in Washington, DC where Pineda earned a degree in International Relations.
“I was thinking of working at the UN or the World Bank or something,” she explains. “But then I realized, ‘My god, these institutes are more corrupt than the real governments.’”
So began the process of Pineda’s finding fulfillment and community in music and visual arts. She worked briefly at Orlando indie electronic label Eighth Dimension, relocated to New York, worked a variety of jobs and finally landed her first club residency, La Chaza, in ’97.
During the past 12 years, Pineda established herself as DJ Moni while playing a huge range of soulful and syncopated sounds at residencies including Ubiquita and Injoy (both with all-women DJ crews) and the recently concluded Brownswood Sessions. At that monthly, founded by Brownswood Records’ label boss, Britain’s illustrious Gilles Peterson, and fronted by DJ Moni and singer José James, Pineda became even more enamoured of connecting with people in clubs.
“The whole communication that happens between a DJ and the dancers is like a high,” she reflects. “Also, I love to see sweaty people losing their shit. It’s such a gift. I know that when that happens for me, it’s such a release. There’s big joy on both sides.”
“Joy” and “share” are the two words that most frequently pepper Pineda’s statements. It’s little wonder that every project on which she embarks — which also included teaching after-school arts programs to NYC public school kids for three years — is rooted in the notion of finding or creating community. Lately, she’s also been documenting it.
Less than a year ago, Pineda and filmmaker Mike Vargas began creating a series of interview-based, “10-minute portraits of intensely creative friends and friends of friends” under the title Friends We Love. Their first profile was of NYC DJ/producer/journalist Bobbito Garcia.
They’ve since made more than 50 Friends We Love portraits, with subjects ranging from visual artists Ellis G, Poster Boy and (former Torontonian) Gary Taxali to activists, athletes, actors and community-minded musicians like our own K’naan and Zaki Ibrahim. While most of the portraits can be viewed on the Friends We Love website (www.friendswelove.com), Pineda and Vargas have also seen them screened in galleries, film festivals and cable station Current TV; now they’re aiming for wider distribution and other deals.
In the meantime, Friends We Love has spawned a related mix-CD of hip-hop and soul (including Ibrahim’s “Grow Again”) and a DJ tour of Japan as well as festival activity in New York.
“We’re really trying to build community — to have it be something that extends beyond online and film screens to physical locations where people can go meet the artists or see them perform,” says Pineda. “We’ll be doing a whole outdoor series this summer.”
Like the District Six and Do Right crews hosting her Toronto DJ debut, Pineda is all about the active overlap of music, art and community.
“I studied International Relations thinking that I was going to save the world, or at least make a difference,” she laughs. “Unfortunately, sometimes the system that’s in place may not be the route that is most conducive for your message. We’re fed so much garbage through media that sometimes it’s really difficult as a young person, or even as an adult, to just make sense of it all. We all need options.
“I feel very fortunate to have people around me who are not just passionate about what they do, but also very aware of what’s going on in the larger picture,” Pineda continues. ”I think that, as citizens, we have a responsibility to do whatever it is we can do, whether that’s getting people sweaty on a dancefloor and allowing them a moment of release, or if it’s speaking at schools and showing kids that there’s something more out there than Lil Wayne.
“For me, the most important thing is to help people connect.”