“The dancefloor is the one place where difference is not simply tolerated, but celebrated; where what matters is not who you are, but how fully you are willing to show up, to feel, to move.”
II. The Artist in the Mirrorball
I did not come to disco as an insider. I was born in the United States, in Atlanta, Georgia — a city shaped by the civil rights movement, where the sound of soul and gospel was everywhere, but where I always knew I was an outsider to that lineage. My childhood was spent listening, watching, learning what it meant to stand at the edge of something powerful and beautiful, longing to find my own way in.
Somehow, I became a nomad — not by conscious choice — perhaps by luck and perhaps influenced by that false American idea that by moving somewhere else we can leave behind all that troubled us in the past. I've lived in a few places: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and currently, Berlin. In each city there is always a new dancefloor; each migration a new chance to discover what freedom could mean for me. I found myself drawn not to the soulful, gospel-infused origins of disco, but to its European echoes: Eurodisco, Italo, the shimmering pulse of synthesisers and the promise of reinvention. I love soul music deeply, but I knew it would be dishonest to claim it as my own. My path was always about finding the place where my story could meet the music honestly, without pretending to be what I am not, although it has taken me quite a qhile to actually live that truth.
Disco, I discovered quite early on, is not about belonging to a particular tradition or passing some test of authenticity. It is about the courage to step onto the floor — wherever that floor may be — and move in your own way. It is about the right to claim space, to experiment, to transform. The dancefloor is the one place where difference is not simply tolerated, but celebrated; where what matters is not who you are, but how fully you are willing to show up, to feel, to move.
This is why The Afterlife was born — not as an attempt to recreate the past, but as a living experiment: what happens when you take songs from every corner of your life — folk, pop, ballads, even songs that never belonged to disco — and see what truths they reveal when you let them move under the shimmering disco light? What happens when you trust that the music you make, however eclectic, can become a vessel for freedom — not just for you, but for anyone willing to listen and dance along?
My journey is only one among many. But it is proof that disco’s promise is not limited by geography, race, or tradition. It is a promise renewed every time someone steps into the music and interprets the sound into their own movement, finding themselves a little more free.