Features
A conversation on craft & community with Mae Happyair, Olympe4000 & Sarah Farina
Recorded during Echoes of Plurality in Bangkok, the discussion dives into topics of mentorship, club culture & the realities of building independent nightlife scenes
Back in June, Mixmag Asia sat down with Sarah Farina, Olympe4000, and Mae Happyair for a podcast recorded as part of Echoes of Plurality; a workshop and mentorship programme for emerging DJs and music creators staged in Bangkok.
The initiative was led by NON NON NON and organised through Goethe-Institut Thailand, the Alliance Française.
Over the course of the programme, Bangkok's electronic music communities got access to workshops, artistic exchanges and mentorship sessions built specifically around and for women and queer DJs in the local scene.
The programme culminated in a closing performance from all three artists at Bangkok World Music Day at Wireless Club, One Bangkok.
The three artists were selected for a shared trait: each has spent her career carving out their own path rather than waiting for the industry to make room for them; building events, collectives and platforms from scratch, and in doing so, building a way in for whoever comes next.
Mae Happyair is one of the clearest examples of that in Bangkok.
Founder of NON NON NON, the free-spirited party series built around Bangkok's LGBTQIA+ community, she's become one of the most recognisable figures anchoring Bangkok's and Asia's queer and techno scenes.
Olympe4000 took a different route out of Paris.
She launched her own label, Adrenaline Quality, in 2023, built as much on political and social conviction as sound, releasing genre-blurring work that refuses to sit still in one lane.
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Sarah Farina brings a Berlin lineage through her projects RainbowBass and Transmission.
Beyond the booth, she curates Emergent Bass, a Berlin event series spotlighting Afro-diasporic influence in club culture, and has taught DJ workshops across Rwanda, Uganda and the US.
During the programme, Mixmag Asia sat down with the three artists for a long-form conversation touching on the geographic significance of nightlife scenes, their individual careers and trajectories, what can actually be taught versus what has to be learned the hard way, and, naturally, what plurality really looks like inside an industry still catching up to it.
Listen to the full podcast below.
Henry Cooper is a Writer at Mixmag Asia. Follow him on Instagram.
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