These words were written in June of 2020 by UK singer Aluna, né Aluna Francis and most notably of AlunaGeorge, in an open letter to the music industry. The movement for Black lives had taken on an undeniable momentum, and a long-overdue reckoning with systemic inequalities was emboldening people to speak out within their professional worlds in exciting new ways. Francis was of course responding to the energy of the moment, but was also articulating a feeling of long-standing unease. In the UK, she had charted a run of hits and collaborated with artists as prominent as Disclosure and had a massive breakthrough with “You Know You Like It.” Yet she felt that her Blackness was often sidelined, and that her position in the industry felt provisional. We sent a film crew to LA to interview Aluna about her experience, the open letter, and how it eventually led to Noir Fever, the all-black event series that she’s bringing to Knockdown Center on October 19th.
“I knew that something was unsustainable,” she told us, describing a chronic experience of having to play nice and not rock the boat by speaking up. “Being accepted into a space as a minority isn’t enough. At the end of the day, you have to stand in the group where white people are saying the n-word when hip hop is playing, or white girls twerking in your face and looking for approval. These are what you’d call microaggressions, but for us they’re not micro.”
“For me, it’s personal,” she elaborated, “because I felt like I couldn’t go on in this industry, just performing and performing, and having nothing for me as a black woman that said that I belong, that I’m central to this experience, that I’m celebrated… and at the end of the day, even if I was celebrated as an individual, that’s not what i want. I don’t want to be the exception to the rule. I want my people with me, and not just told, ‘you made enough bops to get through.’”
A moment of disappointment set in when, after a round of news coverage, nothing really happened. Francis described the industry’s response as “fairly performative and fairly minimal” - perhaps not a surprise, but nonetheless frustrating.
However, instead of becoming deterred, she went underground. “What I take full credit for is having a dream and talking to my Black ravers about what that dream would look like,” she told Edition. “I literally DM’d individual ravers and asked them if they wanted to join a support group to connect us because I felt like what was always happening is that isolation. Every time one of us started the Zoom with a story about having gone to a festival regularly as a Black person, everyone cried.”
These talks led straight to the inaugural edition of Noir Fever, which took place in New Orleans in 2022. Over the course of three days and nights, Aluna curated an all-black lineup of performers, DJs and producers, setting an example for what her version of inclusivity could look like. In our interview, she elaborates: “We need to have that raving experience, that experience of losing your mind and body to the rhythm without being monitored, having your hair touched, having your space invaded… but the opposite, being celebrated, having space created for us, being made welcome, being made a central focus, being represented on the lineups.”
“I was looking at my little corner of the world and I wanted to see change and I didn't know how to do it. This open letter I wrote was, like, speaking into the void. “How do we do this, how do we change the inequity for black people in dance music so we are receiving the value in line with our contribution?” Which is creating dance music. So Noir Fever is going to continue to be asking that question, and trying to answer it.”
The lineup for this edition speaks to Aluna’s wide-ranging taste and interest in multi-faceted expression. “When I go to the club, I need all the different types of dance music, I can’t just live off tech house. I need it all.” To that end, she’s invited Afro-House hybridist duo Coco & Breezy, French/Congolese DJ and producer DJ Karaba and NYC’s beloved Papi Juice collective to join her. “That’s what you’ll find at Noir Fever - expect the unexpected.”