Localized: DJ VI:BRA

SLUG Localized on Monday, September 15 will showcase the electrifying sounds of VI:BRA, tyrinha and Spaz. With diverse inspirations and a fluid approach to music, these queer DJs have carved out their own space in the cis, white, straight bar and club scene. Sponsored by Riso-Geist, the show costs just $5 for entry. Doors at Kilby Court open at 7 p.m. and music kicks off at 8 p.m. Get your tickets here!

For Miel Franco Pérez, music is a process of self reclamation and connection. A nonbinary lesbian DJ, Pérez runs ¡DYKED!, a dance party and inclusive, affirming space for queer women and nonbinary individuals. Getting to the point where they can name their identities and where they belong has taken most of their life, and music has acted as a guiding star through it all.

“Music is a way for us to — when we’re younger — connect with others and fit in. And for the majority of my time growing up, I didn’t really know where I fit,” Pérez says. They spent the first 10 years of their life growing up in Mexico before moving to New Zealand, then Sweden and eventually Utah.

While each place brought its own challenges of assimilation, Pérez found that, through music, they could find a sense of peace and clarity. On dance floors, they’d hear snippets of songs that felt different, sounds that were true to them, and thought about how they could incorporate that feeling within themself. “How cool would it be if I blended this style to these other styles that I’m also listening to?” they say. “It was always this tug of war of like, how can I find this in-betweenness and duality of how I experience and witness music and how it feels in my body? And how [does] it connect me to not only my body, but also my surroundings in my community?”

“Music is a way for us to — when we’re younger — connect with others and fit in.”

Those experiences led them through a long process of self discovery and healing through music. Pérez started DJing in 2019 but felt like they didn’t belong in the largely white, straight, cis spaces they encountered. So they walked away. “And then 2020 came, and suddenly my world was turned upside down,” they say. “And I [was] like, ‘Well, I’m not just queer. I’m a lesbian. I’m nonbinary. I am also neurodivergent [and] autistic … There are all these layers of myself that I [was] coming to really face and realizing that the community I was surrounded by were not really people that were holding any parts of those identities — that I was, once again, just assimilating.”

Pérez returned to DJing with this sharpened sense of identity and, sure enough, began to attract their people. “By 2023, I was so much more settled into all these identities and different communities for me to be like, ‘Alright, it’s time to reel it back in and start creating,’ because I then felt safe enough to create for the people that I had been longing to connect with,” they say.

“I’ll start at a lower BPM and then crescendo to the bell curve … and then reel it back.”

Pérez adopted the DJ name VI:BRA, as in the Spanish word “vibra” meaning “to vibrate,” because their approach to music, and gender, is about using vibrations to navigate. “I consider myself agender, and then I call my style of DJing ‘agenre’ because I feel like there’s a lack of genre, while still [having] a lot of fluidity,” they say, “and that’s also how my gender feels. That’s how my entire being feels.”

Their best sets, they say, create a “bell-curve experience” that starts slow and takes the crowd on an emotional journey through sound. “I’ll start at a lower BPM and then crescendo to the bell curve for that peak experience for people, and then reel it back.” Finding that hypnotic flow state for the crowd is key to a VI:BRA set, and getting there can even be a little emotionally taxing for Pérez.

While they’re still learning to balance the emotional part of music with the task of working as a DJ, through ¡DYKED!, they’re helping younger DJs find the foundation Pérez says they lacked when they first started. “Let’s put you up on the stage … and let’s teach our subconscious that it is safe to play, that we are received and that we are welcome, and that we are able to take up space,” they say.

Follow Pérez on Instagram at @mi111el and see their Localized set on Monday, September 15 at Kilby Court.

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