Mixing tracks under their DJ name pastelShade, interdisciplinary artist Turay Pastel (he/him; femme) is quickly making a name for themself in the Los Angeles disc jockey scene. As the host of Cuties Coffee’s immensely popular BIPOC VIrtual Listening Party series, held on the third Sunday of every month, pastelShade creates a space that offers healing for BIPOC people through sound, movement and community.

Whether they’re serving up solid beats in a (virtual, for now) club or helping to support and house homeless veterans at their day job as a Rapid Resolution Specialist, pastelShade has truly made the work of cultivating healing and wholeness amidst trauma and conflict into a way of life. Always keen to shout out the Black and Queer artists and DJs who inspire them—from Taisha Paggett to Maya Margarita, also known as DJ br0nz3_g0dd3ss—pastelShade centers Blackness in everything they create. We’re thrilled to have them on this year’s SKEW curatorial team, so we sat down to get to know them in greater detail and hear what they’re looking forward to with this year’s magazine.

Interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

A lot of people who aren’t in the DJ scene—and especially white people, if we’re being honest here—underestimate or simply don’t think about the amount of artistry that goes into DJing. However, listening to your sets, it’s impossible to ignore your creativity and ingenuity. What do you hope to achieve when you make a mix?

Mm, thank you! Well, I strive to create a vibe that develops and centers a specifically BIPOC Queer feminist liberatory consciousness. When selecting sounds, I am particularly curious about cultivating ecstasy and supporting the resiliency available through body movement, vocal exercise and memory. My sets explore Femme embodiment and sexual autonomy always and in all ways. 

That sounds truly awe-inspiring. How long have you been doing this? How did you get started DJing, and making art in general?

I’ve been privately mixing longer than I have done so publicly. Mixing started out as a reflexive healing practice where I played music and explored sound while dancing around in my place. Movement has been my medium of healing since adolescence. When a dear friend of mine unexpectedly passed in 2014, I took a year off of work and spontaneously auditioned for a dance collective with my friend and roommate at the time, Jas Michelle. I ended up spending three years as a part of WXPT (We are the Paper, We are the Trees), which is a dance and movement collective under the direction of Taisha Paggett. WXPT was one of the most intentional creative spaces I’d been a part of, as far as challenging notions of power within a creative field. I learned so much about honoring Black interiority through working with Taisha. She grounded my creative orientation in a very fundamental way.

In 2016, I was a part of the Peacock Palace, a Black Queer collective house. At one of our Afrofuturist themed house parties, I asked the DJ if I could hop on and was able to experiment with mixing. I hyped folks up with affirmations and Queer interpretations of my song selections, it was special. Jas also intentionally affirmed the craft for me. I didn’t start my practice, though, because I didn’t have any equipment!

The next time I mixed publicly was at another Afrofuturist party—fancy that!—held by Kumi James, also known as DJ BAE BAE. She was in a DJ duo with DJ Kita called Love is the Plug. She wanted to create more space for Black femmes & Queer folks to DJ and to destabilize ideas of clout and “professionalism” in the scene, so she invited and encouraged me to play a set. That’s when I got my first controller, a Pioneer DDJ-SB, through Craigslist and started practicing. I’m grateful to have gotten my start with the help of such an ambitious person. She gave me a few DJing lessons, and maybe a year later, I attended mixing classes with DJ Kita, which gave me the confidence to start playing events. 

Do you have any specific mix you’re particularly proud of?

“AfroEmo 01: Affirmation Pit” was my first SoundCloud upload and a proclamation of my sound/intentions. It was received so well by my peers, which helped me become even more comfortable with expressing through my creative lens. I’m also really proud of the set I did for Dublab with Treva Ellison. We had a beautifully exploratory conversation about music as a means of archive and transformative healing. I was inspired to experiment more deeply. The mix is bold, and I love moving to those blends! 

So when you’re putting songs together and playing with different aspects of the music, what is going through your head? What do you like to draw out of a track?

I love rhythmic experimentation and sound experimentation in general, I am gaining more confidence with this as I go, but I enjoy including an element of sound experimentation in my sets. I love bended and distorted sounds; for me, they engage in a curious conversation with the richness of physicality. I am always interested in the ways that distortion activates others to dream, release and actualize new personal and relational futures. The hope is to mature into a live sound experimentation artist. I would love to eventually host sound and performance art installations that ask listeners to consider the possibility of interpersonal conflict resolution through sound. 

Magazines like SKEW are typically read quietly by a single individual, which is obviously a pretty different artistic experience from the communal listening parties you host. That’s why we’re so glad you’re a curator this year: you have such a gift for creating authentic communities wherever you go. And with SKEW’s new digital hub coming out this year, you and the other curators are imagining ways to create a community beyond the pages of the magazine. What’s it been like being on the team so far?

This will be my first time editing a zine like this, so I am excited about the creative relationships I’m building with the fellow curators. They are all curious people and amazing artists, and they are enthusiastic about exploring a variety of programming possibilities. I’m excited to see how this project pushes all of us

I imagine community building will be a dynamic process between the curators, artists and attendees of these digital events. As curators, we intentionally hosted a call for submissions that was open to all mediums and asked applicants to consider the accessibility of their submission, in order to center and uplift the conversations that artists and community desire to have.

For me, the internet offers a direct kind of intimacy that I love working with. I appreciate the opportunity to connect people with shared interests, attend social parties and panels where I can simultaneously tend to my own comforts and engagement boundaries. The conversations we center in this year’s magazine about Black dreams, futures and mutual aid have the potential for building amazing communities, and I’m delighted to see how that develops.

To see and hear more of Turay’s work, find them on Instagram at @pas.telshade and on SoundCloud.