Mafalda claims the sun is her place of origin, and it’s very easy to believe her. When we spoke, it was the end of summer and Mafalda was visiting a warm and lovely Lisbon—native territories both in location and season, giving our conversation an instant sense of home. At some points, it was difficult to remember I was interviewing Mafalda because of how easy she is to talk to, and to get lost in stories with. Her warmth is a symptom of how deep her passion is for records, and her reflex to share the emotions entangled in them. Now based in London, the DJ keeps busy with a multitude of projects that explore all realms of her creativity and ambition.
Looking for a focal, or at least a starting point, for our interview, I delve into the Dust & Groove history with Mafalda. She has previously spoken to Eilon about her love for Mac Miller, which sparked a particular curiosity in me. It is somewhat uncommon for our friends to have such an infatuation with more contemporary, perhaps more mainstream artists, but this is in no way intimidating for her as she stands firmly behind her musical loves. As we get going, Mafalda interrogates: “I’m gonna be the Mac Miller girl, aren’t I?…It’s not a guilty pleasure, it’s just a pleasure”, and it’s hard to argue with that.
Mafalda is a prominent DJ, and is constantly tasting all flavors of music—sharing tunes on her monthly NTS radio show Tropic of Love, since 2019. She confessed that this is one of her favorite jobs, as it gives a sense of true freedom that is seldom in many other gigs. “I can play whatever I want: I can just play free-jazz, psych-rock, Mac Miller” [laughs]. This is indeed true, it’s a greatly varied show that does embody the vibe of free love, so check it out when it’s next on.
Whilst busy with DJing, Mafalda frequently accepts further jobs in design and label contribution, displaying her creativity and capabilities as an all-rounder. She has a long-standing alignment with Melodies—a reissue label focusing on relatively undiscovered sounds and celebrating sounds of modern disco, soul, and boogie—being there from its conception. She tells me “I used to run that label, but now I just DJ as part of the team. I may see how I can fit more involvement in, we’ll see.” Melodies is currently led by Sam Shepard (a.k.a Floating Points) and Elliot Bernard.
With roots in visual art and design, Mafalda also keeps this passion in her daily roster. Most recently, she has been working on a magazine for the label Soundway (which focuses on global compilation reissues) by creating the layout and design. It’s almost a 50-page production, so Mafalda really does know how to keep herself busy. By the time you’re reading this it could well be out, so show some curiosity into the visual achievements of our musical friends.
We spoke for an hour about not just Mac, but how music was the source of inspiration for her to become bilingual, her first musical endeavor of a kick-ass all-female hip-hop group, and how music forms connections—whether cosmic, casual, or comforting.
"Good music is good music. I don't care if you sold a million, zillion, billion copies, or if you sold 100. If it's purely good, then yeah, there are no guilty pleasures.."
Tell us about yourself. Where are you from?
I’m from the sun. I say that because when I moved to London, I think my accent was even thicker, and so everyone’s first question was, “Where are you from?” So after around three months, I got tired. I was like, “I’m from the sun, darling”.[laughs] By the way, that’s inspired by the 1960s model Donyale Luna [the first African-American model to feature on the cover of Vogue] who would say she’s from the moon. But no, I’m actually from Portugal. I was born in Porto, in ‘87.
I grew up there. I was there for my childhood, my teenage years, and then I studied further north in Guimarães. Then I moved to Lisbon. I lived there for two or three years, but I already had lots of friends in the city because I was coming to Lisbon all the time prior to that. And then in 2014, I moved to London. I used to collect records already in Portugal, I had lots of hip-hop records from when I was 13. And I had, you know, Pink Floyd that I inherited from my grandfather. But the rare groove kind of situation happened more when I moved to London. Here [Portugal], a lot of people would listen to tech-house and stuff. But in London, the people listen to music. They listen to everything, it’s cool.
You mentioned that you had records from your grandfather. Did your family encourage your record collecting?
I wouldn’t say so. My parents, my grandparents, they’re just much older. They have records because that’s the music that was available for them at the time when they were growing up, so they never really got rid of them. But, I remember when I was 13 and I was starting to listen to hip-hop—I had a hip-hop band, actually. We were short-lived, but we were cool; we were three young girls just rapping. We used to write, the writing was really good, but maybe the delivery wasn’t as good. I remember trying to scratch on my Dad’s turntable, and he was like, “don’t scratch the record, Mafalda!”
I grew up listening to rock, Brazilian music, and jazz. Maybe because I was forced to listen to it so much, I didn’t like rock until much later. Now I love Rock. The Beatles are one of my favorite bands.
"You ask me why I love Mac Miller, I ask other people why they don’t. I don't think people really understand how good he was."
When you were creating hip-hop, was that your first big falling in love with music?
Actually, no. I started learning English very young when I was around seven, I was obsessed with the Pet Shop Boys album Bilingual, and I wanted to translate the lyrics. So I asked my parents to go to English lessons when I was five. At the time, in the very early-1990s, the English lessons in my school were for kids who could read. I couldn’t read yet, because I wasn’t even in first grade. I had to wait two years until I learned how to read when I was seven, and then I was accepted into the English lessons. But I waited eagerly because I wanted to translate the Pet Shop Boys’ lyrics. So, I think that is my first musical memory. At least I can speak English now.
Let’s start with Mac Miller.
I love him so much.
Why?
You ask me why I love Mac Miller, I ask other people why they don’t. I don’t think people really understand how good he was. Maybe he wasn’t the most accomplished singer, per se, but he also wasn’t confident enough yet. He started rapping, which is very different to singing, but he was growing into his singer persona as well—into a different form, which also wouldn’t have been his final form, by the way.
The thing that I’m always looking for more than anything is honesty. I like it when people write their own songs. You can only convey your own feelings very well—if you’re trying to sing a song that doesn’t mean anything to you, it’s never going to come across the same way. And he was super honest in everything he wrote. But he was also a super prolific piano player, bass player, guitar player, drummer. He was a full-on musician, in every sense of the word. An artist, because he poured these emotions into all of this music.
He became quite famous before he died, did that make it all more shocking?
I remember when he died. I was in Belgium with my best friend, about to DJ—it was the day before my birthday. I was just so sad. He wasn’t meant to die, you know? He sang about it many times in his lyrics about how he knew he was gonna die young, but he didn’t want to. He was 26 and I think he just had so much to give. I would have loved to have seen Mac Miller at 50 years old.
In the record he had just released, he was super vulnerable. He confronted his own faults, but it was just like the same guy. Yeah, I don’t think he was gonna compromise in any way. I think it was just his own demons that he had to deal with, it was an accident, a really sad, tragic accident, and I wish we still had him around.
I like your attitude when you flip the question when asked about liking Mac Miller, I like how there’s no entertainment of ‘guilty pleasures’.
Yeah, I mean the other day I was coming back from a festival, and Rihanna’s “Pon de Replay” played on the radio. I was with a bunch of DJs, we hadn’t heard it in years, and we were just like, “this is a banger!” Good music is good music. I don’t care if you sold a million, zillion, billion copies, or if you sold 100, if it’s purely good then, yeah, there are no guilty pleasures.
What’s one thing that draws you to a record? How do you know that, despite genre, despite time period, how something could be a good record?
I don’t know how to explain it, I just know. Everything is subjective, but sometimes three notes are all I need to hear. And I’m like, “oh my gosh.” Sometimes I need to listen to a bit more, of course. London really opened my eyes to the world, to the spectrum of musical flavors. I remember not being really keen on reggae when I was in Portugal; then I met a bunch of friends who showed me a bunch of beautiful singles. London opened my mind to so many things. Now I love everything. Anything will fit in my collection.
And that’s why I love having a radio show [Tropic of Love on NTS] because there’s no tyranny of the dance floor. I heard this term from my friend John Coxon once and it just clicked. If I found the record, if I love whatever genre it is, it fits on my radio show.
You’re a busy lady, you’ve also been involved with Melodies, right?
Yes. Okay, it’s a long story. I was visiting London and I saw Floating Points, and the music just blew my mind. I flew back to Portugal, I was working as a fashion designer at the time so I quit that and moved to London within 2 months. I ended up helping Sam [Floating Points] start Melodies in 2015. I started by doing a zine, a Melozine, for the first release, and next thing you know I was overseeing it all. I was this big music lover, nerd kid that just came from Portugal, and I just landed this job with, like, my idol, and I was releasing these records that I loved and I couldn’t afford. It was a magical time.
My favorite things about it were meeting some of the wonderful musicians and people behind these songs, talking to them, re-imagining this timeless music’s artworks with them, making those records available again, and telling the stories behind them – often these artists may have thought they have been forgotten, but they haven’t. It’s really fulfilling work.
I left the label in 2019 and now I’m just part of the party crew, which is also really fun.
"I left the label [Melodies] in 2019 and now I’m just part of the party crew, which is also really fun."
Your last release with Melodies was a repress of Jack Jacobs’ “I Believe It’s Alright.” What is it that compels you to repress tracks like this?
That’s definitely one of my favorite songs ever. I think if you go to that song on YouTube, you’d probably still find my comments there, “does anyone know who did this? Who is this Jack Jacobs? Does anybody know his cousin or something?” Elliot did find his family though, after years of us looking.
It’s hard to mix in, it’s hard to mix out, and it’s hard to find things that go along with it as well because it’s a very specific track. There aren’t many like it, you know. But I play it every time I can, because I love that song, and even with the tyranny of the dance floor, I like the challenge of it.
Another record of yours that I picked up is Meet Triste Janero. You said that it gravitates around nice people and nice moments, which is warm and sentimental. What makes it a comfort record?
It’s so comforting because of how it sounds. It’s like stepping into a dream. It’s very ethereal, that record is so beautiful. I feel I’ve only seen really nice people playing it. I met a friend of mine through it, HNNY—I got an invite to play with him in Sweden in a little club called Hosoi, another one of those pinch-me moments. Johan only had two people he wanted to invite to the party. At that point, it was either me or Four Tet. And I guess Four Tet couldn’t make it! He told me he invited me because he heard me playing Meet Triste Janero.
"[Archie Shepp]. I celebrate him whenever I can."
You also have quite the Archie Shepp collection. Quite a few of them signed, as well. How did that come to be?
He’s actually signed three of my records. He was playing the Barbican, and I went to see him with John Coxon, who now has a really amazing record shop called Atlantis [London]. And I took my records, just in case. I didn’t know if I was going to have the chance or not, but I was like, why not? I took Attica Blues, Blase, and For losers. I love For Losers. So I took three and at the end of the concert, I was in tears – I wasn’t like, ugly crying, I was beautiful crying [laughs].
We manage to get backstage, and I see a guy with a saxophone. I asked “is that the saxophone?” and he said yes. He asked if we wanted to meet Archie, and met him and his wife. And I think he was a bit touched by the fact that I was young. And, you know, as a Portuguese girl, I feel like an alien sometimes. I told him I’d brought the records and asked if he’d mind signing one. He said, “I’ll sign them all.”
Did you ever see him again or was that a one-off meeting?
It’s funny actually, I met him again at Ronnie Scotts a year later. His drummer, Steve McRavenwas putting his kit away. I told him I’d met Archie once and asked if he could say hello from me. Steve asked if I wanted a picture, but I already had one with Archie. We [Archie and Mafalda] had another lovely conversation about jazz.
He, and actually so do a lot of jazz musicians, asked me what my name meant—it means warrior. Archie said with a little confusion “oh, but you don’t look like a warrior”, I replied “yeah, but I’m a peaceful warrior.” I didn’t know at the time, but he has a song called “Peaceful Warrior”, Dedicated to Martin Luther King.
Come full circle, I saw him again at the Barbican a year later, and I managed to get my way through again. By that time I felt like he was gonna remember my name, so I just said “tell him Mafalda is here”[laughs], and I took a picture with him, as well as saying hi. It was such a moving concert.
I celebrate him whenever I can.
That’s lovely, and rare that you’re on the same timeline.
Absolutely, I feel like Archie Shepp is a sort of bridge to John Coltrane; They’re very special in their own way, but for me, Mr. Shepp is a mythical connection with someone else that I admired, but hadn’t the luck of being on the same timeline with.
What’s your favorite John Coltrane record?
I sometimes battle with my mental health; I used to live with my best friend, and whenever I was having one of my bad days, she would just play John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme for me. It would make me think “okay, time to come out of my hole.”
What’s a timeless classic from your collection that will never get old, one that will always be special to you?
I mean, I say the Beatles are one of my favorite bands. The Rotary Connection are my favorite band, the Beatles are my second favorite. Rotary Connection are just this insanely amazing band on Chess Records with some of the best musicians alive at the time, and in that time and space, You know, you have Minnie Riperton, Charles Stephanie, Philip Church, it’s unbeatable. The arrangements on it, the musicality, the lyrics, everything is great. I’ll never stop liking Rotary Connection.
And what’s the record that you’ll always keep in your bag, ready to DJ?
“It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me” [by Barry White]. I played it so much that I can’t play it anymore. But now my friends play it with me, and I like it. I can’t do it anymore, but I’m so glad they do, because I would still want to play this song. I just, I don’t know, I think I played it too much already. That’s one of them. There’s more. That’s a silly answer to this question [laughs].
Are there any last records that you need to mention? Give me something to end on a high.
Well, coming back to names, one of the reasons I love your name is because I love Fiona Apple —I’ve been listening to her since I was around fifteen. Fetch the Bolt Cutters was so important to me, it helped me so much at a time when I really needed it.
First of all, it was unexpected. It was during lockdown, a really shitty time when I had lost gigs and work, and that record came down like a light from above. She got a 10 on Pitchfork, which doesn’t mean anything really, but it is an incredible, insanely beautiful album. It’s homemade, it feels so honest, that’s really what I need in music.
She has my heart forever.
You’re based in London now, what are the best digging spots in the whole of London?
Well, any, I mean, I’m gonna have to say Atlantis is amazing. That record shop is where I go the most these days. But the Little Record Shop is great as well; I just haven’t been there in ages because it’s a mission to get there. But there are many more, it’s a fun city to dig!
Who would you like to see next on Dust & Grooves?
Tom Smith, John Coxon, Theo Terev (and other Theos), DJ Nature, Rebecca Vasmant…
"I would have loved to have seen Mac Miller at 50 years old."
Mafalda is a DJ, radio host, and graphic artist based in London. She formerly worked heavily with Melodies International, and is still part of their party crew.
Mafalda
