Radio's Enduring Impact as Tech Transforms Culture: An Interveiw with Darek Mazzone, Senior DJ at KEXP

Last month, I had the opportunity to interview Darek Mazzone, a senior DJ from Seattle’s KEXP radio station, during the World Music Festival @ Taiwan. You may be familiar with KEXP's renowned live session video series. This station is truly one-of-a-kind. Though I’ve never visited in person, it’s hard to imagine that KEXP is still considered a “radio station” in the traditional sense, given its scale and setup.

If you're intrigued by how music subtly influences people and how culture can shift like a glacier, quietly but powerfully, then you might find this conversation inspiring.

Darek Mazzone is an incredibly engaging speaker. The interview felt like a jam session—no topic was off-limits, and sometimes we’d veer off course, only to circle back to the main point.

Below is my conversation with Darek Mazzone on October 13 this year. To improve readability, the content has been edited and condensed.

I. Entering the World of Radio

🛰️ Could you first walk me through your journey in the music industry? How did you start your career, and why did you decide to become a DJ at KEXP?

I was living in Boston and I started my "radio career". I was doing college radio and DJing clubs. So it was the 90s. You didn't really have a career. It was before the DJ superstar. You were kind of in the corner playing music. But I got lucky because I worked at a freeform radio station. So I had amazing music nerds teaching me about jazz, about world, about classical, neo-lassical, rock, a deep dive. I kind of wrapped my life around it. It was like an unpaid internship. I was at the station listening to records, learning how to edit, and just it was everything that I wanted from life at that particular moment. It was an intense period. 

I ended up leaving Boston. It was a classic story. Young man, heartbroken. It's America, so you can just drive. And I just drove all over the country with a couple of friends. And we picked people up, and the car broke down outside of Seattle. In the early 90s, Seattle was kind of like a cultural center worldwide. Grunge was happening. Technology was happening. Companies that we've known now as Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco and others were just getting started. Seattle was still cheap that obviously makes a big difference if you're in the arts or anything.

1995, the world kind of went crazy. Microsoft stock split. Amazon started. And then the people that had jobs and technology suddenly got rich. So when you have a whole bunch of people that suddenly have money, the culture changes a little bit. When I landed in Seattle, it was an interesting time for me personally because i had nothing pulling me back. I found KCMU (which later became KEXP). I want to do a show here. It was really progressive, hardcore. Nirvana got a start there. A lot of Sub Pop and everything. And they said, yeah, sure, come on in. 

At the time, you had to prove yourself in radio. So I had a full-time job at an advertising agency. And then for a couple of months, I had to do the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift on a Monday. Back then I was 26. So I could do it. And then I just loved it. I was able to experiment. I brought in poets. And we did collages. I brought bands in. But it was very much a punk rock, hippie little kind of thing. It wasn't my job. It was the thing that you love to do. And then it got bigger and bigger, but slowly. And then it became like a cultural hub for the place.

I always had other stuff. I worked in tech. I worked in marketing, advertising. I worked for different event companies. I had very different careers. I'm still a director. But radio and DJing has always been the center for that. I guess it's just music just kind of like really got to me in a very intense, visceral way. Like it was something that I got good at in a weird way, and then I just continued. And here I am now.

🛰️ I have two follow-up questions. First, how did music become a part of your life? How did you fall in love with it? And second, why did that radio station give you so much freedom to do what you wanted?

Because it was small. Nobody had a job there. We had one employee, and it was just a freer time. It was more experiment-driven. Seattle is a very young city in the context of the United States. It's also the last spot before you hit Canada or the water, and so it draws a lot of freaks and and just people that don't quite know where they are in the middle like Minneapolis or other places. So it was just as long as you're on the air and you're doing something cool—I was also on from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m, so who's going to really care that much? This is pre-streaming. This is when radio was just your transmitter. You're broadcasting there at that particular moment, and then you just get good at it. You just practice and you find ways to blend different musics and different ideas, spoken word, bring people in. It became a canvas. And then the people that were there like, “Yeah this is good, keep doing it.”

Why music got to me? That's a more complicated story because i was born in Poland. I moved to America in 1974 with my mom. Couldn't speak english at all and it was a culture shock to me. It was very much like, "Okay, I'm trying to figure my way out." But at the time, Poland was communist. We would be getting music from other communist countries. It was kind of these cultural exchanges that were going on. And I remember seeing these shows and getting these records that sometimes were playing and it was this window into this whole other world that I would never really experience because Poland is a homogenous country. But it was just something that really just connected me with that. I was fascinated by it. And then I found ways to accidentally or whatever fall into this place. I'm not a musician. I'm a good selector, able to share that music from those cultures.

🛰️ It reminds me of the legendary British electronic music producer Mark Reeder. He brought bands to East Berlin in the 80s before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I grew up in a world doesn't exist anymore. It's just very different. You go to Poland right now, it's European Union. Bright colors everywhere. People from all over the place and capitalism. When I was there, it was poor, gray, but people were together, but they were poor together. So the music from that time period is like this emotional window to that. It's the same with cinema. It doesn't matter what time it was and where it was. You have this transcendent connection to it.

II. Forming a Deep Connection with Music

🛰️ When I was young, there was no streaming either. Listening to music on the radio gave me a space or experience different from the real world. I started collecting records, buying CDs, and could spend hours in a record store.

Yeah, you have a relationship with that. Our relationship with music is so different now. It used to be something you held. Now it's just on devices, but those devices aren’t specific to music. We just pay a subscription for music. Remember cassettes? It was the same with records. You had a record, put it on, it would stop, and you’d have to go over, pick it up, flip it, and play it again. CDs were the first things you could just play over and over again, but then you’d get bored. You’d still have to come in, take it out, and change it. Now it’s just… you say, “Play music,” and the algorithm plays you whatever. So our relationship with it has changed.

🛰️ In the book You Have Not Yet Listened to Your Favourite Song, former Spotify data scientist Glenn McDonald discusses everything about streaming, from how revenue is split among stakeholders to how niche cultures can be accessed with just one click. When I read it I can’t help but think that I used to buy lots of CDs, but now, due to limitations of space and money, I just use streaming. Sometimes I feel guilty, like I’m betraying something.,It’s hard for me to strike a balance between the good and bad aspects of streaming.

I agree. We're in this weird middle space. We don't know what's going to happen. Like, we've seen music formats come in that eviscerated the previous one. When CDs landed, people sold their record collections. And then, suddenly, things came back again. Then downloads came in, and now streaming. We don’t know what’s happening. There’s an old adage that the music industry kills itself every 10 years and then rises like a phoenix. And right now, we don’t quite know where or how that’s going to work. You know the numbers with Spotify. How many songs are uploaded every day?

🛰️ 100,000.

Okay. Do you know how many get listened to more than once? Less than 2%. And the other sad number is that something like 80% of the songs that do get listened to, it's called legacy library. It's the stuff you already have. So if you're a new artist and you're trying to break through, how do you compete with that? 

🛰️ I did my own research on a local DSP called KKBOX, and I analyzed the top 100 weekly chart. I found that 10 years ago, less than 30% of the charted songs were catalog songs, with about a third of those being deep catalog. When we say 'deep catalog,' we mean songs older than five years. But now, more than 60% of the chart consists of catalog songs, with as much as 60% of those being deep catalog.

And now you start throwing AI-generated music. It's just a crazy time. And we'll see what happens.

🛰️ For me, it’s hard to convey this feeling to younger generations. Everyone has their own life experiences, and I can’t just say to them, 'Oh, you don’t know what this was like.'

No, completely. I mean I have two teenage daughters and their musical taste is very interesting. Obviously they're into what we're into. You know we took them to The Cure, they love The Smiths, they love that, but they've claimed it for themselves. It's their music. It speaks to them. 

🛰️ For you, it’s listening to what you loved when you were young, but for them, it’s like, “Wow, the retro stuff is cool.”

Yeah, there’s a weird connection. Kids trying to break out and then come back in again. But it’s fascinating in this context because it shows that this music, written long before they were born, is still resonating with them. They still want that kind of connection to it. There’s something about those songs, those artists. What is that magic that makes you want them to be part of your life?

Nothing can beat a live music experience. And especially when you go to a show of something you know, that’s great. It’s fun, but you know what to expect. It’s like watching your favorite movie over and over again. But it’s different when you start falling in love with something you’ve never heard before—like this duo from Tel Aviv doing Dabke and Berber music—it’s happening here in Taipei. This is desert music from the Levant. And even though the artists are singing in Arabic, it doesn’t matter. They connect. The singer goes into the crowd, moves everyone, and people start moving in a way they don’t quite understand, listening to these rhythms. And they fall in love. You feel it, and it’s a very different kind of experience. And you want more of it. It becomes intoxicating.

I was asking the delegates about the first three concerts they ever went to. Everyone has an interesting story, but one of the main things is that when you’re young, you go to school, church, or family gatherings. But a concert is the first time you’re around a bunch of strangers, all there to experience something together. It’s like your first community where you’re making that choice.

Going back to the technology of that—obviously, Spotify knows this, and so do other platforms. They’re feeding you what you want. But we don’t know how that relationship is going to evolve later.

This is one of the things that’s interesting about KEXP. I’ve been there for 31 years. I started when it was just a little radio station. When you think of radio, it’s not cutting edge. It faces an onslaught of other options. One of probably the most important music discovery platforms right now is YouTube, along with Spotify and other services.And then here’s this one place that’s real. It’s one office, one place. Artists need to make a record. They need to send me a file or a record or something I can actually put into my device or play. It can’t just be like you’re on Spotify—what am I gonna do with that? Good luck! Congratulations on being on Spotify. But you need to have that professional exchange, and I think that’s one of the things that keeps us going. We’re holding onto tradition.

We could just go nuts. We could be everywhere and do everything. We could partner with all these different companies, but we would lose who we are. This has come up recently: we just bought a radio station in San Francisco, and that’s a big step. So, what’s the thing that keeps us honest and legit? Spotify is way bigger, but nobody’s wearing Spotify t-shirts. Unless you work there.

🛰️ I actually have a Spotify tote bag (laughs).

That’s fine. But if you’re walking in a different country with your Spotify tote bag and you see someone else with one, you're not going to build a community over it. “Oh, I listen to Spotify. You listen to Spotify too? That’s great!” It doesn’t mean nothing about you. If you have a record collection or CDs, I could walk into your home and actually learn something about you. How are you going to show me your curated playlists, which are powerful and great? But again, it’s not something I can actually smell, open up, or hold. At the station, we have this music library that’s got all these old records—some of them are classics, like Nirvana's first record. And there are stickers on it. That's the way we used to communicate with other DJs. What's good, what's not good.

I remember when I told you about my first radio station experience—I was falling in love with it because I suddenly found all this great music. I couldn't afford it. I didn't even know where to find it. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I was just learning, learning, learning. I think people have a collective memory of it. It's also interesting because if you're listening to Spotify and someone else is, you're listening to completely different things. But on the radio, you're both listening to the same thing at the same time. In this world right now, where we're so dispersed, the fact that we're checking something out at the same time is important.

III. Preserving Tradition in an Age of Technological Change

🛰️ Did you get mad when Spotify or Pandora called their algorithmic service "radio"?

I didn’t get mad because we didn’t know what was going to happen back then. I’ll give you a funny story. I worked for Microsoft in a group called the Digital Media Division. This was around 2003 or 2004, when things were just starting in that space. I remember being at a conference called MIDEM, and everyone was like, “Napster sucks. Fuck Napster. Napster’s the worst.” We didn’t really have an opinion; we were just creating tools and software for labels and other services. The next year, Napster is the key sponsor with this message of the future of music. So you go from “hate Napster”, literally one year to the next year seeing conference banners saying, “MIDEM, brought to you by Napster”.

We thought Napster would be just a flash in the pan—like, nobody’s actually going to use this, because It was a werid little thing. I remember LimeWire and all these things, because it was the first time you could say, "Wait a second, I don’t have to pay for this? And I have access to everything right now?" Things were moving so fast. We’re here having these conversations about AI, generated music, video editing, and everything else. I had to explain it to a friend with this analogy: imagine it’s 1890, you’re a classical musician composing on your piano or harpsichord, and suddenly electricity is invented. Are you going to use electricity in your next performance? AI will probably be like that—so ubiquitous so quickly that it won’t even be a “thing” anymore. Just like we don’t talk about electricity; it’s simply there. And I think all of this is coming together. So when Pandora started calling stuff “radio,” what else could they call it?

🛰️ In an era dominated by digital platforms, radio definitely seems outdated to people. But yet, KEXP continues to thrive as a cultural epicenter. How does KEXP navigate market shifts and maintain its relevance, especially among younger audiences?

That's a little complicated because there are huge shifts within the industry itself. You're not going to get a younger audience. You might get some margins out there, but a particular generation tends to stick together and follow that. You will be getting them as they grow older, and you will be able to grow globally because you’ve got your market segment. It's music—it’s not overly tied to a particular culture or language, so you’ve got people all over the world who know about KEXP.

That’s a trip for me. I have to take care of myself now because people want to take selfies with me. I'm just a radio guy, not used to needing to keep myself “coiffed,” as they say. But having a global audience is something. It's radio, but just being honest—if you try to chase trends, people can smell it, and it’s not cool. We’re also earnest; we’re reacting to how people categorize music in their minds, and you have to think of it like record stores. In my time at KEXP, I was the only one playing music from all over the world for a long while. Once streaming came in, people started discovering other things, but they liked my selections.

We're still in that space where people start telling others about us. They grow up, and it’s like the older brother, older cousin effect: “Check this out.” We're becoming trusted. So far, we're growing and still have this innocence about us, like, “Wow, you like us? Thanks! This is great.” But we’re also realizing the platforms have changed, so we're creating podcasts.

We’re a collection of interesting, relatively charismatic DJs, selectors, and a team around that helping us. We’re thinking about succession and bringing in new DJs. So we’re a living thing. We’re not reliant on any celebrities. We’re open to what we’re doing and very earnest about it. We’ve been using music as a healing tool. People send us stories about how music has helped them through mental health struggles, cancer, or depression. We partner with different organizations doing that kind of work. We’re connecting on an emotional level, and that’s what keeps us going. That’s what allows us to transcend just being a radio station.

🛰️ Do you think others can learn from or replicate the success you’ve had? In Taiwan, I don’t think there’s any radio station that can have this kind of influence on music anymore.

I don’t know, not at this point, and definitely not at the level KEXP has reached, because it took a long time to get here. Instead of being part of the broadcast department, we ended up in the computer studies department. So, we became a laboratory, a test case for uncompressed music delivery, playlists, and all that, because the developers wanted something cool to work with and showcase. When the internet started to take off around 1995, that’s when you got a modem and could actually start streaming stuff. We were there at that point, in Seattle, so we were part of it from the beginning.

Like TSMC, the chip company in Taiwan, it’s always going to be ahead because it takes a long time to build a reputation and relationships. Even if you start a brand-new radio station, there’s no way to instantly build those deep connections. You can’t make new old friends. So we have that kind of established relationship. But there are ways to do this where you create a micro relationship, like a micro station. I’m personally super supportive of low-powered, micro stations that could serve a neighborhood. Instead of trying to be everything, focus on what’s going on in that neighborhood or region. How do you connect people? Then you can experiment and see what works there. But there will never be anything like the next Michael Jackson or another global phenomenon. Times have changed.

Most people don’t even know that we’re a radio station—they think we’re just a YouTube channel. And we've had some of the artists that were huge when we started streaming on YouTube. But we were there at the beginning of YouTube. So as YouTube was growing, we were growing. Those artists have come back now and have done in studios. The numbers are normal. They're not gigantic. It was just finding things as people were coming on, and we were there at the beginning.

But it was clumsy for us. We didn’t know what we were doing. It was like, “What’s YouTube? What are we even doing here?” We didn’t have the money, so we had to find volunteers with their own gear. We were just figuring stuff out. Those pretty little lights you see in our studio were basically Christmas lights and like muzzling in front of them, because we were broke. That was a cheap prop for us to do that. And in the beginning, for the first year, most bands turned us down because it wasn’t a paying gig. They’d say, “So you want me to play for cameras without an audience? What are you doing?” Now, of course, everyone wants to be on the station, on the platform.

I wouldn’t suggest anyone try to become the next KEXP; that’s not going to work. Instead, become the next thing that can be relevant to your community. I think KEXP’s sweet spot is that we’re growing into a bigger community because we’re also traveling. We’ll be in Mexico in a couple of weeks, and we’re becoming an even more global brand. So, to your question about staying relevant: it’s about knowing that there’s a particular group of people around the world who would love this, and we reach out to them. It’s not about chasing a younger audience or anything like that.

🛰️ Has KEXP faced any difficulties over the past 20 or 30 years?

Yeah. There were many times it could have gone south. You have to understand, the station was part of the University of Washington. It’s a public college that relies heavily on state funding, donations, and tuition. And here it is, with a radio station. Radio’s not blowing up. People aren't dying to be radio DJs. Other things are happening, there’s an economic downturn, and the university has to cut costs. So naturally, they look at the radio station: How many students are using it? What purpose does it serve?

So we had to form an organization, "Friends of KEXP," and get the broadcast license to ensure it wouldn’t disappear. The station we bought in San Francisco was at risk of becoming either a right-wing or religious station. We’ve also grown through weird internal politics and had to figure out how to react to things. It’s a non-profit, and we’re based in Seattle, trying to build our online presence. This requires developers, and developers make a ton of money elsewhere, so there’s constant turnover.

IV. Taking Culture to the Next Level

🛰️ KEXP's live session series has featured several Taiwanese acts, including Go Go Machine Orchestra, Elephant Gym, and Mong Tong. This series has gained global recognition among music fans. For artists aspiring to participate, could you share any criteria or tips on how they might secure this opportunity?

It depends on the DJ. We're still, as I said before, a real radio station, so they have to have a record. There has to be something interesting about them. Everybody's gonna have a different thing. We have one film crew and one engineer, Kevin Suggs, and our film crew headed by Jim Beckmann are phenomenal, but they can't work 24-7. So it has to come like, why would I want this band to come in? 

I want artists whose music reflects where they’re from and what they’re doing. We’ve done a lot with different Korean artists. K-pop is huge, fun, beautiful, but it doesn’t tell me much about Korea. it doesn't matter what the genre is—but tell me something about the history of the space. And even my first time in Taiwan, I've only been here for four days. There's so much deep history tied to the Japanese colonization, the Hakka community, the various indigenous communities here. Then you've got this diaspora and their relationship.

It's like, what is to be Taiwanese? What is that? Where does that go? I'm not a scholar in this field, but from a musical perspective, it's one of those magical things about music. When I see it—whether it's the instrumentation, the lyrics, or something else—it allows me to learn something about you in a very visceral way. It's not like you're being lectured to or reading something. It's just something that tells me something about you. The closest analogy I can make, though it's not perfect, is cuisine. Like the first time you try food from a different culture, you're learning something about it.

So that's what I'm looking for. There might be another DJ who's really into Taiwanese metal or something like that. Whatever you're doing, find the DJ who's playing music you think could work, and then you have to pitch it to them. You have to connect. They can make suggestions. There’s no bureaucracy. We're living in 2024, and it's an opportunity if there's a particular community that's underrepresented in Taiwan that you're bringing in. If it's just a bunch of Taiwanese guys rocking out, it's like, okay... but if there's a gender story or something else going on, because it's film. It's not just playing a song.

🛰️ You mentioned SAMA, and there are other projects you’re involved in. You just launched a label. Tell me more about those endeavors.

This kind of goes back to doing something for a long time and realizing I could do more. Like with anything you do, there are certain limitations in that space. You might be writing for a newspaper or magazine, and suddenly you're like, well, maybe it’s time to write a book, and then maybe it’s time to do a podcast.

I felt like it was time, but you don’t want to just leave what you’re already doing. It’s not like, "I’m done with you." You just want to expand and explore things a little more deeply in a particular space.

SAMA is a three-part story. First, I live in Seattle. It's a big city, but it's not one of the main cities in the U.S.—that’s usually New York, Chicago, or L.A. I wanted to bring artists I really care about from around the world to Seattle, for that live music experience. Because that’s still the pinnacle experience, where you’re sharing with people and building an audience.

This was during the Trump administration, a time when the country was highly politicized. There was a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric, the Muslim ban, and other things that created xenophobia and tension. But music is one of those things where, even if you don’t understand the language or culture, you just fall in love with it. At a live show, we've all experienced this like suddenly you're in love with everybody. So I thought, "Let’s see what I can do with this." We raised some money, and my great co-founder, John Goodfellow, and I set out to find artists we loved and start bringing them in.

Then COVID hit. Everything shut down. But I was still doing stuff with KEXP, and the advances in technology—cloud computing, streaming, Zoom—made me realize that, hey, I could still do this myself. Everyone was stuck at home, so I started putting on shows online. Social media and new platforms were booming, so we thought, "Let's experiment." We started doing interviews with artists from as far as the jungles of Colombia to the deserts of Mali.

Through VPNs, we could reach into countries like Iran and Iraq and actually do proper interviews, with artists performing live for us. Since we were recording in the cloud, we didn’t have to rely on a signal, which meant great quality. And suddenly, it felt like I was making television, or even cinema.

COVID waned, we started traveling a bit, and with these little cameras, I could capture cinematic-quality interviews and performances in different settings. This is growing, and it feels like the universe is pushing me—like, this is what I need to be doing: making those connections.

We learned this from KEXP—those sessions become EPKs. So we’re constantly creating opportunities for the artists we care about, helping their careers grow so they can keep making music. Then we asked ourselves: how do we get people to shows? How do we support venues willing to take a chance on these artists? Magazines used to tell you about shows, but there’s nothing quite like that online now. Platforms like Bandsintown are still fragmented.

So we launched a platform called SAMA, to help people find shows we care about in one region. We also started making films about how music heals and brings people together. SAMA is a platform experimenting with these ideas. For example, we’ve got an amazing Ukrainian artist, Mariana Kud, coming in January. We invite the Ukrainian diaspora, serve Ukrainian food, and bring in a scholar to talk about the bandura, their traditional instrument. Different communities come together, enjoy music, and learn from each other.

We’re also traveling the world, making films on how music truly changes lives. It’s a small effort, but it’s growing, and right now, it’s my main focus.

🛰️ Would you say you're more into “world music” than anything else?

I like everything. Right now, this is the most interesting to me because it’s an opportunity to learn about different cultures. I know pop music—I know how it’s made and how it’s marketed—but I want to see something new. I was at the Raohe night market yesterday, and it was amazing. There was so much there that I’d never tried before. And I want that.

🛰️ What did you have?

I had the pepper buns, a bunch of different seafood, some sausages, and honey-glazed sweet potatoes. You can't describe it, you have to be in it. I can't even explain it to my friends back home. You walk past the stinky tofu and think, "How is that even palatable?" Then you try it, and you're like, "Okay, it's good." That’s why I love this genre. It’s about learning something new.

🛰️ Does all of this connect to your background as a Polish American?

Yeah, a lot of it, obviously. I know what it's like to not be able to speak the language. I know what it's like to move to a country with a complicated relationship with the one you're from. I know what it's like to be labeled based on the politics of your home country, and having to fight against that and figure it out. So I have a lot of empathy for others in that situation. I have a deep empathy for the American experience. And yeah, of course, it influences what I do.

🛰️ What's your emotional connection to your home country?

I love it. I have dual citizenship now. It’s complicated, though, because up until the mid-90s, Poland had a draft. So once I left, if I came back, it would be like, "Here’s your gun, here’s your hat, two years in the military." So, you don’t want to go back. In some countries, you can’t come back at all, so you lose that connection.

It’s also difficult because there was a lot of nationalism. When you have a country of immigrants, they’re often ghettoized. There was a time when you had Irish ghettos, Italian ghettos, Polish ghettos. And then there were the Brahmins, the WASPs, who controlled money and everything, pitting each group against each other.

I lived in a really intense town—Boston, Dorchester. There was busing, and that was my first experience with racism. One of my first friends was an African-American kid. Suddenly, the other white kids were like, "What the hell are you doing, hanging out with this kid?" In Poland at that time, there were no black people. Poland didn’t have colonies, and no one spoke Polish in Africa, so there wasn’t any of that racial connotation. I was suddenly learning about racism and these tensions, but I couldn’t speak the language.

V. Keeping the Passion for Music Alive for a Lifetime

🛰️ Studies suggest that people's musical tastes often solidify at a certain age and I think both of us have passed that age. But as a professional in the industry, how do you maintain your curiosity and passion for discovering new music and could you share your listening habits including any special routines, equipment, or methodologies you use to filter, categorize, and take notes on new releases?

I'm lucky to work at KEXP because there are a lot of DJs who are always trying new things. I have a crew of other DJs and selectors, and we share stuff and see what’s going on.

I'm also a club DJ, and I try different things. I’ll mix familiar tracks with something new to keep the flow going. I use all the tools and technologies, like checking out new releases and staying active with the algorithms. I’m lucky to travel and discover cool stuff. I force myself to listen to new things because it’s too easy to stick with what you already like. It’s a slippery slope because then you’re not really discovering anything new.

I'm a social person, too. We have parties, people come over to the house, and not everything has to be a lesson. But I want to check things out. I’ve kind of hacked myself a bit—like, “Why do so many people like this? I’m not really into it, but I want to see what’s going on.”

I had this experience recently in Portugal with a great label called Principe Discos, which is doing the next iteration of Kuduro. This is a genre that originated in the ghettos of Lisbon from the Angolan population, then was exported like Afrobeats, which originated in London and was sent back to Nigeria and all over Africa. At first, I wasn’t really feeling it—it was raw, and they used a lot of autotune. But then I thought, okay, there’s something here. The technology is changing. Let me spend some time with it. So, I forced myself to stay in the moment and not just dismiss it.

If you like something right away, you don’t really listen to it—it gets flat pretty quickly. But if it’s challenging at first, you build a relationship with it, and it forces you to grow.

🛰️ Did you ever feel overwhelmed or like, "Wow, I just want to stop listening to new music for a while"? If I may share my experience: when I was a teenager and in my 20s, I was always curious about why people loved certain music genres that I wasn't passionate about. So, I'd buy a CD and listen to it repeatedly, hoping to develop some kind of connection or relationship with that music.

You like to torture yourself.

🛰️ I'm just curious. And somehow, I think most music, after listening to them repeatedly, I start to understand what they're about. And if I listen to enough music from the same genre, I can even begin to tell which is good and which is bad. I still recommend new music in my newsletter sometimes. I consciously listen to a lot of new music, and I record it in a database. But I don’t have time to really digest any of it. I don’t remember any of it. I’ll think, "This music sounds good," but I don’t have the same passion for it that I did when I was a teenager.

You had fewer distractions back then. You could really immerse yourself in it, and you weren’t as busy. Music became the soundtrack to everything you did. It’s just the reality—you’ve got things to do. You can’t just wander through fields listening to music. But also, being in the business gives you a different relationship with it. And when people talk about how music tastes stop evolving at a certain age, that’s a bit of a misnomer. We're lucky because we have to listen to this stuff; others don’t. They're caught up in the grind—being parents, working.

The other part is that when I was DJing four nights a week, I needed to really know my music. Each set was different, in different places and on the radio. I had to stay on top of what was happening because I was reacting to the audience, to the dance floor, or to my listeners. I needed to connect with myself through the music. It was like I had a relationship with it—it worked for me, and I worked for it. It was much more intertwined. And now, we don’t have that anymore. We're listening to podcasts, audiobooks, and conversations about what's going on. Things like KEXP, Sama, and other platforms are important because they give people the opportunity to learn more about music. But with 100,000 songs being uploaded every day, it’s overwhelming. We can’t even fully grasp what that means.

🛰️ How should I revive that passion?

It's like any practice, like meditation. You have to dedicate a chunk of time. I get so much music sent to me every day, it's numbing. But I dedicate a morning, have a cup of coffee, and tell myself, “Okay, I'm going to listen now,” because I know I'll get busier later. Allow yourself to feel it in a different way and then you’d find that passion again. It's almost like being in a long relationship.

🛰️ I think we’re more patient when we were younger. We don't have those life events anymore to make music the soundtrack of our lives. Now, you're just living day to day, and everything feels the same, so nothing stands out, neither in your life nor in the music.

It depends on the individual and also on access to music. Imagine being in prison with no music at all. Then you’re out, and it’s like, my God, more, more, new, new, new!

🛰️ It reminds me of The Shawshank Redemption, when protagonist plays music through the prison’s loudspeakers.

Yeah, it's transformative.

🛰️ Are there any current trends in the music industry that you're particularly excited about or closely following?

I'm excited and interested in a couple of things related to rediscovery. One is how streaming services have forced bands to create their own channels. Take a band like Khruangbin, for example. They put their favorite bands on their playlists, and those old bands are now touring and selling out shows. Fans of Khruangbin get to explore new music through them, like being invited into their world. So, when those old bands start getting attention, like the ones on labels like Jazz is Dead, it's amazing to see. It's not just older people discovering this music; a whole new generation is finding it through this delivery method. It's kind of like having a cool older brother, cousin, or friend introducing you to great music.

🛰️ I like that. Artists acknowledges other artists, especially those veteran artists who have influenced them. 

Yeah, it's about giving back. Sometimes it really makes a difference and changes their lives. Booking agents and festivals give them a shot, which is really important and can work out well.

The other thing I'm interested in is how government institutions and other organizations in Asia are supporting the music scene. You're seeing this in Korea, and we'll see about Taiwan. I'm curious to see how it plays out, especially as we're looking to bring some of these artists to the U.S. It's really encouraging to see this support, and now we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

The third part is just in general. I'm really curious about TikTok and how things are popping up. My daughter went to a concert with this artist named Clairo. She's one of the leaders of this genre called "sad girl rock"—you know, skinny girls singing sad songs. It's huge right now. Clairo was great, but she basically started by writing songs and posting them on YouTube, just singing. Now, she's selling out gigantic venues.

I'm super curious about how that happened. What's going on here? In the past, you'd spend a fortune on CDs that were made by record labels, who were the only ones with the resources to produce them. Now, it's wide open. I feel like there could be someone out there who will create the next big thing—something that will cross borders and become something else. There's a lot of bubbling going on.

I'm also really interested in the scene coming out of Istanbul. There's a growing scene in Johannesburg right now with Amapiano, the next iteration of Kwaito. I’m always interested in music coming out of China, and the scene in North Africa and the Middle East is fascinating too. It seems like there's this really interesting dance floor culture happening there.

🛰️ What is your impression of the culture and music from this trip?

When people think of Taiwan, they don’t really know what to think. They might think of the news about potential invasions, or think about chips and laptops. It doesn’t really have that cultural identity. That’s why it’s so important for you guys to create something that makes Taiwan a place people want to visit, giving it weight, character, and a unique feel. Right now, it’s not quite doing that.

This is what I was talking about with Korea earlier. Korea has invested in being unapologetically Korean—this is the food we eat, the games we make, the shows we produce. That cultural capital is so important. Taiwan can’t compete with Western culture head-on. But this is the way to do it—reach people like me, who have a following based on authenticity, not selling out. We’re all learning together, not like bringing in a bunch of so-called experts, like you often see in academia.

Books recommended by Darek Mazzone:

• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Music recommended by Darek Mazzone:

• In a Silent Way by Miles Davis
• Love Supreme by John Coltrane
• Pornography by The Cure