DJ The Black Madonna on performing at Sónar festivals and making dance music accessible for all

Last June in Barcelona, Spain, The Black Madonna held court over a packed arena, ushering the 15,000-strong Sónar festival crowd into the first light of dawn with a two-hour set that blended pop, disco, acid house, jazz, rock and soul music into a seamless and uplifting mix.

Greeting a pulsating sea of arms with a “Good morning Sónar” midway through, she welcomed to the stage French house DJ and LGBTQ icon Kiddy Smile to perform as the beats hit a celebratory high. Eclectic, energetic, euphoric and, most importantly, inclusive – these are the hallmarks of one of the world’s most exciting DJs, whose real name is Marea Stamper.

Nine months later and the US-born DJ is about to grace a Sónar stage again, in Hong Kong this weekend, as she rides high after years of hard graft and sleep deprivation.

“There’s nothing quite like Sónar. It stands alone internationally,” the 41-year-old says. “Before I’d ever left America, when I was an aspiring DJ, I knew that Sónar was a place I wanted to get to someday."

Speaking over the phone as she prepared to make her first visit to Hong Kong en route to a tour in Australia, Stamper reflected on life as an international touring artist, a dream to which she had aspired since attending her first rave in the American state of Kentucky at the age of 14.

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“The great thing about this music is when you go somewhere that you don’t think is a dance music capital and put on some obscure tunes and people love it. That is really touching – to go from Japan to the Middle East to some small town in America and see people have the same visceral reaction to the same music. It makes you understand the power of dance music.”