The Best North African Boiler Room DJ Sets
Across the region and its diaspora, North African DJs and musicians are celebrating their musical heritage in collaboration with Boiler Room.
Boiler Room has been connecting emerging talent and local dance floors to the wider world for over a decade. Originating as a webcam taped to a wall in a London warehouse, the online music broadcaster has grown to organize parties across the globe, showcasing dance music and underground genres.
Across North Africa and its diaspora, Boiler Rooms have celebrated all types of local and international genres — from hip-hop to electronic to shaabi to gnawa — and invited listeners into a unique soundscape from Morocco to Egypt and beyond.
Listen to the best North African Boiler Rooms below:
Shamann: Boiler Room Tunis: Point Collective X Hype (Tunisia)
The first-ever Boiler Room in Tunisia was hosted in collaboration with Point Collective and Hype, two of the finest collectives keeping things underground and bass-heavy in Tunis. The party took place at Yüka, a nightclub on the coastal town of Gammarth and home to one of the biggest emerging music scenes on the Mediterranean. Fares Amara aka Shamann, a Tunisian genre-less DJ, initiated the open-air rave with a spiritual-electro-house set, mixing the Arabic instrument Oud with South American percussive beats.
Yas Meen Selectress I Boiler Room NYC: Laylit (Egypt)
Laylit, or “the night” in Arabic, is at the heart of a thriving SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) party scene in Brooklyn. They partnered up with Boiler Room for an unforgettable celebration of Arab culture and music in 2023, offering their eclectic hip-hop, folk, and electronic DJ sets, paired with live performances and drag shows, to the Boiler Room archive. This set by Egyptian DJ Yas Meen Selectress is a must-listen! She seamlessly fuses percussive beats and Egyptian influences into a soundscape that will have you jumping around your room.
Another great performance of the Laylit Boiler Room is by Egyptian rapper and songstress Felukah.
Driss Bennis I Atlas Electronic (Morocco)
Moroccan DJ Driss Bennis aka OCB aka DJ.Booth runs Casa Voyager in Casablanca, the label hell-bent on circumventing the idea that sunny places must produce sunny music. Bennis produces wiggy club music, rooted in electro and a bit of funk. This set was recorded as part of Morocco’s renowned Atlas Electronic festival which took place in the picturesque Villa Janna Ecolodge. Through borderless music, the festival encourages attendants to participate in a cross-cultural exchange of knowledge.
Kabylie Minogue I Boiler Room x Le Bikini: Toulouse (Algeria)
At Le Bikini, one of Toulouse’s most infamous clubs, Algerian French Lebanese DJ duo Kabylie Minogue (“Kylie Minogue's worst nightmare”) recorded this set which can best be described as pure joy. The energy in the room is ecstatic with North African vocals, instruments, and rhythms.
Maalem Mohamed Kouyou Boiler room Marrakech Live Performance (Morocco)
At the first edition of Boiler Room Marrakech, Maalem Mohamed Kouyou performed with his band, granting Boiler Room an incredible glimpse into gnawa, one of the world’s oldest music genres. Mixing classical Islamic Sufism with pre-Islamic African folk traditions, gnawa evokes soul healing and prayer through its slow rhythmic build-up and trance-inducing repetition of certain phrases. According to Boiler Room, this set performance is perhaps the highest-quality document of gnawa music that has been captured in its 150+ year history.
Zeina I Boiler Room x Überhaus Egypt (Egypt)
Zeina is a Cairo–based DJ and Co-founder of Unfamiliar, the only female-only rave in the city. Over the years, she has established herself as one of the most respected artists in the Egyptian underground dance music scene and the wider region, as well as a godmother for emerging female DJs. SceneNoise in 2015, referred to her as “the hardest working Egyptian female DJ” in 2023, YUNG called her “the hardest working woman in the business.” Enjoy this electronic set she played over Cairene rooftops at Boiler Room x Überhaus.
Pekodjinn I Boiler Room London: Middle Of Nowhere (Tunisia)
Middle of Nowhere is a project and party series celebrating the very best SWANA sounds from London and beyond. Their debut with Boiler Room racked up nearly four million streams on YouTube. As part of an eclectic crew, Geneva-based Tunisian producer and DJ Pekodjinn mixed his first Boiler Room set, an energetic hour of his own Maghrebian electronic Afro House music tracks and remixes. A promising artist to look out for!
Retro Cassetta I Boiler Room SYSTEM: Marrakech (Morocco)
Last month, Boiler Room joined forces with Moroccan local creative collective Somnii Culture and put on a multi-generational program of the country’s most celebrated artists and genres. Badr Haoutar aka Retro Cassette mixed a groovy set showcasing the variety of North African musical heritage which used to be mostly distributed through cassette tapes. The DJ and self-proclaimed tape addict from Casablanca uses Moroccan and North African cassettes dating as far back as the '80s and '90s to create his special sets of undiscovered shaabi, Raï, boogie, funk, disco, and rock from across the region.
Another set that impressed at Boiler Room SYSTEM: Marrakech is by DJ GJ Leith.
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