Beloved Palestinian Armenian DJ and producer Nanoos kicked off her solo North American tour, “Musiqa Baladi,” on April 4 with a send off at the California Clipper. The ten-city tour is an ode to the places she calls home as she makes stops in cities like Detroit, Montreal, and Los Angeles. The twenty-seven-year-old Chicago-based DJ debuted her “Musiqa Baladi” dance party at the Ramova Theatre in Bridgeport in September 2024, selling out the 280-person venue. More recently, Nanoos was featured in the Pilsen-based music platform Elevator Music—the first Arab DJ to be invited there.
This year is shaping up to contain many more firsts for Nanoos as she dives full-time into her music career. Towards the end of last year, she released music alongside Bodhi and Southsider DJ Slugo with the track ARJUUK, which blends juke, dance, and Arab sounds. Nanoos has teased future collaborations with DJ Slugo as well as with Pakistani DJ Zeemuffin.
The spring tour will end back on the South Side as Nanoos gets behind the decks at the Ramova loft once again on May 30. A year since our last conversation, the Weekly caught up with Nanoos to see what’s changed.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about your tour “Musiqa Baladi,” which is being kicked off in Chicago.
The premise of the tour is paying homage to the places that I call home through music—Detroit, Chicago, Palestine, Armenia. How am I going to showcase the music of my land with people that I love in a way that they can relate to? Club music, Chicago house music, Detroit techno music, and Arabic music. I fuse all of these things together to create subgenres of new things, where we have Arabic rhythms and melodies with Chicago music or with Detroit music, and connecting the dots for people in a way where they feel like they understand me better.
I’m trying to give my all in it. This is music that comes from people who look and think like me. And I want people to know that any music that they listen to comes from the hands of real people who go through real things.
This is a ten-city tour you’re going on as a solo DJ. How are you mentally preparing?
Honestly, I don’t feel like I’m intentionally mentally preparing. I’m physically in “go, go, go mode” so it’s been really hard, just to keep it real. It’s been really hard to even sit back and be proud. Because I should be so ecstatic. I should be so happy. And don’t get me wrong, I am, but I still need to execute. I still need to make sure that people come through the door. So I need to work really, really hard to get this done, and then when it’s done, I’ll be able to sit back.
Since the ceasefire ended and the genocide resumed, the moments of hopelessness also resumed. How are you still treading forward and doing so amid criticism for doing it through dance and music parties?
I don’t want our voices to get diminished in any light. And not all of us are going to be revolutionaries or on the front line or at the protests and the microphone, but we interrogate other people’s lives in other ways. For me, it’s the music scene. For you, it’s through journalism. We interrogate all these things in our own way.
The love has overshadowed all of that, and honestly, I’m lucky that I haven’t gotten too much to where I can’t handle…. It just goes in one ear, out the other, because I know my intention and the community behind me, they love me and they support me. And they’re people who don’t just love me as sheep, but [as] my best friends. They will clock me when I know that I’m gonna do something wrong.
What is something you’re excited to share?
In September, I’m doing my first 500-person venue at Lincoln Hall, and it’s going to be an interactive DJ party. It’s going to be like a murder mystery DJ party, where it’s going to be called, “Who Killed the DJ,” and it’s going to be a surprise lineup of out of town people. I won’t say, but they’re really cool people. They’re not gonna know who’s on the lineup, who’s gonna DJ until it’s time. No set times, no nothing. And it’s gonna be interactive.
What is your creative process like?
I have a home studio now, and it’s because I have this issue where I would have an idea, I would hear something in my head, but I didn’t have anywhere to put it because I didn’t know how to do something, or I didn’t have the equipment. So I would have to ask somebody to get in the studio. But then, by the time you get in the studio, either you forget it, you don’t have the same flow, it’s just gone!
So I built the home studio for this purpose. When I get an idea, I literally go immediately to the computer and if it’s a sound I’m thinking, I’ll run through, literally, a bunch of samples and just find something. Or I’ll listen to other music that other producers I really appreciate have made, and I look through their process. I’m an extremely “type A” person: when I sit down, I lock in. I’m afraid when I lock in I won’t even get up to drink water, it’s really bad. I don’t condone that behavior at all, but that’s kind of where I’m at because I’m a perfectionist.
What can you tell us about future collaborations?
I’m already collaborating with DJ Slugo and will collab again with DJ Slugo. I’m hitting the studio this week in Detroit with a couple of OGs here. There’s a DJ in New York, Zeemuffin, she’s a Pakistani DJ. I told her that I’m gonna send her some stuff and we’re gonna work on some stuff together. So there’s that. But honestly, as much as I love collabs, I want to focus on my own productions. Literally, on my own, just to really challenge myself.
Do you have any advice for anyone looking to pursue their creative aspirations?
I quit my nine to five and at the same time I became self managed. And like, it’s very fucking possible. It’s just like, “hHow bad do you want it?” And not to say that you need to work yourself off into oblivion but just the biggest lesson I learned was that people are there for you if you keep your heart pure. And people will help you as much as you can remain in a non-transactional relationship with them, where you help them and you love and care on them because you want to. Look at your peers and your friends and see the small talents that they have. How can I wake that up for them so they can help me too in a way?
Like for Jordan [Editor’s note: Jordan Esparza-Kelley took photos of the Friday event and is a frequent Weekly contributor], he did a little interview tour thing for me, and before, when I asked him to help me do it, he was like, “Oh, I’ll ask one of my friends to help me too.” I was like, “No, no, I asked you because I believe in you and I want you to help me. I don’t want your friend. I want you.” And he was like, “Oh, damn. Okay, I really appreciate that.” We did it, and he executed a great project, and now we’re going to work on more.
And my best friend Alexa, she designed my hair for Elevator Music, and now she wants to creatively produce more outfits and designs and hair for me. So it’s just about waking each other up and inspiring each other. I feel like that is what this tour brought to light—that you don’t need nobody except your peoples who love you.
You can check tour dates and buy tickets at djnanoos.com.
Jocelyn Martinez-Rosales is a Mexican American independent journalist from Belmont Cragin who is passionate about covering communities of color through a social justice lens. She is a senior editor at the Weekly.