Under the pink haze of the LED lights, the gentle atmosphere enveloped the audience as if they were being held. Everyone was lying on the floor of kwia. A listening bar in Neukölln that already embodies an organic, womb-like tenderness in its décor, it was the ritual in front of them that enhanced this sense of softening even further. For her performance, the DJ Nas Tea and her creative cohorts dressed head-to-toe in white. With her head bowed down and her long, dark plaited hair, she looked pure in a way that’s rarely found in a city like Berlin. She played a blend of meandering ambient with the occasional hushed vocal behind the decks. One of her collaborators slowly lit an altar of white candles. Around me, patrons drank glasses of floral tea and closed their eyes in meditation.
The intention behind her music now is to facilitate a space for the collective to dream, to rest, and to unfurl.
Despite what her moniker may suggest, Nas Tea is anything but. She has a mellow demeanor—quick to laugh but also quick to vulnerability. (She admitted she had been feeling “a bit emo” this summer.) There’s a grounding yet lambent quality to how she exists, so much so that strangers often divulge to her their deepest secrets.
From a young age, Nas Tea encountered the unifying potential of music when her extended Iranian-German family came together during reunions to sing. In their home in Hamburg, they performed old songs from the Persian pop icon Googoosh, clapping their hands as people danced. Unsurprisingly, the intention behind her music now is to facilitate a space for the collective to dream, to rest, and to unfurl. In Nas Tea’s words, “Creating sound for me was always to want to bring people to their deeper selves and to let them feel.”
Nas Tea’s mix for Aeyde Radio goes just as deep, lulling the listener into a synesthetic state. She nods to her Middle Eastern roots with the inclusion of the plucked, reverberating melodies by Fatima Al Qadiri and DJ Plead’s hypnotic percussion. Bittersweet strings by avant-gardist Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet pay homage to Nas Tea’s classical, instrumental, and ambient influences.
"I was always doing my own sound pieces and visualizing things when I listened to a song—it was interesting how listening to music made me fantasize and have visions.”
—Nas Tea on retreating into music
Whitney Wei:
Let’s start with your music background.
Nas Tea:
I was always drawn to music. My mom always sang to us and every time, as kids, when people came over our family would always sing together. And, of course, I'm a pop culture baby, watching MTV and listening to Britney Spears and all these pop icons. Then when I got into my teen years, I was more into theater, so I was very into performance art and doing soundscapes and sound art. I was always into time-based media, but I never thought of myself as a DJ. I was always doing my own sound pieces and visualizing things when I listened to a song—it was interesting how listening to music made me fantasize and have visions.
Whitney Wei:
Could you tell me more about these sound visualizations?
Nas Tea:
I think it's connected to a higher realm. I feel like I have a vision and I can't explain it. I always had that since I can remember. I’ve always had this connection to not only myself, but to something higher that now, I call a God, but before I called it a higher self. I think I always had a vision of creating a space where people can just open their hearts and really let go. Creating sound for me was always to want to bring people to their deeper self and to let them feel. It's not always spiritual and high vibrational or whatever people say—it's also a lot about going deep and feeling yourself again.
Whitney Wei:
What was the most powerful or the most recent vision with sound that you’ve had?
Nas Tea:
One of my last visions was for this performance piece for Volksbühne. It's going to be in October [Editor’s note: Whitney Wei spoke to Nas Tea earlier in 2023 before this event took place] and we had a rehearsal and the first thing I saw was just for people with long hair, dancing in a circle, holding hands, and with mirroring choreography. The surroundings are very dark. I also had visions of what I wanted to feel, and the feeling is always mystical and mysterious and this vibe of: “I feel a little uncomfortable, but it's good.”
"kwia already invites you to be very out of the world and I wanted to enhance it. Go ahead. You're not in a typical club space. You are in a space where you can rest and be at home...”
–Nas Tea on shifting perspectives
Whitney Wei:
You also have a night at the [listening bar] kwia. Now that I know your visions center around sound, could you describe the intention behind those nights for me?
Nas Tea:
I think the intention behind the night is creating a space where people can rest and open their hearts. I want to make this space as cozy as possible by having tea that makes you feel a certain way. It’s not only all this tea's warmth, but we have ingredients, like specific flowers, that are there for grounding you or to open your heart or connect yourself. To something higher. The setting was also kind of ethereal, of course, but I think sometimes I have problems with this whole spiritual thing. But I think for me to create this I mean, kwia already invites you to be very out of the world and I wanted to enhance it. Go ahead. You're not in a typical club space. You are in a space where you can rest and be at home and maybe also zone out and dream and visualize something for yourself.
Whitney Wei:
You keep on saying opening your heart and love within the context of our conversation. Do you think that there are not enough spaces? Or why do you think it's necessary to have these very intentional spaces where people can open their hearts at all?
Nas Tea:
You can get lost in a city like Berlin and people do feel very lost. They try to find themselves in clubs and in music and this is important. I also love clubs because you can have this space of just losing yourself in music and people around you and sexuality and everything. But I think what I miss a lot are spaces where it's not about the ego and where it's not about being cool. Kwia was one of the first spaces where I felt like, whoa, there's something new happening here that I feel super connected to. And you can still lose yourself here, but it's in a space where people are connected to you in some ways. Both sides of this are super important in a city. There needs to be a balance where you can lose yourself in a process but also open your heart and see that there is more in life than just a club.
"[DJ Plead’s] Ep 'Relentless Trills' is a beautiful mesh between slow dancing and dreaming. And this track matched with my vision for a dreamy dystopian future set.”
–Nas Tea on “RT6” by DJ Plead
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