Sofia Kourtesis’ life story serves to remind us that the personal is the political – and vice versa. Her colourful, emotional and beautiful ride is at the heart of her debut album, the stunning ‘Madres’. Anna Cafolla quizzes the Berlin-based DJ and producer and discovers the reason for Kourtesis’ knack of telling stories that resonate. “I am a frustrated filmmaker that never made a good movie!” she reveals…

Sofia Kourtesis wants to take you on a journey with her music. But first, she has to swerve the German police. When we speak, the Peruvian, Berlin-based artist is driving home from the studio. She’s in a rush, has forgotten her passport and the authorities are close by. “But how are you?!” she says warmly, when she’s pulled up and settled, smiling with her signature red lips and all her teeth.

“Everything is beginning to get more serious,” Kourtesis says, settling in the stationary vehicle. “[Previously] I’d been careful and creative with how I shared parts of myself. With my first album, I’m giving the full spectrum. I’m sharing a lot of emotions – losing somebody, having hope again, meeting somebody and falling in love, heartbroken again, moving house again. It’s autobiographical, as I evolve to express myself in new ways.”

‘Madres’ has been two years in the making. Her expansive life so far – its tumults, tragedies and triumphs – is articulated in her vivid, whorling soundscapes. She released her debut EP, the tenacious ‘This Is It’, in 2014. And following her self-titled 2019 EP, Kourtesis has received riotous enthusiasm for shimmering, heart-on-sleeve groovers – see the EPs she released over the last three years for proof: ‘Sarita Colonia’ (2020), ‘Fresia Magdalena’ (2021) and ‘Estación Esperanza’ (2022). Her sensual sound has enraptured clubbers from Berghain to the Balearics and Barcelona’s Primavera Sound. Her fanbase has grown thanks to support sets for Caribou and Bicep. She is a deft crowd controller – watch her rousing Boiler Room set for evidence – with emotional ebbs and flows from bittersweet to beatific house. 

Kourtesis’ Glastonbury 2022 set was a turning point – hitting the deck, she got straight back up again to the roaring crowd. Wrapped in a Peruvian flag, she powered through a bombastic set: “I fall down, but your energy is keeping me up!” Playing Berghain – four times and counting – remains magical. “In German, we say ‘Ritterschlag’ – to be knighted,” she says. “I feel that hand on my shoulder when I play there. It is perfection to me.”

Yet punctuating her stratospheric rise has been intense personal strife. Kourtesis took a break from making music following her father’s death from leukaemia – the mesmeric ‘Fresia Magdalena’ was written for him. Shortly after, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She travelled often from Lima to Berlin to see her. On ‘Madres’, Kourtesis chronicles her life’s path and purpose through her relationships: her mother and father, her lovers, activists on the ground, and one surprising central figure: Peter Vajkoczy. The album track ‘Vajkoczy’ is dedicated to the in-demand neurosurgeon, who Kourtesis reached out to on social media with her music and a plea to help her mother. Vajkoczy agreed to perform a risky surgery and it was a remarkable success. Her story of enduring hope swirls through the record.

“EPs for me are chapters of my life, and this album is a decade of experience,” Kourtesis says. “I thought about what I needed to say, and what people maybe needed me to say if they’re going through things too.”

The title track is the ultimate tribute to Kourtesis’ mum. “I love her so much, and she loves this record, this painful record. It is important to have music that speaks to that.” ‘Cecilia’ recalls her mother’s work protecting South America’s Indigenous tribes. “She found beauty and pain across the country,” Kourtesis says. 

“I live with a lot of anxiety and pain, but also sweetness and hope,” she continues. “I wish I could listen to more songs about how people cope. It is something people go through very quietly. Making that a creative, musical experience feels important."

Kourtesis neatly finds the throughline between two distinctive worlds to meld in music – whether that’s her South American homeland and Germany; the protests of the street and the pulsating club or the crescendos of love and loss. It’s reflected in a life she’s had to fight for. At 15, she was caught kissing another girl in her strict religious school’s bathroom, which sent her to conversion therapy. “I was expelled so I would ‘recover’ from my Queerness,” she says. Aged 17, she absconded to Germany with her Greek passport, studying film and working in bars. 

“Moving to Germany was a liberation,” she affirms. She built upon her love of music and counterculture. As a teenager, Kourtesis adored the Smashing Pumpkins, Tupac, classic film soundtracks, Afro-Peruvian artist Susana Baca, and old Salsa bands. She fronted a punk band and “tried and failed” to be a rapper. 

“Moving to Berlin, I witnessed clubs treated like museums and institutions,” she says. She began her long relationship with the celebrated venue Funkhaus, where she still works as a curator. And alongside its industrial, heavier and new wave sounds, she found Berlin’s Queer spaces. “I felt safe to explore my Queerness,” she says. “Being unafraid to be the person that you are is beautiful, creatively freeing. I was struggling to find an apartment and doing shitty jobs, but I was able to access this thrilling otherworld.” 

She laments Berlin’s break-neck speed of gentrification, witnessed across the last decade. “It’s wrapped up in tape now,” she says. “A Silicon Valley vibe. It felt underground, spontaneous and dirty when I got here. It was so different from South America – I felt like I was in the ‘Matrix’! Even seeing people dance by themselves was so new to me. It felt communal, welcoming. You could see Kraftwerk in a tiny venue. Ben Klock and Ellen Allien would jump on the decks in DIY spaces. There was a lot of effort in creating new experiences that combined art and film, long before Instagram. You’d get a tattoo at the rave or see ballerinas dancing to techno. I think of it as an era like Andy Warhol’s Factory.” 

“I always say my heart is Peruvian, but my motor is German,” she says. “There’s a German conviction for getting things done. In South America we say: ‘Mañana, mañana!’”

Her first musical home was Stockholm-based label Studio Barnhus, which also houses Axel Boman and Kornel Kovacs. “They really believed in me when I felt like a bedroom electronic producer,” she says. She joined Ninja Tune in 2022 after releasing ‘Fresia Magdalena’, which contains the track that made many sit up and take notice of her talent, the astounding ‘La Perla’ on its Technicolour imprint. “I’m more confident opening up as a songwriter. I’m enjoying the poppy, sunshine-y sounds. They parallel my feelings – for love, dating, new ways of life. An album is a proclamation of what makes me, and what I hope to be.”

Kourtesis feels the pressure – like everything – acutely. “I’m scared!” she says. “I’ve been taking risks.” Her vocals are at their most prominent, lyrics deeply personal and political. Listeners might expect the urgent pop pressure points that ‘La Perla’ and now ‘Madres’ articulate, and while they’re present, fizzing and insistent, there’s the reach-in-your-record bag electronic and techno mainstays too. “I’ll always make those songs that DJs can bring the shutters up with,” she says. The tracks glide through twinkling piano loops and deeply melancholic, melodic basslines, to arpeggios of sparkling euphoric synths. 

The full-bodied sonics mirror Kourtesis’ sprawling narrative. ‘Estación Esperanza’ is about taking to the streets and opens with recordings of a Peruvian protest against homophobia. It traces Kourtesis’ guilt for being far from her home’s political groundswells. It’s also a collaboration with legendary French-Spanish musician Manu Chao, known for his amorphous catalogue that traverses punk, reggae, and Latin music to address immigration, poverty, and globalisation. It’s a rare partnership, but Chao was moved by a long letter Kourtesis wrote asking him to work with her. “It’s a duty to speak politically with my music,” she says, “and we share a cause.” Politics has been imbued in Kourtesis’ life – from a left-wing, politically active family, her father was a pro-bono lawyer during the disgraced Alberto Fujimori presidency period, and Kourtesis has campaigned for gender equality and abortion rights. In her music too, she preserves and celebrates Afro-Peruvian culture. For ‘El Carmen’, she travelled to meet the Ballumbrosio family and developed authentic percussion techniques with a cajón, a traditional Peruvian rhythmical instrument. It’s a vibrant community tribute.

“People are out there doing the hard work, and to represent them in political music is both a mark of respect and a privilege,” she says. “It becomes difficult for me to express this passion in English, but I find the new generation get where I am coming from. You can engage people in a different way that isn’t just Instagram captions about showing up.”

Kourtesis has cultivated a following for speaking candidly about loss, elucidating it into stark, stunning music. ‘Moving Houses’ finds her vulnerable following a huge break-up. “I thought I was going to die,” she says curtly. “It was so dramatic. I was watching so much ‘Twin Peaks’. I was eating so much chocolate.” Still, Kourtesis leads us to the hope on the horizon: ‘Si Te Portas Bonito’ is a feverish anthem of pop bliss, for “falling love with people who treat you right”.

Community abounds on the record with collaborators from Funkhaus, as well as long-time creative partners David Krasemann and Thomas Stephens. This yielding of some control is new territory, but it offers different energy and sonic possibilities. “I’ve learned bringing people into my personal universe only adds to my work,” she affirms. The ecstatic, frenetic ‘Funkhaus’ celebrates her community. And instead of relying on her previously sample heavy approach, Kourtesis created field recordings in Peru, and asked collaborators to recreate samples to make more organic sounds. 

Her evolving priorities are reflected in this reconsidered approach to production: “I was happy to lean into a chaotic, ravey musical world before,” she says. “I’m older now, and I’m conscious of focusing on what I’m expressing for people to listen. I used to let machines talk for me. It’s less about perfect drums, the right hi-hat. Now I’m talking. I’m not hiding behind an MPC.” 

“And when you work towards perfection, you can lose your authenticity,” she explains. “I’m not a native English speaker, and sometimes people would suggest collaborating with a big English-speaking artist, but I really wanted to go my own – my own honest, imperfect way.”

Kourtesis says Caribou’s Dan Snaith gave her some amusing device. “He told me you need 50% love songs and ballads, 50% bangers,” she says, “but then he said: ‘Oh, you wrote all love electronic ballad bangers’,” she laughs. “Bassy 135bpm songs about my greatest loves and family. I’m less worried about dancefloors, and now I’m more into getting the message straight. There are clubs I cannot wait to play, but I am just wanting to reach more hearts!”

Her filmmaking background is reflected in her musicianship, and the live shows will build out a cinematic production with dancers and live visuals. “Honestly, I am a frustrated filmmaker that never made a good movie!” she says. “I try to be a film director in a musical way. I love David Lynch and Pedro Almodóvar – ‘Volver’ is the movie of my life.”

Vajkoczy, her mother’s surgeon, has been another enduring force that’s buoyed her life, a lighthouse on Kourtesis’ own path. While making the album, Kourtesis would show Vajkoczy, a music lover himself, drafts and ask for his thoughts. A few months after her mother’s surgery, she took him to Berghain. “He showed me life again, so I wanted to show him mine.”

Kourtesis wants her music to connect to people similarly. “I just want to be involved in life’s journeys,” she says. “I want to take people on a journey to find and use your voice. I want to be there for having a beer – two beers! To lose themselves. I want to be the sound when they’re feeling heartbroken and be with them when they take risks in and out of love. I want my music to hold them through tough family times. No matter what age, or gender, whether a parent or child or friend.” 

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This article first appeared in issue four of Disco Pogo.

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