Alec Lomami is an artist, producer, and curator of the No Visa dance party series, a multi-genre celebration of dance music from around the globe. These dance parties started at The Nightlight in Chapel Hill, but have expanded throughout the Triangle.
No Visa is about to celebrate its five year anniversary. 瓜神app Music reporter Brian Burns caught up with Lomami to talk about the past five years and how the dance music scene has changed in the Triangle.
This is an excerpt of an edited transcript of that conversation. You can hear the full interview by clicking the LISTEN button at the top of this post.
How would you describe a No Visa party to someone who has never been?
We like to describe it as a genre-agnostic party. A lot of parties tend to be genre specific, and we felt like we like we wanted to have a party where you can kind of throw everything in a mix and see what happened.
What are some genres you'd hear?
We've done techno, drum and bass, some hip hop, some house music, and everything in between. A lot of the stuff we鈥檝e done has been from Africa.
What inspired you to start No Visa?
We wanted to have a party that resembles us. Hence the name, No Visa. The idea was to be able to travel musically without having to necessarily leave. It's kind of your passport to explore different genres of music. It's also my personal experience. I was undocumented for quite some years, and I even spent some time in an immigration detention center, and there you had all these people from different cultures. We didn't speak the same language, but what kind of got us together was music.
No Visa is throwing a free party to celebrate their five year anniversary at in Durham on December 28th.
