Juki P2 / Traxman

Juki P2 is the new solo project of Bern-based singer/songwriter Pamela Méndez.

It was born in New York, where Pamela Méndez creatively explored her newfound love for house music and Chicago footwork with producer Tim Walsh (The Stepkids, Stones Throw) even before the pandemic. Specifically, the two tried mixing pop songs with production techniques from house and Chicago footwork. It is this body of work that we finally get to hear and christen on the spot – Juki P2’s first EP!

The trip to New York was a culture shock in a positive sense for Pamela Méndez, she realized how little we here in Europe know about the importance of Black Culture as the foundation of electronic music. Méndez used the pandemic to do research in this very field. This led her to the source: To Chicago, the birthplace of House and Chicago Footwork, where she conducted interviews with various dancers and music producers* between April and September 2022. There she met Footwork legend Traxman, who soon became her mentor.

The two will open the evening together with a lecture about the emergence of house music in Chicago and the development to ghetto house and to footwork. At the same time, the various cultural currents and subgenres from New York, Chicago and Europe will be discussed. Because what is House? Is it music, club culture, a dance? Traxman argues that House is a movement that is as multi-layered as Hip Hop, with diverse disciplines, but which today has been split up or fragmented into all its different areas. Cultural Appropriation is now both: a logical consequence but perhaps also the cause of this fragmentation.

Behind Traxman, also known as Corky Strong, born Cornelius Ferguson, is a DJ and music producer from Chicago’s Westside. He took his first steps as a funk DJ in the 1980s. Through a side job at the legendary label Dance Mania, he got to know pretty much every big name in the house music scene at the time as a young DJ. Traxman is considered a co-founder of the music styles Ghettohouse, Juke and Footwork. A jazz nerd at heart, he is jokingly called the J Dilla of Chicago footwork. Traxman is known for warm sample-based but also futuristic to techno tracks that are completely sample-free. His DJ sets are a danceable trip through Chicago’s music history but also a psychedelic vision of the future.