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'Not for the faint of heart’: Queer underground rave Seltzer is back

Seltzer founders Precolumbian and Bearcat talk about the limits of the underground, the struggles of finding a consistent, safe venue, and the “cutest thing since Seltzer.”

DJs Precolumbian (left) and Bearcat, the founders of Seltzer.
DJs Precolumbian (left) and Bearcat, the founders of Seltzer.Read moreArie M Photos @lorbih

If you ask the founders of Seltzer what their queer underground rave sounds like, they hesitate — and then tumble into word association.

“Diasporic tribal sounds,” says Chaska Sofia, known as Precolumbian.

“Bass, experimental,” says Kerrie Ann Murphy, or Bearcat.

“Heavy. Industrial. Very loud.”

“Not for the faint of heart.”

It’s by design that their roaming party evades simple description — the DJs created it two years ago, they say, because the queer nightlife scene had gotten, um, boring — though writer Alex Smith’s description feels closest to capturing its essence:

“Certainly, there is the ever-present vogue battle beats or the syncopated rhythm and bash of Philly/Jersey club blasting out of speakers,” Smith wrote on WXPN’s The Key. “But its playlist is also informed by world music, EDM, and experimental music — like a Soundcloud autoplaying from a queer, utopian Cybertron.”

After a Philly hiatus, Seltzer is back, leaving West Philly for the first time to throw an after-party for the Trans Wellness conference Saturday at Ulana’s (205 Bainbridge St.), featuring Sofia and Murphy, as well as Chicago-based producer Ariel Zetina and Philly’s DJ Love.

Born in Peru and raised in Washington, D.C., Sofia started DJing in West Philly more than a decade ago, “when all the queers were throwing house parties," and is releasing her first EP through the label Apocalipsis this weekend. Murphy, who’s signed with Discwoman and has played at Afropunk and the Museum of Modern Art, was born in London, and used to be part of an all-women punk band before she became a DJ.

At Satellite Cafe in West Philly, where there’s a Precolumbian sticker on the bathroom sink, we talked to the Seltzer DJs, who also have a residency at the Brooklyn club Nowadays, about the limits of the underground, the struggles of finding a consistent, safe venue, and the “cutest thing since Seltzer.”

When did you start throwing parties and how did Seltzer come to be?

Precolumbian: I think I started throwing parties in ’08. I’ve always just been wanting to make queer nightlife really exciting. It felt a little homogeneous. I wanted to make spaces for queers of color.

In ’08 and ’09, I was throwing parties that had baile funk, kuduro, like all these genres from all over the world that you would never hear at a queer night back then. I feel like I’ve changed a lot of what queer nightlife in Philly sounds like. I don’t know though [laughs].

Bearcat: When I moved here, I was just very disappointed [in the nightlife]. There were a lot of really cool live punk shows but in terms of just going out and dancing, there was nothing that I felt I could connect to. Everything was a theme night, a Beyonce night, a Travis Scott night. I knew there were people here who would appreciate the sound of deconstructed club. So I was like [to Chaska], can we throw a party?

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Honestly, I always avoided throwing parties. I threw, like, one party in New York, for 4/20, and it was cute. But I like to show up and do my thing and then not have the responsibility. But I just felt like it needed to happen here, something that was deliberately for black and brown people — we don’t book white people at all — and specifically queer people, LGBTQA, whatever is in that frame. And we used to drive around and drink seltzer, so I was like, let’s call it Seltzer.

Precolumbian: We’re obsessed with seltzer.

You’re moving from a DIY warehouse space into a more traditional venue that shuts down at 2 a.m. for your next party. Why?

Bearcat: We pulled out of our last venue — the warehouse on Grays Avenue — because it just wasn’t safe anymore.

Lacquer was the first venue in the warehouse and that was just amazing. And then they left and it was taken over by a new crew. After a few months of solid parties there, I feel like other venues in the warehouse were, like, we can do parties, too. So in one weekend in the building, you would have, like, four or five parties happening.

There were a lot of cis-het-normative men. I was even sexually assaulted at my own party. Some guy came behind me and put his hand all the way up my skirt. That’s in a space that I’m creating. And a lot of people were getting robbed afterwards. It just got infiltrated so we had to pull back, you know?

We left Cousin Danny’s because the floor was going to cave in. They’ve redone their floor; I won’t take the risk. For smaller shows, it’s fine, but for us, if we bring maybe 200 people out, I don’t wanna go out like that. Safety is a really big thing especially when you’re DIY.

Seltzer is underground by design. But you’ve made moves to reach a broader audience, too.

Precolumbian: We’re in a time of hyper-visibility for queer underground stuff. And sometimes the underground can be limiting, if you want to pay people what they’re worth.

Bearcat: There’s a lot of people coming from out of town for the trans-health conference. It would be cool for them if they wanted to see other trans women [like Precolumbian and Zetina] DJing.

Precolumbian: That’s a big reason I do what I do. So that other girls can see that you don’t have to be totally passing or wearing makeup or doing all the things that are expected of women, and especially even more so of trans women. I wanna be as visible as I can so people can know that you can live past 30 and still be cute.

When I was first transitioning, I was trying to be super femme. I grew out of it. Sometimes I think about, like, oh, maybe if I wore more makeup or passed more, people would book me more or be more interested in talking to me or [in] my art. But I just try and let the art speak for itself.

I still get self-conscious about certain things, like I always shave my legs. But I try to do my own thing and to be a model for non-passing, whatever that means [laughs].

Any parties in Philly you like?

Precolumbian: All Mutable brings cute things. Do you know DJ Love? She just started this party with DJ Delish. I tell Love this all the time, I’m like, this is the cutest thing since Seltzer.