DJ OF THE WEEK 5.7.12: MAGDA

Some people are just destined to do what they do, to accomplish certain things; it’s as if their destiny is preordained. Such is the case with the DJ known as Magda.

Magdalena Chojnacka was born in the picturesque town of Zywiec, Poland. She lived there until 1984 when her family made a major decision to move halfway across the world to the United States. Magda was all of nine years old when they landed in good ole’ Texas, where they remained until they decided to pack up and move again two years later, this time finally laying down roots in dreary Detroit, a town drastically different from the green pastures back in Poland. Despite all this moving and the drastically different environments, Magda didn’t become a lost soul trying to find her place or some sort of stability in her life she instead, quite literally in fact, found music.

This is where destiny comes in. See, as a teenager in love is prone to do, one nite Magda visited an underground party on the insistence of her boyfriend, despite the fact that it wasn’t her type of scene. Thankfully for her, and for us, Magda did go and it was there that she first discovered electronic dance music. It wasn’t long before she was working at one of the most famous record stores in town and teaching herself to rock a party on her own pair of belt driven turntables and entertaining the idea of being a DJ.

Even after Magda decided to take a shot at a career and moved to New York to study Graphic Design the allure of being a DJ had such a hold on her she couldn’t just let it go. She eventually moved back to Detroit and jumped right back into the party scene and it was at one of these parties that she was introduced to the legendary Richie Hawtin, sparking off what would be a great relationship between the two and the beginning of Magda’s rise to fame.

Magda made a name for herself as a DJ in the 90’s by touring with Hawtin as his opening act and rocking out on her own spinning at clubs, raves and everything in between. In the new millennium, Magda began to hit the studio and has since produced and remixed more than a handful of noteworthy tracks. There is ‘48 Hour Crack In Your Bass’ from the EP titled ‘Stop’. Then there is her 2010 debut album ‘From The Fallen Page’ featuring singles such as ‘Your Loved Attack’, ‘Entertainment’, ‘Doom Disco’, and more. Despite the heat these projects have garnered, its her comp CD mixes which stand out the most. ‘She’s A Dancing Machine,’ ‘Fabric 49’, ‘Trax 149, and the bootleg CD ‘Fact and Friction’. These are the types of mixes that really give listeners an idea of what Magda is capable of and that you’ll have on repeat for quite sometime.

Magda is known for her minimal house sound but, she has a way of layering her sets with a varied collection of sounds from Detroit techno to Discotech and more, that she hooks the listener before they realize what’s happened. Maybe this ability to help the listener get lost stems from the drastic changes she experienced moving as a child. Who knows I’m no psychologist, but one thing is certain, she was destined to do it.