Miss Tacacá Cannot Afford to Stop: With seven years of DJing, the Pará-born DJ is experiencing one of the highlights of her career, yet she envisions even higher peaks.
Text and interview by Pedro Paulo Furlan.
2 PM, São Paulo. Miss Tacacá, the stage name of DJ and producer Taka Kasahara, appears on the call, with the sun illuminating her bedroom in her apartment in São Paulo. With a smile on her face, the artist begins our conversation by saying, “I love giving interviews.” After a brief exchange of introductions, I start the questions by admitting my admiration for her work, which only grew after watching her set at the Trophy Halloween party last year.
“You played a technobrega remix of 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' [a Cyndi Lauper classic], and it was the highlight of the night; your set was incredible,” I comment, to which she quickly responds, “Can you believe that I left that night feeling sad because I thought I had done a bad set? I said, ‘Oh, geez, I hated my set.’”
But that's how things work for a DJ as experienced as Miss Tacacá, with a lot of self-criticism and a desire to always present her best sound. At 25 years old, the Pará native started her DJ career at her 18th birthday party in 2017, still in Pará, and since then, she has never stopped.
“When I was 15, most of my friends were already 18, 17, and they were already going to parties and everything, and my dream was to go to parties.”
Entangled in CDJ Cables Since Childhood
Born and raised in Belém do Pará, Miss Tacacá, "the name they gave me at the parties," always had a connection to her artistic side. Growing up in a school where students studied music and performing arts, her interest started there, solidifying in an unexpected place: at the van that used to take her to school.
Instead of listening to the radio in the van, the future DJ, at 11 or 12 years old, asked her mother for a USB drive and made a large selection of songs. "I would put it on the bus and spend the entire trip to school listening to my music—I think that was the first time I was a DJ, without knowing it," Taka says.
However, with a military father and studying in a military school, her teenage years were marked by many limitations. Unable to go out much and with "an extremely regulated life," the first appearance of the ‘Miss Tacacá’ we know today happened at her aforementioned 18th birthday party, where she invited over 400 people: "I remember thinking, 'I know a lot of people, they like the music I play, so I think I'll throw a party and become a DJ.'"
In her first set, Taka didn't yet play the mix of electronic music, pop, and Pará rhythms for which she is now known. Instead, she carefully selected international songs and funk tracks that would energize any party in Belém.
"In Belém, technobrega and tecnomelody are regional musical styles, so it's something you hear everywhere, all the time, and there are specific parties for it, called 'aparelhagens'. But it's still very marginalized; it's peripheral electronic music produced for the outskirts of Belém. So, at parties, you generally didn't hear technobrega back then", the artist explains about the scene she grew up in.
Leaving home at 18, Taka moved to São Paulo, first to study advertising and then to pursue her dream of being a DJ, living with her friend, fellow DJ and producer Slim Soledad—who played an important role in convincing Miss Tacacá to adopt technobrega.
"One time, while we were cleaning the house, I started playing some technobrega and tecnomelody tracks, and she [Slim Soledad] turned to me and said, 'Girl, why don't you make a set of this? No one plays this here!'"
"Understanding the Importance of the Work I Was Doing"
After her friend's suggestion, Taka decided to create her first set of technobrega and tecnomelody, both traditional musical genres from the northern region. Combining elements of various musical styles, such as samba, forró, sertanejo, and embracing pop, technobrega merges everything with electronic beats, synthesizers, and characteristic instruments (saxophone and accordion are prominent).
For the producer, the decision to embrace these genres was not intentional or based on conveying a message; "it was, in fact, something that was already part of me." However, through her research, Miss Tacacá began to adopt technobrega and tecnomelody as a movement, dedicating herself to their recognition as electronic music and their integration into electronic music parties.
"In the beginning, it was very difficult. I only played at Brazilian-themed parties, for example, so I started advocating for technobrega and tecnomelody. This is electronic music, so why isn't it being included in electronic music parties, you know?"
Highlighting the erasure of cultural influence from the northern region, the DJ feels that "I entered the scene also to educate people's ears." As a "trans, indigenous, and fat" person, Taka points out that her unique perspective allows her to understand different ways to position herself and thus expand the reach of these rhythms.
In 2020, the artist played at the eighth anniversary of the Mamba Negra party, one of the largest spaces for LGBTQ+ and underground culture in Brazil. She says that it was at that moment that she felt many people opened their eyes to what she was doing. In front of seven thousand people, Taka brought genuine northern culture.
"What we need to do, we're already doing, which is fighting. It's like shooting in the dark; we're going, following, fighting for what we believe in, fighting for the recognition of our culture."
Technobrega, Tecnobrega, Trance, Tacacá: What's the Next Step?
"A lot of people thought what I was doing wasn't important," Miss Tacacá tells me when I ask her about performing on Boiler Room, a milestone achieved in November last year during a special stage at the Rock The Mountain festival.
However, the reality is that this was the second time the DJ was invited—she was previously scheduled to perform in 2021 at an event in São Paulo that never happened. After that cancellation, Taka was very disappointed, compounded by the "major boycott" she felt in the southeastern scene, but she "never stopped doing it."
"I don't have the possibility to stop. Regardless of whether I feel happy or tired, I can't stop."
With 7 years of experience, Miss Tacacá can confidently say she has endured "a lot of hitting a brick wall, believing a lot" before reaching her current position.
Listing important milestones so far, the DJ cites the first time she played for an audience of 9,000 people at a UNESP party in 2019, the Mamba Negra event in 2020, the Boiler Room, and the Urbeck’s festival in 2022 (her highest fee up to that point)—but she never forgets to emphasize the immense effort required.
"I'm very happy, but these are not things that make me dazzled, because only I know how much I had to work to get to these places; I even feel like crying," the artist says, adding, "I'm fighting to grow more and more, but I know nothing fell from the sky, and I know this is the result of a lot of hard work, and I know it's much harder with the body I have."
Still, for Taka, it's important to point out that "I'm not a quota," stating that she doesn't want to be recognized as "the trans DJ from the North," but for her work. Fortunately, she feels that "this is what's happening, which makes me very happy."
Always seeking to stand out for what she does, the artist is taking the first steps toward a new chapter in her journey.
"Everything is falling into place at the right time," Taka says as she tells me she is starting to produce her own music. Highlighting the machismo and even pedophilia present in some technobrega works, she decided it would be important to take things in a more authorial direction—even to enhance her sets.
"It's hard to make a set the way I do, the way I like, that I know will please the audience too. Sometimes it takes me about 3 months to create a unique 1-hour set."
When asked about the values Taka brings to the nightlife, the artist emphasizes the importance of wisdom and balance, even years after entering the scene. "With all these issues of alcohol, drugs, if you don't know how to handle it, you'll sink, so that's it, you have to keep your feet on the ground," she says.
"Learning this over time," the DJ and producer says she now sees her moments at night more as work and leaves "my crazy part for my friends at home."
Ending our conversation, Sara Jéssica, Miss Tacacá's little dog, jumps into her lap, and between petting her head, the artist pulls out a packet of rolling papers and shows that Sara has torn all the sheets. Laughing, Taka hugs the little dog and says,
"Sometimes, when I feel really tired, I remember I can't stop, I need to buy her food, my little girl."