I was the only child of a hardworking single mother; a public school teacher in LAUSD. She also worked in radio. Sound was not entertainment in our home; it was atmosphere, it was education, it was survival.

I was a latchkey kid. I spent long afternoons alone, and music became my companion. It taught me how to feel. It gave shape to emotions I didn’t yet have language for. By third grade, I was studying clarinet and ballet. Music and movement were never separate for me. They were ground forces.

My mother has been a lifelong social activist. She took me to protests before I could walk. As a Spanish and ESL teacher, she poured her heart into immigrant students navigating language barriers, poverty, fear, and extraordinary resilience. I grew up watching her advocate for families whose lives were shaped, and often destabilized, by immigration policy. ICE was never an abstract acronym in our home. It was part of the ecosystem of fear surrounding the communities my mother loved and fought for. Justice was not a theory. It was inherited.

I've been studying and playing music for as long as I can remember. For over three decades, my primary instrument has been turntables; always vinyl. I came up in the early rave scene as both a DJ and promoter. While attending Emerson College, I was half of a duo of the first female DJ’s to host an electronic music show on US radio (Radio Babylon on WERS 88.9 FM). In rooms often dominated by men, I learned how to hold space through sound. I learned that the dance floor can be a sanctuary. That rhythm can dissolve isolation. That music can gather strangers into a sacred, temporary family.

I create DJ mixes that tell stories. I build sonic journeys. I weave together the sounds that shaped me—techno, house, post-punk, hip hop, classical, dub, experimental sounds—into emotional architecture. Music and dance have always been spiritual for me. They are healing practices. They are collective rituals. They are revolutions disguised as joy.

In January 2025, when Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term, and immigration enforcement funding expanded yet again, I felt something shift in my body. This was not just a political development. It was a reminder of how easily cruelty becomes normalized. I thought about my mother’s students. I thought about families in Northeast LA. I thought about the quiet, constant anxiety that so many communities live with; the way fear seeps into daily life, shaping how people gather, speak, travel, and dream.

During a conversation with my best friend, Uli Bella, I broke down in tears. We grew up during the Reagan and Bush eras. We remember how art and music became lifelines during times of political hostility. Uli reminded me of that lineage; how culture responds when communities are under pressure.

That conversation was a turning point.

I realized I could not only cope privately. I had to build publicly. I turned to DJing because it's is how I process the world. A DJ weaves disparate voices into a shared experience. A DJ builds narrative through rhythm. A DJ refuses silence. When news cycles fragment us, and outrage exhausts us, a sonic journey forces us to stay, to feel, to move, to confront what is happening in our bodies and our communities.

Authoritarianism thrives in isolation and numbness.

Music creates pulse. Pulse creates community.

Contra-ICE was born from that understanding.

Not as a reaction, but as an intervention.

As a Chicana woman, founding this collective is also an act of authorship. Too often, women of color are asked to support movements without leading them; to organize without being visible; to be grateful for inclusion rather than claim direction. Contra-ICE is me stepping fully into the lineage I was raised in— music, protest, immigrant advocacy—and refusing to wait for permission.

The urgency is real.

We are living in a time when family separation is reduced to policy language; when detention becomes a bureaucratic procedure; when communities are expected to absorb fear quietly. If artists remain silent, cruelty becomes aesthetic background noise. It becomes normalized.

I refuse normalization.

My vision for the future is one where culture does not look away; where artists understand their power to shift narrative; where dance floors become sites of solidarity; where albums fund legal defense; where concerts double as resource hubs; where joy and resistance coexist.

Contra-ICE is not only an album. It is not only a collective. It is a cultural infrastructure built to support frontline organizations, amplify immigrant voices, and mobilize creatives who believe that love is not passive, it's organized.

Music has always been my first language.

Justice has always been my inheritance.

Contra-ICE is where those two lineages meet; urgently, unapologetically, and with LOVE OVER FEAR.

- Dali Colorado, Founder & Executive Director of Contra-ICE