PASIFIKAFUTURISM

This playlist is my way of celebrating and documenting unique and forward-thinking music of all styles by artists of Pasifika descent (from the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia in the Pacific).

When I started making experimental electronic pop music as Lonelyspeck back in 2013-2014 I didn’t know of any other Pasifika artists doing anything even slightly similar to me. For a while I wondered if I was the only one. Over the years my work has led me to connect with some incredible Pasifika artists, in music and other disciplines, and more recently I’ve been excited about the wave of forward-thinking young Pasifika rappers, producers, singers and DJs coming out of cities like Sydney and Auckland.

So in September 2021 I decided to start trawling the internet for the most exciting and futuristic music I could find by Pacific Islanders and compiled it all into this playlist, which I made public in May 2022 and have continued to update since. I really dug to what felt like the end of the internet to find some of these gems! I’d love if they reached some new ears through this.

I hope PASIFIKAFUTURISM can be an ongoing reference point and source of inspiration to others – most of all to those emerging islander artists like my younger self who hadn’t seen much of themselves reflected back in styles beyond what is typically associated with Pasifika people. Innovators and futurists forever 🌌

— Sione, 2022

^{(Apple Music TBA!)}