Through music, astrology and sexuality, Reggaeton DJ Manuka Honey embodies fluidity

Words by Dalia Al-Dujaili.

It’s midnight in Utrecht. Dark red lights give the smoky room a heavy air of hedonism. The bass is reverberating through the walls and floor, and young clubbers are dancing electrically by the speakers. We’re in BASIS club and Manuka Honey–London’s favourite Reggaetonera–is playing her set for this year’s 15th Anniversary Edition of Le Guess Who? Festival.

The DJ and Producer, real name Marissa Malik, was invited to play on the back of her debut EP last year, ‘Industrial Princess’, and the performance followed her first ever Berghain set earlier in the month. Growing up in Connecticut to a Mexican mother and Pakistani father, Marissa was immersed in a world of varying sounds so that ‘fusion’ became second nature to the artist–she’s a mish-mash of supposedly conflicting identities and she embodies unpredictability. The heavy and demonic meets flirtatious feminine energy, hairy meets sexy, careful and considered meets devil-may-care. It’s what makes Manuka Honey’s act and her sound so inimitable.

She was introduced to Reggaeton at an early age, she tells me over tea the next day. “When I was younger, it was just coming to fruition in pop culture. Where I grew up there is actually a huge Puerto Rican population, and who’s Puerto Rican? Daddy Yankee, Nicky Jam, Ivy Queen–all the original Reggaetoneros and Reggaetoneras.” Walking down the street, Marissa’s ear was well attuned to the Reggaeton flowing out of the bodegas, and so the sound almost became a soundtrack to her formation as a young woman. As Marissa’s mother became a Zumba instructor, Reggaeton was a common sound in the house too.

“The lower spectrum of sound has always been really interesting to me,” Marissa continues to tell me of the sounds that inspire her sonic blueprint; “That kind of reverberation is a visceral experience and there's something about bass frequencies that are a spiritual experience for me. And I grew up playing the cello; it feels very distant now, but I feel like it's always been within me,” she says, referring to an affinity for the cello’s belly-deep reverberations. The spirituality of her music-making is not to be played down either. Marissa is a practicing astrologer (we discover we’re both Pisces) and has recently been writing horoscopes for gal-dem, but her connection with the spiritual began in childhood with a Reiki therapist for a grandmother and a Mexican Catholic family–a Catholicism which “has so much indigenous spirituality in it,” Marissa explains to me. This foundational experience and knowledge made Marissa’s mind ripe for expansion into the worlds of astrology, Tarot, magic and spirituality, which have heavily influenced the subtle messages of her music, her brand, and play out deeply into daily rituals for work and relationships.

On ‘Industrial Princess’, the self-proclaimed “nerd” is able to really show off her production skills through the four gritty tracks. The many metallic sounds like the sheathing of swords and clanging of metal take direct inspiration from her upbringing, watching her grandfather in South Texas cut bananas off a tree with a machete whilst also hinting at an adolescence spent tucked away behind a screen playing World of Warcraft and scrolling through Reddit forums. “I was like one of three brown kids at school. I was a nerd at school. No one ever asked me out. No one asked me to prom. I got zero attention from guys. From girls, I was ostracised. I would just come home, have my big headphones on Reddit and play World of Warcraft. My character was a night elf, she was so sexy.” As well as “battle sounds” she found solace in the sonic worlds of artists like Digital Mystikz and genres like Dubstep.

When the artist moved to the UK, she learnt how to DJ at workshops held in Boiler Room’s headquarters in 2018, and she’d practise at Hub16 in Dalston. But she missed Reggaeton – ”I took it for granted!” she jests. Immersed in Garage, UK Funky, Grime and British Dubstep, she soon became weary of the toxic masculinity of those scenes. Thus, she chose to become a Reggaeton DJ. “I was in every Reddit forum, on Soundcloud collecting weird sounds, finding out ‘who’s this DJ ranking in Mexico City? What’s this label?’–I dug and dug and dug, and connected to people on instagram. I was really keen.”

For Marissa, playing the Le Guess Who? Festival is “bittersweet.” On the one hand, she’s honoured to be invited to play, and on the other, there’s a part of her that feels like “white spectacle, at times.” The festival has one of the most internationally reaching programming. So while artists like Manuka Honey are deeply grateful for the recognition and the chance to play alongside 150 artists from every genre, it’s also no wonder she worries about how music made by those in the Global Majority might be exoticised or consumed exploitatively in European cities like Utrecht. Whilst progress has been made at tremendous rate with the help of festivals like this one, she rightly reminds us there’s always more to be made.

Life is a balancing act for Marissa–hosting ‘Astro Hours’ at London's female-led online radio station Foundation FM, writing horoscopes for gal-dem, and running her party SUZIO–but she’s not pressing on the brakes any time soon. “Expect me to be about in the festivals circuit next year, developing new music. Expect to be surprised at every angle…” she tells me rather cryptically, before telling me to “expect SUZIO to be loud and proud.” She also says she’s “excited by collaboration”, hinting at some more collaborative projects to come. But most importantly, Marissa breathes a sigh of relief in that she feels like she’s on an upward journey of embodiment and reclamation of power after years of lacking self-confidence. And it’s beautiful to hear her tell me, “I’m just so happy”.