AFEM FACES: HANNAH SYLVIE BUENING

Hannah Sylvie Buening, known artistically as HannahLuyah, is the Communications Manager at the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM), where she contributes to its mission of supporting artists and shaping the global electronic music industry. She is also a vibrant artist who transforms dance floors with her bass-driven sound. Born in New York and based in Barcelona, she is a DJ, creative director, and co-founder of the Funk It! collective. Her sets weave bass-heavy rhythms, dreamy melodies, and glitchy accents, always adapting to the crowd’s energy. Her career has already taken her to Spain, the U.S., the U.K., and Japan.

Vasil: AFEM is often described as the voice of the global electronic scene. What is your personal mission within the association?

Hannah: AFEM represents so many organizations within the electronic music ecosystem, and as Communications Manager, my mission is to unite those voices into one cohesive message. That means listening closely, finding common ground, and identifying the issues, perspectives, and changes that matter most. Through that, we can build narratives that drive not only industry change, but also wider cultural and societal shifts.

Vasil: How does AFEM help artists like you find a more sustainable environment in the industry?

Hannah: Being an artist driven by a love for music and connection, entering the music industry felt like being a small fish in a big pond. The more you learn, the more you realize how much there is to grow. Through AFEM’s educational efforts, outreach, and initiatives, I was given resources that helped me find my place within the industry. Music evolves so quickly, but thanks to AFEM’s advocacy on global platforms, I feel more confident navigating those changes and growing with them.

Vasil: What do you see as the most important topics for electronic music today, and how is AFEM working on them?

Hannah: Where to begin? The biggest recurring conversations I see surround fair artist rights and the seemingly unstoppable force that is AI. The electronic music industry literally cannot run without music, and without the artists who create it. AFEM protects our work and livelihood through the Get Played, Get Paid initiative, as well as the AI Principles, which set fair practice standards around the use of AI in music.

On a more personal level, the topics I find most important include gender equity, diverse representation, and support for live event promoters. As a queer woman in electronic music, I have not always felt safe or supported in nightlife spaces. Whether that’s being passed up for opportunities, facing discrimination or harassment in the booth or on the dancefloor, or feeling like I cannot fully express myself, it remains an ever-present current in the industry. AFEM consistently supports and amplifies these conversations, including the #MeToo movement in dance music, trans rights, and less-represented voices. There’s always more work to be done, but I’m glad to see things moving in a positive direction.

As a grassroots promoter myself, I believe live events are the backbone of electronic music culture. The music is made to be played in these communal spaces. Protecting those spaces, as well as the organizations and individuals creating them, is hugely important. In a landscape where big money is often needed to make events happen, the culture still depends on smaller local promoters to represent the scenes that drive artistic experimentation and trends. So I’m very glad to see AFEM’s recent Grassroots Promoter Good Practice Guide taking shape.

Vasil: You were born in New York but are now part of the Barcelona scene. How has this cultural shift influenced your music?

Hannah: Spending my childhood in the New York City metropolitan area greatly increased my musical appetite. You could hear every style of music, discover niche sub-genres that mixed and influenced each other, and find like-minded people to enjoy it with. At home, my mom would play samba from her native Brazil, my older sister introduced me to hip hop, friends at school showed me punk, at raves I heard dubstep and bass, and I heard sounds from every country on the streets every day.

When I moved to Barcelona, I learned much more about European electronic music culture. I quickly found a community with acid house lovers from the U.K., then the techno scene largely championed in northern Europe, and Latin-infused percussive rhythms growing in popularity along the Mediterranean. My musical knowledge grew, and my style honed in a bit. While I still take influence from many different styles in my sets, they now have more of an informed narrative that tells a story an audience can really follow along with.

Vasil: Your sets blend a wide mix of styles—from techno and electro to indie-dance and hip hop. How do you thread these together into a single energy?

Hannah: I follow mood more than anything. The feelings of the crowd, the themes within a song, certain elements of instrumentation, all speak to people more than rigid understandings of “genre.” I find that different subgenres have more in common than they do different. After all, they were all influenced by each other or branched off from one another when they were created. Finding those similarities takes listeners on a journey that might be a little bit out of their “comfort zone.” It’s fun to show people the possibilities, and I love when people tell me after a set that the music I played widened their understanding of what electronic music could be.

Vasil: When preparing a set, do you plan its structure in advance, or do you let improvisation and the crowd lead the way?

Hannah: I lead with improvisation. I do take a bit of time before the event to set a playlist of songs that I think might work in the session. This is based on what I know about the event or recent songs I’ve found that I feel inspired to share. But I don’t plan their order, and making the playlist doesn’t even mean I’ll play any of those tunes. It’s more of a comfort feeling, that if I need a song to pull quickly, I’ve got a specially curated list ready. There’ve been times where that list was very helpful, and other times when I didn’t use it at all.

Organizing my overall collection is the most helpful thing. Knowing that I can draw on different folders for different moods or genres allows me to feel the vibe of the crowd and quickly find a track to match. Some of my most used folders as of late have been those based on feelings or moments. Some folder titles include “cyberpunk,” “weird tropical,” and “video game.” More recently I even started organizing them by animals, which has been fun. I have one folder just with songs that remind me of a shark, for example.

Vasil: Beyond DJing, you’re also a creative director. How does this role change the way you experience the music scene?

Hannah: It allows me to see the full picture of what an event, musician or organization offers. How do they communicate their identity? What are their values? Who are their audiences? It’s easier for me to connect with the essence of what they do. If I feel the passion or motivation behind a project, I’m more likely to engage with it and recommend it. I think everyone feels this subconsciously without realizing it; I’m just able to analyze it and put an explanation to that feeling.

All creativity is interlinked, especially in the modern music industry. It’s not only about creating a great track, it’s also how you share it with the world: how does it sit with your general collection, what cover art you use, what the communication campaigns look like, what is the brand image of the artist, what kind of merch do they have, how audiences see themselves reflected in the storytelling. You get enveloped into the world of that creator, which is very special. And in a realistic sense, it creates fandom loyalty that leads to greater sales, cultural movements, and human connection.

Vasil: You co-run the Funk It! collective in Barcelona. What is its mission, and how does it fit into the local scene?

Hannah: Funk It! largely started as an accident; my partner and I were given a bimonthly residency at a beach bar just outside the Barcelona airport right as the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions were easing up. The people who flocked to the event, as well as the seaside location itself, created the mission: freedom. It’s about letting yourself go and being in the moment, having that safety to just be yourself fully and really be with the music, in whatever way that means to you. It doesn’t have any pretenses and in that way it’s very open.

Barcelona’s musical scene can feel very segmented, made up of different nationalities or groups that “stick to their own.” It can feel hard to enter into a music community, to know what underground events are happening unless you’re part of a crowd. So creating a welcoming space at Funk It! was very important to me. Locally, it’s known for being a point of connection between many different groups. It’s very much a melting pot, and in that way quite quirky. We get the best of everything, I think, and there’s a feeling of entering an old-school house party. It’s the kind of place you can go alone and make new friends, and lose yourself on the dancefloor.

Vasil: You’ve already played in Japan, the U.K., Spain, and the U.S. How do the energies of the dancefloor differ in these places?

Hannah: Of course this depends very much on the specific places where I’ve DJed, which are largely underground smaller venues. To put things very generally:

In the U.K., people go a bit mental. They are loud and excited, and they know what it really means to let loose. The party culture there makes people very friendly and animated.

In Japan, they take going wild to a different level. By day, the culture is quite restrictive, but by night, people can be who they want to be. At the club, that means they really go crazy.

In the U.S., it’s fun because you can really play a lot of different styles and people are quite receptive. They are as involved in the musical scene as the music itself: they want to participate in the culture of it, not just dance to it.

In Spain, late nights rule. People go out late, stay out late, and after-parties are where it’s at. Be warned though: they love a chat. You’ll find half the people in the smoking area and the other half talking on the dancefloor.

Vasil: Where do you see yourself and your sound in the coming years—as an artist and as part of the AFEM community?

Hannah: As for myself, I definitely see more international gigs in my future. I want to experience many different types of dancefloor environments: different countries, different sizes of dancefloor, different contexts, be it at festivals, in nature, or clubs of all sizes.

I’m also beginning my journey of production, largely starting with remixes that I can play out in sets but also making my own original tunes. I have something inside me that I want to express, and instrumentation is a big part of that for me.

I definitely see my artistic side meeting my place within the “behind the scenes” work that I do in the industry, of which my work at AFEM is a big part. I want to advocate for artists and our scene at large, and better connect my past experience working in policy with my current work in music. I envision that involving getting more involved in initiatives and research, which can be used to affect larger structural change at an industry and (perhaps even) governmental level.

Interview conducted by Vasil Ivanov - The Editor