El Corazon (Future Nostalgia)

Atiyyah Khan is a DJ, record collector, cratedigger and music journalist from Johannesburg, now based in Cape Town. Her love for music was nurtured through years of writing about South African sounds and learning through listening.

She started collecting records more seriously when co-founding music collective Future Nostalgia in 2013, with a few other music lovers, to come together and listen. The collective is a platform to bring ‘collectors, selectors, deejays, and diggers’ together and has hosted events all over South Africa and beyond.

Outside of writing and DJing, Atiyyah worked as a sound artist and toured extensively abroad with Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire; experimented with zine-making; hosted radio shows on WorldwideFM (UK) and J-Wave (Japan) and frequently works on podcasts, sonic lectures and other sound work.

Atiyyah believes the best part about music is getting to share it with others. Her sets as DJ El Corazon (the heart), dig deep into her record collection to weave in sounds including jazz, African and Latin groove, middle eastern rhythms, dub, reggae, Gnawa, cumbia, taarab, soul, funk and beyond. Her sets explore music beyond boundaries and form connections that conjure up a curiosity in the possibility of sound.