Leah Culver: Creating Light

Leah Culver, electronic music artist, DJ, producer, and visual artist:

I'm willing to cover. I produce music, songwrite, sing, and play shows, make art and all around just have a good time.

In the last three years, I've made so much music, so much new music, that I've been releasing with Monstercat. You should check out all the artists on Monstercat. Monstercat is a label from Canada. They are the nicest, most amazing people ever. They have been so supportive and incredible with my releases. We started with Won't Stop, Call My Name, and then moved on to Give It All in October, which I just released.

It's been so cool to get that kind of support. I feel so proud. You always have to ask yourself what everyone's intentions are and just try to protect yourself, because I think at the end of the day, you will be the only one to protect yourself.

We are releasing every month and now we're doing like bimonthly. So we have so much music to release with them in this coming year, which I'm so excited about. Most of these songs are about things we've also been discussing, like the passing of Harrison. I'm grateful for this experience because it gets us to the point we are at and where we're supposed to be.

I can see personally in the places that were the hardest or the scariest or the most painful, that it got me exactly where I'm supposed to be, which is to the most resilient form I've ever been in my life. And that's just something that you can't take away from people. It's insane the things that have happened since we started this documentary.

[On growing up in Atlanta:]

I was born in Northside Hospital in Atlanta. I grew up in Gwinnett. I think growing up in Atlanta in general was a really good experience. Everything was such a melting pot. I'm really grateful for that. My mom raised me to love everybody.

I have two brothers. The oldest brother played drums all growing up and was in bands. And then my middle brother is a DJ. So growing up in my musical family, as the youngest, all I ever wanted to do is hang out with the bigger kids, and they were always making music, so I was always kind of like the little sister on the beat-up couch with my brothers playing in their band, watching my middle brother scratch on his turntables. I'd sneak in there when I was like 6 or 7 and play on them. If you caught me, I was dead. But they had a huge influence on my want to create music.

[On how she became a DJ:]

I fell into DJing, actually. It's a funny weird story. I was working for a rave company — barely working for it, I mean, like sending emails and partying as a young kid, really. So my friend who was running it said, "There's no female DJs in Atlanta." I'm like, "I'm a female DJ." And he's like, "Really?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he's like, "You're booked." It was just a joke. It was just a joke. And then I learned how to DJ like that week. There were like four days before the show.

[On the music production school Icon Collective:]

There's really no school for music producers that have an emphasis on being an artist. They're not trying to get a job somewhere else in the industry working on someone else's music. So Icon has a program that really empowers students to learn the skills they need and the business know-how to take this on as a career, but all with the artist mentality as the focus.

The curriculum really has four angles to it. The first being the technical side — understanding your DAW, mixing, mastering, recording, synthesis, sound design. The second is the musical side: music theory, harmony, arrangement, keyboard technique. We have like the campfire test — if a song can't stand alone on just piano or guitar in a small room without the lasers shooting off behind you, you need to work on it a little more. The third angle is the business side: where is money being made, how has the industry worked, where is it going. The fourth, probably the most important, is the creative side — a class called the Art of Flow, where they take away all technology, no phones, laptops. They really dive into the headspace of what it means to be an artist.

They bring in people for Q&As — artists like Getter, Borgore — and they tend to bring in EDM-type people because the students tend to be more EDM driven. The songwriter class was great for me, and I've been writing songs forever. I wish I had done it sooner.

[On music as painting:]

I do a lot of sampling and resampling and audio effects. It's like painting, really. It's like painting sound. I paint. Some colors are brighter, some sounds are brighter, more tinny. Some purples are more deep, like the lower sounds are a little more deep. You have all this space on a canvas. Your drums are usually pretty center. You try to have balance, and you do the same thing in composing music as you do a painting. You choose your colors, you choose your sounds. You want it to be aesthetic, you want it to sound good.

[On her art and street murals in Atlanta:]

So for me, art is just as important as music. I spend a lot of time when I'm not making music, painting. Some of that is spray painting. I love the art scene here in Atlanta. They do this really cool thing called Free Art Friday. You paint things and you drop them in locations and hashtag it, and then somebody can come get some free art. It's kind of cool because it's another way to get back some light into the world.

I tend to draw faces and paint faces. I usually do them bald, and it's kind of against beauty standards. But I also put like big lips and small noses and big eyes, long lashes, perfect brows. That's just kind of what society expects of women nowadays.

[Leah performing, introducing a song at a live show:]

My name is Leah Culver, and tonight's a special night. Let's have a good time together. Let's go.

[On Imagine Music Festival in Atlanta:]

Imagine Festival is always really fun for me because every single year I want to one-up what I did the previous year. Imagine Music Festival is a three-day music festival. We grew from being an inner city music festival to now a three, sometimes four, day festival with camping. We've had Leah play the main stage at Imagine every year for six years now. She's great and she really deserves it.

[On the pandemic and writing through it:]

I focused on writing a lot of new music in that time, almost like chronically writing. I was writing every single day, whether it be just by myself or my guitarist Lance would get on Zoom with me sometimes. We would decide what we're feeling. These could be songs for me or for other people — we were just writing, like 30 songs or more. Every year I go into this phase where I write like two albums worth of music.

[On grieving the loss of her brother John:]

I think I'm kind of there again a little bit because, as many people know, my brother passed away some months ago.

John, John inspired me to no end, starting from when I was five. He put my hands on the decks. Both of my brothers are so musical. I wouldn't be, we wouldn't be here without John. He was my biggest supporter.

One of the things I learned from John is how to not take things too seriously, how to make jokes, how to make something that's hard fun, and push through things that are hard, and work hard. He would kind of push me up, but also pull at me to remind me — don't ever get too comfortable, you can always be better, you can always improve.

John was a huge part of the Atlanta EDM scene. When I first came into the Atlanta EDM scene, no one knew who I was, but everyone knew who John was. He always showed up, and he taught me how to be a strong person.

Any time I would get down on myself, he wouldn't let me sit down too long. He'd just remind me — don't sit down there too long. No time. You got to stand up and run.

John died too young. He died trying. He was fighting a lot of things, and he tried. John is the reason I'm here, hands down, as far as inspiring me to start wanting to be this.

[Closing reflection:]

I'm definitely in shock. I'm no newbie to grief. But I'm the happiest I've ever been right now. Also, it's crazy, because I'm making the best music I've ever made.

I hope that if anyone feels stuck, they will just take inventory in their life and ask themselves what makes them happy and what doesn't, and who makes them happy and what doesn't, and just make the changes you need to make. Because I'm pretty sure the only thing that matters is physical action, making the changes you need to make to move forward. And no one's going to come do it for you. If you don't like something, change it. If you don't change it, you didn't try hard enough — is what John would say.

I hope that seeing this documentary and watching all of this helps somebody know that you can get through it. We're on this little spinning rock together. And the least I can do is make art and try to create a place with anyone I interact with that is safe and feels good.