Spin cycle

Sep. 13—Many of Atlanta-born Christina Swilley's older family members were Pentecostal preachers, adept at both spreading the word of the Lord and animating that message via keys on an organ or a piano.

While Swilley might not share their religious fervor, music is hardwired in the Santa Fean's soul. She heard plenty of gospel songs growing up and can trace her obsession with music to both her extended family and her father, who plays more secular-oriented instruments such as guitar and saxophone. Swilley, who's white, attended a church with a mostly Black congregation while growing up, she says, and makes clear that "the music was just better; the choir was better."

Swilley moved to New Mexico's capital city from Georgia's sprawling one with her three daughters nearly four years ago, and if her last name sounds familiar, it's probably because she performs DJ sets regularly around town. She turned to her love of music to supplement her income following a divorce, teaching herself how to operate turntables and match beats from unrelated songs so they flow together seamlessly.

She proved to have the talent and, more important, the musical knowledge.

"My dad came out, like, 16 years ago, and I feel, as a gay man born in like 1958, he just has cool taste," says the 39-year-old Swilley. "I had a little radio in my room and would listen to college radio. It was always blues and jazz. As a little kid, I was like, 'I love this.' I was 7 and hearing Robert Johnson, and I was like, 'This is my favorite thing.'"

The foundational bluesman's plaintive stylings don't work well for DJ mixes, but they helped open a young Swilley's mind to a world of musical possibilities straddling eras and continents.

"I remember having this conversation with myself when I was probably 8; I was like, 'I wonder what kind of music I like,'" she says. "I made this list and it was the Yardbirds and the Animals and Billie Holiday, stuff I still consider the best music." Swilley was 8 in the early 1990s, when hair metal still ruled the rock airwaves and grunge was an established genre.

When Swilley was about 10, she'd sneak into her then-12-year-old brother's room when he was gone and listen to his punk records.

"Before I started collecting records, when I was 7 to 12, I was just spending all my money on CDs and had stacks of jazz CDs and Beatles CDs," she says.

details

Soul Night with DJ Swilley at El Rey Court

* 8-10 p.m. the last Sunday of every month

* 1862 Cerrillos Road

* 505-982-1931; elreycourt.com

* On Instagram at @christinaswilley

Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta: Rosé All Day

* 11 a.m. September 29

* Bishop's Lodge

* 1297 Bishops Lodge Road

* Tickets at santafewineandchile.org

That interest gave way to an obsession with records, which long had been surpassed as the main format for music sale and consumption by the time Swilley was growing up in the 1990s. While outlets that sold records were still commonly referred to as record stores, compact discs were their bread and butter. Crates of musty records often could be found beneath shelves of CDs, a treasured source of obscure, old, or out-of-print music for the more sonically adventuresome.

"Records were always really cheap growing up," Swilley says. "I used to just walk into thrift stores and buy crates of records. Now I don't even think thrift stores sell records anymore."

Records, unlike streaming music, can lure listeners via eye-catching album covers. As such, crate digging offers the twin rewards of turning up hard-to-find music and introducing one to new sounds. Long before Swilley had the idea of becoming a DJ, she was building the musical vocabulary needed to be a good one.

Measured in terms of demand and audience feedback, she appears to have accomplished that goal.

"I'm doing it because I love it, but I also can't believe it works," Swilley says of her success as a DJ. "It's this chance that I took, and the thing that sets me apart is I have all my gear. I think it's cool to have a female DJ, and I'm playing records. I'm in a small town where, if you're looking for what I do, there's not a lot of other people doing it.

"I invested in all my gear, and now I can make a living and not have to pay for child care. I can cook dinner and be with them. So it's like this miracle that it worked."

Swilley has three daughters: two teenagers and a 4-year-old. After spending the first three and a half decades of her life in Atlanta, she didn't expect to be raising them in Santa Fe's sub-alpine topography.

"During the pandemic, my husband at the time got offered a job here," she says. "It just felt like the pandemic was never going to end. So I was like, 'Let's do something. Let's go somewhere.' I didn't even know what Santa Fe was. I think if you grew up in the South, nobody travels West. You go to New York, or you might go to Europe, but you don't go to the western United States. So it wasn't until recently that I had ever come out here, and we moved here without me ever having visited."

Swilley says it took a couple of years to fully adjust to her new environment.

"I love the blue sky," she says. "I love nature. I love the open spaces. I love being able to drive five minutes and just see so far. Nowhere [else] looks like this. I spend all of my time outside hiking and running in the woods."

Living in what she considers a small town compared with Atlanta, the ninth-largest metropolitan region in the U.S., means she encounters the same people repeatedly, including at gigs. Like a comedian performing different sets in the same city, she knows she can't recycle material or experiences.

"So it's a weird thing to try to come up with different sets with a few thousand records, then shuffle it and think about what makes sense and why," Swilley says. "It's a fun, weird, hard exercise."

Swilley is a fixture at El Rey Court and performs more sporadically at numerous other venues, including in Taos. She recently began DJing at weddings and corporate events as well.

While spinning records and matching beats is a different musical exercise from, say, performing on an acoustic guitar, both involve impossible-to-control variables. Swilley accepts that while most of her shows will be as high-energy as she hopes, some will not.

"I do it so often that I know that three out of every four times that I play, it's going to be the most fun of my life," she says. "It's going to be life-changing. And then one out of every four times is going to be kind of a drag."

Predicting a crowd's energy has proved to be a fool's errand. Swilley says she recently played at a wedding, despite having misgivings because "I don't play wedding music." So she didn't, instead introducing guests to a mishmash of what she describes as "super-weird music." To her surprise, the crowd loved it, and much dancing commenced.

"When people are dancing and having fun, I'm not self-conscious," Swilley says. "I get a little panicky when I feel like it's not going well. But for some reason, when I'm DJing I feel like people can't see me; I feel like I'm invisible. So it's fun because I'm kind of shy, and it's a way for me to interact and host something without having to be in it. Like, I would rather host a dinner party and not have to sit and talk, but just serve everyone."

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Music Muse: Christina Swilley's days of digging through record crates mostly are behind her. Instead, she sells fine art, books, designer goods, candles, and other merchandise at her boutique shop and gallery Collect, which she opened last month at 343 W. Manhattan Avenue. She operated a similar shop with the same name in Atlanta.

Collect is open from noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and hosts an after-hours party from 7-10 p.m. the first Friday of each month. Visit collectsantafe.org for more information.