LAS FLAQUITAS ARE READY TO TAKE ON THE WORLD…BUT WON’T FORGET THEIR VALUES ALONG THE WAY
Photography by Rhys Williams
“That’s why it’s good there’s three of us,” says Tatiana as she joins our Zoom call half an hour late – the result of a miscalculated time difference. “There’s always someone to pick up the pieces for the others.” She gives a cheeky, ‘forgive me’ smile to Kaila who is dialling in from somewhere else in New York. Slouched against her bedroom wall, Kaila looks as if she is face-timing a friend or family member, which, in some ways, she is. The third member of Las Flaquitas, Jess, is looking at me from the same screen as Tatiana (or Tati for short, as I soon find out), intermittently sipping an iced coffee.
Since founding their collective in May 2023, the New York-born, New York-based DJ trio, who’s ethnicities span from Dominican-Irish (Kaila), Albanian (Jess) to Black American and Slovakian (Tatiana) have grown from strength to strength. Playing six times at Paris Fashion Week this year and, more recently, landing their first-ever Boiler Room set on a line-up alongside Aliyah’s Interlude, Eli Escobar and Yaeji – it was the first ever Boiler Room any of them had been to, even as spectators.
There’s no predicting a Las Flaquitas DJ set. Transitioning from dancehall to R&B to bachata to house, the trio will take you on a journey across borders and through BPMs – the musical embodiment of their own multicultural backgrounds and upbringing. “As cliche as it sounds, I feel like we really do encompass that melting pot of New York; we’ve grown up with so many different influences and we bring them all together into one set,” says Tatty. “I think that’s why our music tastes work together; because there’s nothing we’re not opposed to,” Kaila adds. “We’re very open… as long as you can move your hips to it.”
As I chat with the girls from my bedroom in London, I soon see what they mean by picking up the pieces for each other. There is a chemistry between them that goes beyond a normal friendship; they finish each other’s sentences and exchange inside jokes with the blink of an eye. It is a chemistry that becomes all the more clear when you see the girls play. Gracefully passing the headphones to each other as they dance, the trio share the decks as if they were one, stepping in to make alterations for each other when needed.
“People always ask us how we navigate our sets, like is it 1, 1, 1, but we’ve never even had a conversation about it,” they tell me. “We’ve just known each other for a really long time.” Eleven years to be precise, since they met in the first year of high school in Manhattan. As with most friendships that last beyond teenhood, it developed out of a realisation that they had more in common with each other than with others at their school. “I felt like I had found my people,” Jess tells me.
And part of that was music. “The three of us would always be dancing together at parties, even if no one else was. You could find us by the speaker, passing the aux cord and playing songs. So learning to DJ felt like a natural progression.”
But it wouldn’t be until a joint trip to the Dominican Republic, where half of Kaila’s family is from, that Las Flaquitas was born. It was here that the girls began to play out as a trio. Having made friends with a local DJ (who they credit with putting them on to “so many new genres”), they played all around the town of Caberete where they were staying – on the beach, in bars, even at a pizza shop owned by the wife of their new friend. “I think what was so beautiful about us getting that time in DR, was that we felt no pressure, there was no New York influence, no one looking at us with judgement. So then, by the time we got back to New York, we felt comfortable to play and not have to prove anything.”
The influence this trip would have on Las Flaquitas goes far beyond the music. Not only did it give them their name (in the DR flaquitas is a colloquial term equivalent to ‘slim’ in New York and whenever the three of them would get on the back of a motorbike, the driver would refer to them all as ‘flaquis’, as if they were one single unit), but it also taught them a lot about the importance of community, a value they brought back with them to New York.
“In DR, you hear the boleros from the 1940s with the dembow being made now, so you get that timeless, cyclical nature of music, where each era flows into the next and you can't really define where something starts and where it ends. Also, the 60-year-olds are out sitting while the 8-year-olds run and down the street, and the 18-year-old girls walk around and the boys are on motos but they're always in check because the older generations are there too.” Kaila tells me. Of the three, she is the one that misses DR the most and, if it weren’t for Las Flaquitas, probably would have returned already. “I love that familial aspect of dancing and being together.”
“I want to throw a party where you have to bring your mum.” Jess chimes in. “I wanna throw a party where you have to leave your phone at home,” responds Kaila. As well as having this timeless nature in their sets, the girls hope to bring the kind of human intimacy they saw on the dancefloors in DR to their parties in New York. “It’s weird because in a way we’re overly connected to everything and everyone through our phones, but then something doesn’t happen in person anymore. I think that music and movement can help us tap back into that.”
“We want people that come to our sets to be really immersed in the sound and the music, to hear things you haven’t heard before and things you haven’t heard for a long time. A little escape from everything that’s going on in your own head and in the world,” adds Tatty. “Parts of your body hold pain and trauma, and we think that moving to music can release that, even if you don’t realise it consciously.” Jess agrees. “I hope that people who come to see us play feel relieved when they’re on the dancefloor. I hope that they don’t think about anything else – just for an hour or two.”
Grateful for all the opportunities they have been given in the past year, Las Flaquitas are looking forward to spending their summer in the city, before returning to Europe in September. “We want to play in cities we haven’t before, like London and Amsterdam. We enjoy the challenge of being in new places, learning new music and new ways of being in the world.” They have also been dipping their toes into the world of production, they tell me, promising that their music will reflect the eclecticism and diversity of their sets. “We’re not going to make music unless it’s genre-bleeding.”
Apologising again for their lateness, Tatty, Jess and Kaila leave the call at 6 pm my time, 1 pm theirs, to start preparing for their own party, Bunda, which will be taking place at Cafe Erzulie later tonight. I am confident that this will not be the last time I hear the name Las Flaquitas. Driven and passionate with a hunger to push their craft forward, Las Flaquitas are surely on the cusp of a great career. And yet I get the feeling this is not their top priority. These are DJs with their hearts in the right place; content with the privilege of doing what they love, sharing their music, and hopefully bringing a bit of joy into someone else’s life.