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During his meteoric rise as a DJ in the early 2020s, John Summit once opined that aspiring DJs focus cultivating a fan base with short-form, video-driven social media platforms. A continent away, Brazilian tech-house DJ/producer Mochakk has taken that advice to heart, and had become one of South America’s rising talents in the world of dance music.

Pedro Maia, born in Sorocaba, São Paolo, in 1999, was raised on rock and nu-metal as a child (he took up guitar lessons at the age of six), and immersed himself in hip-hop and skateboarding culture as he got older. By the time he turned 18, he was enamored with the cultures around dance parties and DJs; music production, initially a side gig when not attending fashion school, soon became the center of his world.

Maia started releasing his own tech house singles in 2017, infusing the steely rhythms of the genre with his warm affection for analog dance music and respect for a wide array of remixers past and present, from Steve “Silk” Hurley to Seth Troxler and Pete Tong. After taking that advice from Summit to heart, Mochakk began uploading videos from inside the DJ booth, where he could be seen dancing as exuberantly as his crowds. This kicked off a viral tidal wave and drew attention to both his original works (2022’s “Da Fonk” featuring Joni and 2023’s “Jealous”) as well as remixes commissioned for tracks by Diplo (“Express Yourself”), Louie Vega of Masters at Work (“Cosmic Witch”), and the Martinez Brothers (“Rizzla”). In due course, he began to book sets around the world, from DC-10 in Ibiza to Miami’s III Points Festival. ~ Mike Duquette