Time traveling, genre-jumping, everyday soundtracking.
Music
Radio Valencia
Contact
margarita@kalw.org
ABOUT MARGARITA AZUCAR
Margarita Azucar originally hails from Chicago, and became a California transplant in her teen years. Eventually she returned to the Midwest to pursue a doctoral degree in clinical psychology at the University of Michigan. She’s had brief stints in Mexico City, Jamaica, Brazil, and Paris, but spent much of the last 20 years in San Francisco.
She has a range of musical influences: her older siblings exposed her to everything from hard rock, metal, to new wave, punk, and reggae when she was a kid; the streets of Chicago brought house music and caribbean Latin American sounds; while family parties brought the rancheras, polkas, and Mexican rockabilly. She looks for lyrics and their meaning, but also appreciates the music's ability to bring about spiritual elevation.
When she isn't curating playlists (she’s evolved from mix tapes and CDs) and radio hosting, Margarita leads diversity and inclusion strategic initiatives at a local university. She spent most of her career developing trauma-informed interventions for children, youth, and families and continues to approach her DJing and work through a lens of social justice and community healing.