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San Francisco Chronicle​

Bay Area artists turn down S.F. Boiler Room show, throw their own party instead

When Jorge Courtade first started DJing in 2016, he aspired to perform for Boiler Room, a popular online music broadcaster founded in London in 2010 and credited with bringing the underground music scene to the masses through livestreamed performances. 'In the underground, people are very mindful of how dance music fits into the global political context,' said Courtade, also known to the Bay Area's event scene as DJ Juanny. But Courtade doesn't think Boiler Room's new owners align with that ethos. So, when he was approached by Boiler Room in March to play a show in San Francisco on June 6 — after performing for them in 2022 and 2024 — he says he turned it down. Instead, Courtade joined a group of Bay Area artists and studios including DJ Fridge, Lower Grand Radio, Program SF and SafariiiCamp, to protest the show by throwing their own counter event called Bay Area Solidarity Strike. 'Our decision was primarily focused on Boiler Room's involvement in Israel and direct support for what ended up being, to me, a genocide,' Courtade said. The global underground music scene prides itself on counterculture. Some of Boiler Room's most-watched streams include Yousuke Yukimatsu, a Japanese DJ who left his construction job to pursue music after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, and Kaytranada, whose 2013 performance became a career-defining moment for the Canadian producer. That renegade spirit is what made people like Courtade fall in love with the scene and look up to places at its cutting edge like Boiler Room. But lately, the subgenre has been reckoning with the increasing ubiquity of private equity, which has been investing in everything from public utilities like water to music, sometimes to damaging effect. In January, Boiler Room was acquired by Superstruct Entertainment, whose parent company is the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. The acquisition prompted a slew of artists to withdraw from events with ties to Superstruct, citing KKR's investments in the fossil fuel industry, the defense industry, Israeli tech companies and ties to a company accused of contributing to human rights abuses in the West Bank. 'Boiler Room feels like a giant corporate entity that's still trying to masquerade as part of the underground, but it's extracting value from our positions as community members,' said DJ Fridge, also known as Benjamin Cook. 'And then that value is eventually going upstream to KKR.' Boiler Room did not respond to the Chronicle's request for comment. But since the acquisition, the entity has shared its stance via social media. KKR 'has investments that categorically do not align with our values,' Boiler Room posted on social media in March. 'We are also unable to divest because we have no say in our ownership. … We will always remain unapologetically pro-Palestine.' Cook said it's a layered situation since Boiler Room has made statements in support of Palestinians — and Cook wants to make a distinction between staff and owners. 'We want to be clear that we're not trying to bash on the employees,' Cook said. 'But you also have to recognize that when they first sold their company, they gave up that control to a … disgusting entity.' Boiler Room's San Francisco show earlier this month never came to fruition after artists refused their offers, Cook and Courtade said. Instead, the DJs helped organize a show on the same date at the workspace SafariiiCamp in Oakland, where zines and projectors detailed KKR's investments. 'We kicked Boiler Room out the Bay Area,' read a post on social media by the event's organizers, who said they raised $9,050. The funds, they say, went to artists who had dropped out of Boiler Room's event, to the Middle Eastern Children's Alliance, to eSIM cards for Gazans and to the organization Ravers for Palestine.