"I Was a Big Party Person": How Manda Moor Got Her Start as an Artist
Manda Moor seems to take inspiration from every corner of the globe. Growing up, her Filipino mother instilled a love for warm melodies and tribal drums. As a teen, she became enthralled by the dance-pop glitz of Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake. Most recently, a brush with the legendary dance music scenes in Chicago and New York City inspired her to become a musician.
Now a celebrated and chart-topping tech house producer and DJ, Moor got her start the way so many have before her, by being a party kid.
“I was a big party person, and that really shaped my love for electronic music,” she said in an interview with Gray Area earlier this year. In 2014, while in New York City on a student exchange program, Moor bought her first set of turntables and taught herself how to DJ. She began playing for friends and small afterparties around Manhattan before returning to Paris and working her way up the ladder. “It was all practice and just for fun. I never thought at that time that I would be an artist,” she admitted.
In 2019, she took a trip to Chicago after scoring a few big-time gigs at Amnesia in Ibiza and Rex Club in Paris. Suddenly on hallowed grounds for house music, she was able to meet with music legends like Paul Johnson and DJ Sneak.
“I’m so blessed to have them in my life. I consider them family,” Moor said. “They really really inspire me, and they inspire the whole music industry. They’re like the pillars of house music today.”
After meeting with the founding fathers, Moor describes an insatiable inspiration to produce her own music. In 2020, her debut EP, What U Want via Kaluki Musik, hit #1 on the Beatport Minimal Deep Tech chart. Now with her own record label—Mood Child, celebrated releases, and a successfully burgeoning party brand, Moor’s inspiration has truly done her well.
