International Ani Joon

Jan 18, 2021

Welcome back to Post Up Radio. We hope you’re all relaxing at home during the long weekend, but also thinking of ways that you can contribute to ending racial inequality, as Dr. King would have wanted.

This week’s very special guest is Ania Kamkar AKA International Ani Joon. She’s regularly based in LA, but hit us up from her home town of Olympia, Washington to share 15 songs from around the world. Ania works as the account manager between Spotify, Tidal, and Peloton for Caroline Distribution’s releases, so needless to say, she has excellent taste and is the mf plug. While in school, she headed up the University of Washington’s Arts & Entertainment committee, booking all types of events, and inspiring students to go out and get it.

Ania’s global mix is now live on Post Up Radio, and below we have not only an exclusive interview with her, but also a track list for the mix, which you can only find through being an incredibly loyal subscriber.

You grew up in both Memphis, and Washington state, both places with rich musical histories. Can you tell us a bit about how that’s influenced your taste?

Justin Timberlake is the GOD, his music teacher was also my sister & I’s elementary principal. From the youngest of ages *NSYNC was the band that informed my taste (still to this day) because my sister was obsessed with JC Chasez, and for me it was Timberlake. The pop & hip hop blend has always influenced me. In Memphis my parents didn’t really know what was going on with pop culture except for the radio, but they loved Shakira. My mom was super into 90s women, like Shania Twain, she just loves soft pop. Moving to Washington State, I didn’t know what grunge or alternative rock was. I didn’t know who Nirvana was until I lived in Olympia, and I didn’t know who people like Father John Misty or The Postal Service were until college. All of this alternative music & alternative rock was a part of my musical taste that hadn’t been tapped into living in the South.

Your family is also Persian, adding another element to your adolescence. Do you have any fond memories listening to Persian music growing up?

100% It has to be the Persian parties when you have company over. My mom would cook for literally 50 people every Saturday. All the parents went crazy over Persian music, it was the life of the party. everyone’s eating a lot, drinking was never really a huge part of the culture, but music was everyone’s drug. Get high on music and dance.

Your taste is global, and your mix reflects that, as you’ve included songs by artists from Spain, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, France, Iran, and more. What is it that you love so much about international music?

What I love most is that whether it’s a Persian song where they’re singing in Farsi, or a Puerto Rican artist singing in Spanish on a reggaeton or bachata song, or if it’s the German song in the mix, you don’t need to understand what they’re saying. If you played this music at a rooftop party on a midsummer night’s evening, it’s music everyone can have a good time to. It’s music to dance to, and I don’t think dance music needs to be American. Dancing, that’s the connection.

You were on the team that spearheaded Lil Baby’s first of a kind double cover on RapCaviar, what was that process like? Any fun stories?

We knew that Lil Baby was MVP artist of the year, not just for RapCaviar (where they called him MVP of the year), but he had the top selling album of 2020. Nielsen confirmed that My Turn was the highest selling album of the year, so when Lil Baby drops two singles on his birthday after not releasing music since “The Bigger Picture”, which was anthemic for not only people in Atlanta, but people around the country during a time of civil unrest, it’s gonna be big. We asked the Spotify team if we could do something with Carl Chery (who is the creative director of RapCaviar and other hip hop playlists at Spotify), suggesting that Carl interview Lil Baby. Their team took it to the next level, adding a photo shoot with Gunner Stahl. The day before the double single release, we get an approval request email from Carl, and in the email were two attachments: the cover of New Music Friday, and also the cover of RapCaviar. There were two photos. Carl added a note that this was the first time Spotify had done a double cover, and that other artists would love it and want to participate, but they wanted Lil Baby to be the first. My boss was texting me “Ania, Ania, Ania, open up your email, have you seen it yet?” and I was like “OMG, i’m in trouble.” I open up the email despite being in a company wide meeting at the time. My boss is a very supportive woman, and paused the meeting, requesting that I share my screen and show the team. It was a really good moment. It wasn’t a one person thing at all, it was a team effort to make a big splash for these two singles on Lil Baby’s birthday, previewing the follow up album of My Turn in 2021. There was no other choice, if it was a regular release, why even try?

You were the head of Arts + Entertainment at the University of Washington, what was your favorite event you got to book? Also, what was your favorite memory from a show?

My favorite thing to book was Bobby Hundreds in conversation with Nick Beeba, possibly my favorite thing to date that I’ve ever done. A lot of students walked away from the event with a newfound energy to do their own thing within an industry that they thought they couldn’t break into, and that feels like my life purpose. It felt like a microcosm of what the rest of my life could look like.

A fun memory is when Rae Sremmurd came to perform on a bill with SZA (pre CRTL) and A-Trak in 2015, and Rae Sremmurd showed up minutes before their set time asking for fried chicken and red bull. Two volunteers, and my friend Vlad and I all booked it to the food truck, got little boats of fried chicken, flooded our arms with flats of red bull, and booked it back up the stairs to the artist green room. Their bodyguard greets us saying, “y’all didn’t need to bring these boats, you could have just brought a bucket!” I remember thinking “we’re so dumb, why didn’t we think of that?” even though there were no big buckets. It was boats or nothing. We all looked at each other in that moment thinking “yeah, he’s right, but also, he’s wrong.” If Rae Sremmurd requests fried chicken, they want buckets.

Ania’s Top 10:

Music to cook to: Ty Dolla $ign (feat. Jeremih) - Dawsin’s Breek

Music to drive to: Odesza - Late Night

Music to work out to: Martin Garrix - Bouncybob

Music for being sad: Natalie Imbruglia - Torn

Music for a cocktail hour: Magdalena Bay - U Wanna Dance?

Music for the pre-game: The xx - On Hold (Jamie xx Remix)

Music to show your parents: Altin Gün

Music your parents showed you: Shakira - Laundry Service

Music to work to: - interfloat!!!

Music to Post Up to: Kllo - Walls To Build (Mall Grab Remix) / Koffee & Gunna - W

International Ani Joon’s Track List: