On Her Garifuna Upbringing:
Both in her South Bronx home and back in her family's lands in La Buga and Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, Kaysy Gotay, aka DJ Young Wavy Fox, was surrounded by Garifuna culture and clear on how this shaped her identity. "That's all I knew of myself to be. I never knew of myself to be anything else," she told POPSUGAR. "My parents and my family made it very clear that I am a Garifuna woman living in America."
Her awareness of self was also rooted in her family's lineage and spiritual practices. Spiritual leaders, like her uncles Mariano and Carlos Gotay, were her introduction to the power of ancestral connection and how Garifuna spiritual practices have sustained the community in times of transition, resilience, and joy. "I'm very blessed to say, till this day, I know my ancestors by name."
On Preserving Garifunaidad:
The 31-year-old creative and entrepreneur unapologetically infuses her culture into her sets when she spins, but she's continuing to step further into her cultural work. Gotay has been working for the last three years on a documentary and photo series on Garifuna culture, titled Garifuna Nuguya: The Presence of Blackness in Guatemala. While the Garinagu origin story becomes more known, Gotay is unpacking the historical accounts that've been documented to date, while interviewing scholars such as Belizean-Garifuna historian Dr. Theodore Aranda.
"A lot of our history has been removed from us. It's not our fault that we don't know all this stuff about our culture . . . But we can help each other put the pieces together."
