Marfa Myths is an annual music festival and multidisciplinary cultural program founded in 2014 by nonprofit contemporary arts foundation Ballroom Marfa and Brooklyn-based music label Mexican Summer. With Marfa Myths, our organizations bring together a diversity of emerging and established artists and musicians to work creatively and collaboratively across music, film, and visual arts contexts. The festival is inherently embedded in the landscape of Far West Texas, and engages with Marfa’s cultural history and present-day community.

From a remote barn in Burton, Texas, a mix of 1960s Thailand funk, 1970s Persian rock, 1980s Algerian symphonia, disco, soul, and Balearic come together to form the trio known as Khruangbin. Following the release of an acclaimed second album in January 2018, their diverse fan base continues to grow, although the psychedelic band retains its distinctly Texan roots.

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The Atlanta-based rock band led by frontman Bradford Cox has undergone many incarnations since its formation in 2001. Described by the band as “ambient punk,” they also incorporate elements of noise garage rock, art rock, and elements of pop. After reconvening in 2013, Deerhunter released its latest album, Monomania, a return to their scrappy punk aesthetic and the layered and hazy vintage guitar sounds that define them.

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A pioneer in electronic music, Annette Peacock is a composer, singer, songwriter, producer, and musician who is best known for combining her vocals with one of the first Moog synthesizers in the late 1960s. She is noted for her daring lyrics and her work within avant-garde/free jazz.

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Cass McCombs is a musician and songwriter whose decade-long career has created insightful and emotional music that blends rock, folk, psychedelic, punk, and alt-country. His uniquely cracked lens of lyrical wit and singular insight led to widespread popularity with his 2016 release, Mangy Love, considered by McCombs as his most provocative and complete record yet.

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Vivien Goldman is a writer, educator, broadcaster, and post-punk musician (The Flying Lizards, Chantage). A Londoner, she has lived in Paris and now resides in New York. As a pioneering female emerging from the ferment of Britain's 1970s punky reggae party, she has taken her can-do attitude and outernational insights to journalism, books, radio, television, university teaching, multi-media lecturing, museum panel moderating, the recording studio, even (very occasionally!) the stage - and her beat goes on.

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Jon Bap is a producer/singer-songwriter who has a penchant for combining experimentation with soul - expect body moving grooves in odd-time signatures, and unique chord progressions that are molded and glued together by his soulful voice.

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Tim Hecker is a Canadian composer and sound artist whose 15-year career of intersecting noise, dissonance, and melody with digital and organic sources has produced a hybrid aesthetic of electronic abstraction and psychedelic American minimalism. In addition to releasing nine full-length albums, Hecker has also extended his talents to film and contemporary dance scoring, as well as art installations.

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John Early is a comedian and actor who currently stars as Elliott on the TBS comedy, Search Party, and whose credits also include 30 Rock, 2 Dope Queens, and Bob’s Burgers. Kate Berlant is a Los Angeles-based comedian, actress, and writer who recently appeared in the breakout film, Sorry to Bother You, as well as Duck Butter, and The Disaster Artist. The pair co-wrote and co-starred in the Vimeo miniseries, 555, and frequently perform their singular brand of comedy together on both the stage and screen.

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A singer and composer based in Cairo, Egypt, El Shazly released her debut album, AHWAR, in November 2017 to critical acclaim. Part of the blossoming underground music scene in Egypt, her sound is an amalgamation of rock, avant-garde, electronica, and traditional songs of her home country.

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OG Ron C is a Houston-based record producer, radio personality, and DJ who is the current on-air DJ for 93.7 The Beat. The Chopstars are a group of DJs and turntablists that perform chopped and screwed remixes of popular music - created by OG Ron C, the group is an homage to the late DJ Screw.

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Inspired by the sounds of South American “Chicha” music, Money Chicha is a modern translation of a subgenre known for its infectious beat, psychedelic surf guitar pyrotechnics, and indigenous-tinted melodies. Featuring members of Grupo Fantasma, and its offshoot funk outfit, Brownout, they perform fuzzed-out, reverb-drenched, and percussion-heavy versions of this classic style to both dance and listen to.

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Träd Gräs och Stenar is a Swedish rock band, originally formed in 1969, that has inspired generations of minimalist experimental music with their hypnotic, moss-fragrant psychedelic trance rock. With their latest release, Träden, the band continues to deliver mind-expanding oscillation.

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Sparked by a trip to Guinea, West Africa, Evan Shornstein combined his newly acquired knowledge of polyrhythmic percussion with his own experimentations with sampling and field recordings, to form the alias Photay. With a seamless combination of audio sources and techniques, his music balances analog and digital, along with natural and synthetic.

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Trinidad-born Neville Lawrence began performing in New York in the mid ‘80s, where he first honed his brand of DIY music. His hypnotic sounds which are self-described as a blend of pop, soul, and Caribbean flavor gained him an international following on YouTube, where he also shares his talents for fashion and video work.

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Susan Dietrich Schneider, also known as The Space Lady, is a singer and musician known for her work with space music, synth pop, and psychedelic pop since the 1980s. A beacon in the outsider music community, her highly original songs are known for their distorted and amplified sound through phase-shifters and echo units.

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Texan musician Jess Williamson achieves her artistic vision by looking inward and making spiritual discoveries. With her third album, Cosmic Wink, she exhibits an appealingly swampy, occasionally static sound that recalls Amen Dunes and Alice Coltrane, until Williamson’s voice bursts through in an ecstatic push.

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The synthesist, songwriter, and sound designer hails from the Catskill Mountains, and now currently lives in Los Angeles. Sprague retains a personal and spiritual approach to her compositions and communicates emotions with her tones as gifts to the world.

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The French-born drummer and producer is noted for his enigmatic process of layering and interweaving live music instrumentals and sound effects that blur the boundaries of both jazz and electronic. With his most recent release, the double LP Universal Beings, McCraven continues to garner widespread acclaim with his boundary-pushing improvisation.

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Josey Rebelle, a London-based DJ dubbed by Crack magazine as one of the 50 Most Exciting DJs in the World, has received worldwide recognition for her heavyweight selection, combined with her ability to impeccably blend house, techno, and disco sounds old and new. In addition to her illustrious DJ career, she has hosted a show on Rinse FM since 2011, where she shares the full spectrum of her music knowledge.

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Jerry Paper is the alias (and exaggerated version) of Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer Lucas Nathan. Paper's surreal music often deals with the existential and the ego, mixing aspects of muzak, lounge, and bossa nova to create hypnotizing sounds that demand a live audience.

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With their 1985 release, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, songwriters Jess Sah Bi and Peter One became one of the most popular musical acts in West Africa. Blending traditional Ivorian village songs with American and English country and folk-rock music, this multilingual album addressed social and political injustices and incited a cultural revolution. The album was re-released for the first time in 2018 by Awesome Tapes from Africa.

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Lisa is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, performer and composer from Houston, Texas. Trained as a classical voice/opera singer, she performs across a wide range of genres and mediums. Her work focuses on the energetic relationships between body, land, spirit and place. She uses voice, theremin, movement, improvisation, meditation and new media to explore healing in performance and living.on and new media to explore healing in performance and living.

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