Visual artist, DJ and cultural producer

BIO

ARTIST
Almass Badat is a visual artist. Beginning with paint, she then ventured into portrait photography, film and collage.

DJ/RADIO
Almass presents Mass Movement monthly on Voices Radio, a two-hour curated live radio show playing roots, rhythm and gems. You can also hear Almass in conversation on the What is this Behaviour? podcast, available on British Airways long-haul flights as well as Spotify and Apple Podcast. Read her DJ bio here.

CULTURAL PRODUCER
Producing, curating and creating across music, tech and art industries, Almass connects people and culture through memorable live experiences. Visit British Underground, where she produces international music and tech showcases at SXSW Austin, Folk Alliance International, WOMEX and AmericanaFest.

Almass regularly mentors developing creative professionals and is a member of the SXSW London Jury, the BRITS Voting Academy and is a member of the Soho House committee since 2017.

Notable collaborators include: Amazon MusiBarbican Centre, BBC, Boiler Room, British Council,  British Podcast Awards, DAZED, Dialled In, Dishoom, Elrow, Fender, Folk Alliance International, Glastonbury festival, ICA, Johnnie Walker, Kérastase, MacMillan Cancer Support, Netflix, NTS, SONY, Southbank Centre, SXSW Austin, SXSW London, The Science Gallery, Trippin World, V&A, We Out Here festival, WOMEX, WorldwideFM & more. 

ABOUT

EARLY LIFE

Almass Badat was born in North London to a British-Indian mother (Safirah Irani) and a Zambian-Indian father. She was raised in Lusaka, where her Gujarati-Muslim paternal grandparents migrated to and where ngoma (Zambian drums), African wildlife and Indo-African food, dress and culture shaped her formative years. While her peers were moving towards the ‘dot.com boom’, much of her childhood was spent outdoors - either in the playground her father landscaped or on road trips to Victoria Falls, Kafue National Park and Kariba Dam, opening routes for her to Zimbabwe and South Africa. Almass was nurtured by Safirah to be creative, confident and curious and by her father to be entrepreneurial, sharp and academically driven. Her early life was vibrant against the Central African landscape and shaped by second wave Indian-African migration, yet lived in the shadow of her father’s violence.

At 10 years old, Almass’s mother was rescued by the British High Commission and brought back to Hackney, London. Almass followed with her younger brothers one week later, returning to the family neighbourhood where her maternal grandparents had eventually settled, her mother had grown up and she had visited in school holidays. While her family life was fragmenting, Almass’s reintroduction to the West as a young South Asian and Muslim girl was marked by a single moment that shook the world, 9/11.

While her mother found her footing, adjusting to communal living spaces, colder weather and new cultural customs proved challenging for Almass. Almass socialised with her peers, learned about the multicultural food, language and new people that surrounded her and absorbed popular culture across hip hop, R&B, grime, garage, reggae, indie, rock and pop. Alongside this, her enrolment into evening and weekend classes at madrasa (a place of study for young Muslim children) and Safirah’s exploration of the South Asian Underground became parallel pathways into understanding British Asian identity. As her multifaceted diasporic identity became more apparent in the West, it was at the tender age of ten that she bravely began living authentically despite the lingering impact of 9/11 and feeling othered because of her Zambian upbringing and Indian Muslim roots. Almass embraced a new world: the rich warmth and bubbling streets of working-class Hackney.

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© Almass Badat 2025