Rising Stars: Meet Jopenga of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jopenga

Hi Jopenga, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Jopenga is just us two, Andrew Durkee and Quejo Hanna Al-Shaikh. We met each other while we were studying music at CalArts up in Santa Clarita. We both have very different taste as far as what we enjoy listening to. Andrew is all over the place but really goes for experimental textural stuff. Quejo is more into pop music, she loves a really good chorus and some stacked vocal harmonies. Where we meet right in the middle is with our love of electronic music, and that’s where Jopenga really started. A few months after we met in 2021 we played a showcase at our university. It was mostly a ton of demos and rough drafts we threw together the week before, and from there we started working on our debut mixtape.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The toughest part of being independent has been finding how we fit in to the larger LA music scene. We’re a mix of a few genres and have had quite the struggle finding who we can play shows with and what venues/bookers would be open to having us. In the past year or so we’ve finally found a community, and it’s been really cool to appreciate the art of our peers and share a space with some really incredible artists.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We’re a multi-instrumentalist electronic psych-pop duo. Andrew does most of the producing since he knows his way around a studio pretty well, while Quejo is more focused on writing and performing. Every song we make is a combination of our sensibilities, we sit down and work out the flow and cadence of each work until it’s just right. Some of our pieces are traditional pop songs, others dive more into sound art and are narratives told with sonics rather than with words. Each song is very personal.

Any big plans?
For the future we’re hoping to play even more shows this year and maybe even go on tour! We’d love to finally release our debut album that we are in the process of finishing up, but we have so many ideas we’re trying to weave together, so the release date is still TBA.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jopenga?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@jopenga?si=hfx6URzcTGJlzuSb

Image Credits
Isabella O’Brien