In Dialogue with: Family Affair
Family Affair started in June 2024 as a single fundraiser for Medical Aid Palestine. Nearly £2k raised, a run of FREE PALESTINE tees sold out, and a realisation: people were ready to turn what they do every weekend—dance, sweat, spend money—into material support for Gaza. With an ever-growing family by his side—both behind the booth and on the dance floor—Sheriff Boo expresses that music is the heartbeat of what they do.
What Showing Up Looks Like
5 parties. 28 artists. £6,000 raised. The maths is simple. What’s harder to quantify is the community that grows when a basement full of people decide that going out on a Friday can mean something beyond the night itself.
“We never planned on making this a series,” the crew admits. But after their first party at The Glove That Fits, they kept going. Because the model worked. Because the community showed up. Because the crisis didn’t stop.
So, Why the Dance Floor?
Family Affair operates from a different starting point—that gathering in a room, moving together, raising money together, is itself a form of solidarity.
Silverlining frames it like this: “It’s not dancing in spite of a genocide. It’s dancing and remembering what it is to be a human being while this is happening. And to remember love and community. “
“We have the privilege of being able to distract ourselves from what we’re seeing,” founder Sheriff Boo acknowledges.
“These parties are not built to distract, but unite in solidarity for humanity. It’s important that everyone present at the parties knows what we’re raising for, and know why we’re doing it”
“The artists who play for us are conscious, and bring their sound as a means of unifying.”
Repetition
What started as one night has become a series. Five parties so far. Two more locked in before spring. The return to venues creates a rhythm. It stops being a one-off gesture and becomes an infrastructure. A practice. A commitment.
So, what’s on next?
14.02.26
The sixth edition brings friends, old and new, together to Hackney’s most loved basement—The Glove That Fits. A night built on sound, presence and collective action, with all proceeds going to MSF for Gaza.
07.03.26
The seventh encounter sees the crew return to Venue M.O.T, inviting new hands into the circle. As always, the focus remains on gathering with purpose, this time venturing into darker and more hypnotic currents.
What it builds
“These smaller venues are often human enough to offer a reduced rate of hire, sometimes even free, which helps us maximise our funds,” the team notes. “It brings an awareness that such a place can host and support the same causes.” The Glove That Fits, Gaffe, Venue M.O.T—these aren’t massive commercial operations. They’re DIY spaces, community hubs, places where the people running them have decided that supporting Palestine fundraising is worth taking a financial hit for.
There’s a moment the Family Affair crew return to when asked about their fondest memory: sitting on the sofa at Gaffe, feet up, watching their best mates and a room full of people dancing to the final track of Secretsundaze and Silverlining’s b2b. The music was good. The room was full. The donation total was climbing. That was it. That was the thing they’d built.
Georgia, who played that night, said it clearly: “This is what community is all about. Standing up for our shared humanity has never been more important.”
Electronic music has always carried politics within it, whether it wanted to or not. Detroit techno emerging from post-industrial collapse. UK rave culture defying the Criminal Justice Act. Berlin’s clubs as sanctuary after the wall fell. Family Affair is part of that lineage—not as a grand statement, but as a practical response
The Answer?
Turn the music up. Fill the room. Raise the money. Do it again.