M
ichael Badal pulled up to DJ Club Silk Nightclub in Sacramento with his essentials – USB sticks, headphones, and ear plugs. At just seventeen, the Los Angeles native had driven nearly six hours to perform.
This became his weekend routine. While selling phones at Best Buy and taking film classes at California State University, Northridge by day, he hustled at night and on weekends to produce music, tour with world-renowned DJ’s like Tiesto, and launch his own music label.
“I saved up everything and started DJing when I was eleven years old,” Badal said, who became interested in DJing in 1998 when he saw his cousin spinning at a party.
After nine years of saving for equipment and hunting down gigs, he signed with Baroque Records in early 2007.
“The first record did well and stirred my name in the pot,” he said. “Then my cousin Zya said that we should start our own label and asked why we are giving it out to other people. I thought it was a great idea, but having never ran a label, I had no idea what marketing was or sending out promos.”
Even as he became one of the most successful Assyrian musical artists in the world, Badal’s parents had no idea how popular he was becoming.
It wasn’t until 2010 — when he was 23 years old and on the verge of his first Grammy nomination— that his mother googled him and discovered her son was a rising EDM (electronic dance music) star.
The Big Break
Badal and his cousin Zya launched Jigsaw Recordings in August 2007. Just a month later, his record “Colours” was featured on Tiesto’s Club Life radio station.
“We never actually sent the music out to Tiesto,” Badal said. “I got a call from his people and they said, ‘We want to sign you, we want you to make music with us, we want you to play with Tiesto.”
That call changed everything.
“We weren’t just messing around anymore,” he said.
Soon after, Badal was touring nationally with Tiesto while building momentum for Jigsaw Recordings. Between 2007 and 2009, the label grew into a formidable competitor, signing deadmau5, Myon, Shane 54, Matt Cerf, and Maarten Hercules. Major music publications praised the label as “developing rapidly and gaining a reputation not to be underestimated.”
But with so much focus on signing new talent, Badal and Zya struggled to find time to produce their own music.
“I was focusing so much of my attention on other people’s careers and promoting my artists that I didn’t focus on myself,” he said.
The pair put the label on hiatus at the end of 2009.
“It was a blessing in disguise because after the label went on hiatus, I stopped worrying about other people,” Badal said. “I started diving into my own career.”
Soon after in 2010, Badal was invited to join the Recording Academy as a voting member. That same year, two of his tracks landed on the Grammy ballot. His first Grammy event left a big impression: “I ran into Lady Gaga, I almost knocked her out. And I flat tired Kathy Griffin and she almost fell. I was a klutz,” he recalled.
Since that chaotic debut, Badal has been on the Grammy ballot ten times and invited back five of the past seven years.
In 2011, he and DJ Zya revived their label, this time exclusively to release their own music. That same year, Badal met popular Persian singer Andy at his cousin’s wedding.
A longtime fan, Badal mentioned a remix he had recently completed. The two began following each other on social media and soon started discussing a collaboration.
Their single, “Donya,” is set to be released early this year.
By August 2016, Badal realized he wasn’t making the music he truly wanted. Until then, he had been producing almost exclusively EMD. But after watching the documentary “Daft Punk Unchained,” he felt inspired to pivot — expanding into pop music, classical film scores, and soundtrack music.
His creative process shifted as well. Instead of building underground tracks around drum patterns, he began composing like a songwriter. His most essential tool today? The voice memos on his phone.
“I’ve got a million voice memos in my phone of me humming atrociously,” he joked. “Then when I get to my studio, I play it and try to figure out what I was singing in my head. They all have weird titles too, like ‘film score idea’ or ‘deep soundtrack.’”
Supporting the community
Badal was initially hesitant to share his artistic skills within the Assyrian community.
“I didn’t see artistic excellence pushed in our culture here in America,” Badal said. “Our Assyrian culture has such a rich history of art. Some of our artifacts are beautifully carved reliefs, and then we just discarded art as this thing that would never feed you.”
That began to change as he discovered the work of young Assyrian artsts like KSRA, Dan David, Dennis Joseph, Shamina Khangaldy, and Sargon Saadi, which helped him reconnect his craft to his community.
“We need to get Assyrian artists out there,” Badal said. “We need more people in the arts. We’ve got to get rid of this stigma that the arts are worthless.”
In the past five years, Badal has performed EDC Las Vegas twice, landed tracks on major stations like Sirius XM, had a composition considered for a Golden Globe ad, and appeared on the Grammy ballot 12 times.
After years of late-night hustling and weekend gigs, he’s finally able to support himself through his craft.
“One of the major milestones I’ve hit, which has been a blessing, is being able to create music 100% for a living,” he said. “I wake up for work and drive to my studio and make music all day.”
His second full-length album and first classical project “Seasons” releases January 26. The 12-track record was written over the past two years, and a limited-edition vinyl pressing is available for pre-order, with all proceeds benefitting F*ck Cancer and the Etuti Institute.