Latin music is having a moment in Atlanta—and DJ B. Bruja is riding the wave

On a muggy Thursday in June—as the FIFA World Cup kicked off, and Atlanta’s passion for football reached a fever pitch—Ana-Frida Herrera headed downtown to Centennial Olympic Park. She wasn’t just there to join the fun, though: Ana-Frida, better known as DJ B.Bruja, was there to create the fun, spinning tracks for hundreds of people who’d gathered for a party timed to the opening game, which pitted Mexico against South Africa. The crowd that day mostly  supported Mexico, which is where Ana-Frida’s mother is from—so she leaned on Mexican genres like corridos, rancheras, and banda. 

“It felt like playing at a family party,” she said recently. “The energy was really high.” 

DJ B.Bruja is one member of a growing community of new Latin DJs making a name for themselves in Atlanta, and riding a wave of burgeoning enthusiasm for Latin music. That music scene has been going strong especially since the 2018 launch of OYE Fest, which brings together Latin and international artists for an annual one-day block party. The festival has also offered a way for artists to connect with one another and help each other out: OYE co-founders Margarita Ríos and Randall Ruiz (DJ Florista) Ana-Frida said, helped her get DJing opportunities in venues she may not have been able to get into by herself. 

Growing up in a predominantly immigrant community in Orange County, California—and with two immigrant parents; her father is from Cuba—Ana-Frida immersed herself in all kinds of music, from Lana Del Rey to West Coast rap to salsa and cumbia. In high school, she’d create playlists that were over 20 hours long and then rearrange them for house parties depending on the vibe. Around the fall of 2019, she moved to Atlanta to study art history at Emory University—where her tastes continued to expand to include more international music, like Afrobeat and dancehall. She also found a convivial group of friends and DJs here—so, when she graduated in 2024, she decided to stay.

That’s also when she started pursuing DJing more seriously.  “People always told me I should be a DJ, and then actually right after I graduated, I found a pair of turntables on Facebook Marketplace really cheap,” she said. “That’s kind of how I started.”

In late 2024, Ana-Frida landed her first official DJing gig, opening at the Reynoldstown cocktail bar El Malo for DJ Gia Fu, who was known for playing salsa on vinyl—something Ana-Frida was also doing at the time. That opened doors for her, and she found herself spinning records at more and more events. “I was still a pretty new DJ, so I had to really lock in,” she said. At the time, she still had a job at a restaurant, so she was working full-time during the day, while playing at night at bars, clubs, and restaurants. In the past year, things have really kicked into high gear, and Ana-Frida has been able to leave other work behind to focus on music full-time. 

One of DJ B.Bruja’s first big events, which also took place at El Malo, was a party last September for Mexican Independence Day. This summer, she herself played OYE Fest for the second consecutive year. She said she’s found that people have been getting increasingly excited when she plays Latin music, no matter who’s in the crowd—a development she credits to Bad Bunny’s performance during the halftime show at the February 2026 Super Bowl. “I think that has made people more open to listening to reggaeton and Latin sounds,” she said. Almost entirely in Spanish—unprecedented for the U.S.’s biggest annual sporting and television event—Bad Bunny’s performance attracted around 128 million views globally. Since then, requests to play Latin music have increased, she said. 

Ana-Frida’s love for music extends beyond the DJ booth: In addition to spinning tracks, she also likes to incorporate music with other art forms, like photography, and she likes to support the work of other artisans—all of which she does under the guide of her event production company, Callejera. “Doing Callejera was a way to mix a lot of my other interests beyond just DJing,” she said. “I love DJing, but I also love creative direction and other kinds of art, so Callejera gave me the chance to do a little bit of everything in one event.” 

Her regular event Mango Juice, for instance, is billed toward fans of Latin, African, and Caribbean music. “I noticed that my friends who were African wanted to hear Latin music, and friends who were Latino wanted to hear African and Caribbean music, so it was a way for me to bring the different kinds of music together,” she said. At each one of her events, she tries to represent multiple genres of Latin culture—from the Cuban American singer Celia Cruz to Colombian Salsa’s Grupo Niche and the Mexican band Grupo Kual. 

She also tries to find ways to give back to the community. Another regular event she organizes is Café con Cumbia, a dance party that usually also serves as a fundraiser for organizations whose work Ana-Frida is passionate about. For her most recent, in July, she partnered with the Latina-owned food truck Cometa Coffee and the grassroots education organization Escuelitas to give away free backpacks and school supplies to families on Buford Highway. She’s also thrown parties on behalf of El Refugio, which supports the families of immigrants incarcerated at Stewart Detention Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Lumpkin. “My parents are immigrants, so I’ve always grown up in a predominantly undocumented community,” she said. “It’s just something that matters a lot to me.”