ACROSS WORLDS

With a global ear and a chameleon-like approach behind the decks, Asha Franco is carving out a distinct space in the Northern Rivers music scene.

Image: Anna Hutchcroft

Born and raised on Bundjalung Country, DJ, vocalist and actor Asha Franco has become one of the region’s most versatile emerging artists — a selector whose sets move fast, wide and with intention. She’s not a genre DJ; she’s a connector. Across any given hour she’ll thread Deep and Soul House, bass-driven club music, Afro-electronic fusion, tribal rhythms, Latin, dancehall, hip hop, jazz and R&B, building momentum through contrast rather than repetition.

Her path into DJing was shaped by community. “I became a DJ through community — different pockets of people around Byron, then Melbourne,” she says. A guest appearance on Skylab Radio in 2021 led to her being offered her own program, Earth Tones, named after the Grover Washington Jr. track she picked up while travelling through the south of Spain. The show reflects her global ear and her instinct for weaving genres into something cohesive and emotionally charged.

Jazz has had a huge impact on Franco since she was young — one of the first sounds that shaped her listening — but it’s a thread among many. Her palette draws from a lineage with roots in North Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, and from a childhood spent travelling through different cultures, ethnicities and spiritual communities. “My love of music is an expression of how I was brought into this world,” she says — a sentiment that shows up in her ability to read a room and respond in real time.

As a vocalist, Franco moves easily between jazz, soul and R&B, and isn’t afraid to throw in a Jeff Buckley cover when the moment calls for it. Since returning to the Northern Rivers, she’s been leaning into collaboration, opening the door to forming a trio or band and developing original work.

Her creative practice also extends into acting and event curation. As an actor, her work spans both theatre and film, with a new project currently in development. Separately, her curatorial work focuses on building spaces and events that merge worlds and atmospheres — an extension of the same instinct that drives her musical approach.

Franco is also a student of evolutionary astrology, a discipline she says keeps her grounded when the industry gets noisy. “Some of us have a lot of work to do for the collective and our ancestors,” she says, describing her creative life as a spiral: always moving, always returning.

Image: Anna Hutchcroft

This October, Franco brings a special iteration of Earth Tones to DINGO Music & Arts Festival — a guided, slowburn set built around ceremonial tea, spiritual jazz and ambient sound. Designed for DINGO’s deep-listening corners and intimate venues, it offers audiences a moment to reset, settle and sink into the quieter edges of the program.

Franco pays her respects to the land that holds her community so generously, and to Indigenous elders past and present.

@ashafranc0