Cesar Almeida, aka DJ Antonio Cesar, says it’s impossible to create new music. “Something new is something old that has been reinvented,” says the 25-year-old house DJ and producer. And with his blends of traditional rhythms and contemporary production, he shows us exactly what he’s talking about.

“When I’m in Chicago, I’m like, ‘Let me produce the Chicago stuff,’ ’cause I’m in that vibe. But when I’m in Ghana, it’s like, ‘Yo, I gotta produce some Afrobeats, Afro-house-type stuff, ’cause I’m in Ghana!’” Almeida says. “If I’m in Ecuador, let me produce some reggaeton! Because I am international in my heart and in my lineage too, I do produce many styles.”

Almeida is an extroverted self-starter, and on that same trip he met Ghanaian rapper Kwaku Bota, who owns a recording studio. He told Bota that he was learning kpanlogo drumming to incorporate it into his productions, and that kicked off a musical friendship. “He actually studied African drums,” Bota says. “And for me, I’m a musician out here, and I don’t even study African drums.”

In July 2020, Almeida helped Solidarity Studios move its beat-making workshops and community-building efforts into a COVID-safe virtual space, launching the Beat Passport program in collaboration with Chicago label AfroBang and Oakland-based music-education program Today’s Future Sound. (It ran till September, and the organization is bringing it back this year.) Solidarity Studios helps local and international artists with music publishing and distribution, and Beat Passport teaches producers to use rhythms from around the world, including Chicago house, Afrobeat, and reggaeton. Using the Citizen DJ platform developed by Library of Congress innovator in residence Brian Foo, participants can also draw on the library’s vast public music archives and incorporate that material into their own original productions.

Almeida could have even bigger projects on deck too—that video he made of himself DJing at the North Park Village Nature Center has apparently reached the right eyes, and he’s waiting to hear whether he’ll get a six-figure grant. He can’t yet say from whom or for what, though, because he’s bound by a confidentiality agreement until the money comes through.