DJ Kimyon Huggins poses in the Dayton Society of Artists’ building where the city’s first Future Is Now event was hosted.
Fresh from an event full of turntables and paintbrushes, DJ Kimyon Huggins is a man in his element. Internationally renowned and known for mixing sets as far afield as the Dominican Republic and Belgium, most would be surprised to learn that Dayton was where he got his start.
“I went to Our Lady of Mercy from third grade to eight grade. Then I went to Chaminade Julienne for high school and I had a short stint at Sinclair, that freshman year of indecision that led to me dropping out,” Huggins told the Dayton Daily News.
Now he’s back, 27 years after moving to New York City. And he’s brought with him an event that combines the visual arts and music, one that has already made waves in the big apple. This time, the DJ is aiming big, perhaps bigger than ever.
Huggins said, “I’m invested in this community, many of my family that is still here, I have many friends that are still here.”
For them and future generations he hopes to change the city the way he impacted the dance scene in New York, with the aforementioned Future Is Now event breathing new life in Dayton. The DJ that got his start playing house parties downtown sees it as a chance to bring downtown back to life.
“We need to fill it up. There’s no reason for people to want to be downtown, you have to give them a reason to come back downtown and that is what we’re going to do,” the DJ said.
It’s a vision that started in Dayton, was cultivated in the biggest clubs around, and is now ready to transform the city as we know it.
Dayton-bred
He might have spent nearly three decades in America’s largest city but Huggins still retains the easy laugh of a Daytonian. Only it’s tempered by a smooth New York edge born from years pioneering the city’s music scene.
“There’s a saying about New York: 12 million people and no one to talk to. Because people are ambitious and overwhelmed by their live and their bills and the dreams they’re trying to chase,” he said.
Dayton, it seems, prepared him well for the challenges he would face. As a freshman at Sinclair Community College, he discovered the underground scene through a friend at the University of Dayton. Almost instantly he was hooked.
“I started going to concerts and that was cool but it kind of got old and very commercial. I graduated in 93, 94 was the last time I went to Lollapalooza and I wasn’t feeling it. I was over it and then the rave culture came,” he said. “I was just swept up and I’m still here in the underground representing that culture.”
The path to DJing came naturally. It started by going to the shows, then helping the people who organized the parties. Soon they had him on the tables. The next step was hosting his own events. Experience and insight enabled the DJ to hire the best security so that parties remained safe.
“There were a lot of underground parties where people were doing illegal things as far as their operations and it wasn’t safe,” Huggins said about that time. “We always used legitimate spaces, we always had security, we always had multi-million dollar insurance policies even when I was 21 years old.”
Others caught on that there was something different about this DJ from a smaller midwestern city.
“Mike Huckaby was a Detroit artist and he was playing the Dayton scene and he saw my talent before I did,” Huggins said. “He passed during Covid but he was a prolific influence and mentor to many of us and he booked me at Shelter in Detroit as a Dayton DJ in 1995. I was 20 years old. It was a huge deal.”
A slice of The Big Apple
Huggins obtained a scholarship in 1998, studying audio engineering from the Institute of Audio Research. With the goal of studying music business at NYU, he forged ahead, eventually gained an internship with Grammy award-winning artist Roger Sanchez.
“I will say in retrospect that year I interned for him was the most valuable year of my life,” Huggins said.
However, as part of the program Huggins was not allowed to hold parties, which left him creatively stifled. He became physically ill. But a chance meeting with someone from Lima who knew him from Dayton would turn his life around.
“I was having this moment when he approached me, feeling lost and on the wrong path. And the juxtaposition of this amazing opportunity that I was considering relinquishing,” said Huggins. “He’s like ‘we’ll put up the money, you teach us how to throw these broke parties, bring your network and lets do this’. So, we started.”
Huggins since worked with some of the biggest names around and DJ’d overseas. A year after his internship he’d earned a spot at the same club his mentor Sanchez was a resident of. The who’s who of New York’s nightlife were calling including Peter Gatien. Multimedia events uniting visuals and sound were also gestating during this time. In 2011, Future Is Now was born.
“One of our original inspirations was the art show with the shitty DJ setup or the club with a painting that size in the dark, with a square on the wall,” Huggins said. “The priorities of the producers were evident.”
Throughout its run, Huggins has worked with some of the best musical and visual artists. He’s brought in artists like Gaia, Ellis Gallagher, and Ronnie Cutrone; acts such as Suburban Knight, and Gray, the band of the late Jean-Michel Basquiat. Since the pandemic, livestreaming has become an important part of the experience with a weekly show running from Oct. 2020-July 2025.
Home Again
Bringing the show to Dayton is part of an effort by Huggins and many local friends to liven up the city. It’s also about exposure, giving Dayton-based talent an opportunity to participate and later go on tour. This, the DJ explained excitedly, is not a one-off.
“We’re going to bring that whole show, mirror the programming, but have it run for two weeks in Dayton. We’re still looking for a space; we’re looking for partners. We’re looking for people to come help us enliven downtown again,” he said. “It’s not going to happen by itself. It’s not going to happen by people talking about what’s wrong. It’s going to happen by activity and action.”
With the first Future Is Now event in Dayton wrapped up, one step in the DJ’s growing ambition has been achieved. For him, this latest achievement in his hometown mirrors the philosophy that drove him to come this far.
“The only thing we have is the present moment,” Huggins said. “In the ever evolving now everything impossible. That’s what Future Is Now is about: bringing these creative endeavors together in a literal capacity and then bringing the world together through this platform.”
