It's rare that you find a record label that matches its founder so exactly. Rasa Music is the vision of founder Donna D'Cruz, bringing sensuality, spirituality, and style to electronic music with compilations blending club and chillout with the influences of boutique labels like Hed Kandi or Hotel Costes. Known as a jetset DJ playing international parties for the fashion elite (Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci), Donna is also setting her own fashion trend with the signature Rasa Crystal DJ headphones made by Swarovski.

Hard to imagine that headphones could be as glamorous and sparkling as Miss D'Cruz.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: So let's start from the beginning, how did you start DJing?
Donna D'Cruz: Rather than how, I think it's more why. I was at a Billboard Dance Music Summit talking with Jellybean Benitez and Tom Silverman, talking about a track. I said that I loved this track with this beautiful Brazilian sound and a girl singing in French, that it's such a fresh song and absolutely beautiful. Jellybean asked how I knew so much about music and if I had DJed before or would like to DJ at his club. I said of course I know how to DJ, but I didn't really. I had been thinking about it for a while and had played around with the Pioneer CD players mixing chill-out music. Jellybean said, well, why don't you come and start playing in the lounge and so I started playing with this idea of what New York City was missing. I kept hearing my own complaints about how come we live in New York City with the greatest music and the most fantastic fusion we've ever heard and why is it that you go out and you only hear pop, electronic, or dance music.

I heard so much about the legendary Larry Levan and how people would play whatever they wanted without limits. I think you should be able to mix all kinds of music - African and Brazilian music with house and dance music and R&B and hip-hop if it fits in, with soul music and funk. It's all the same thing, it's all one celebration of life. So that's really why I started, so I could have a place to do that.

RS: And so from the lounge at Jellybean's club you've become this international DJ playing all these celebrity parties, how did you make that transition?
Donna D'Cruz: I wanted to bring music, glamour, and healing through music and I think you can do those three things. I started the label as an extension of my DJing and as an extension of me. I think the reason it's resonated because I have a lot of sensuality that I blend in with the music and the journey I take people on when I play live. There's a lot of fun but there's also a sense of something deeper going on as well, and I think somehow it seems to resonate with people. It doesn't matter if you're playing ABBA's "Dancing Queen" and it's fun, and then you go to "La Vie En Rose" and then you go on to something that's African, it should be pertinent for the crowd that you're playing for at that time. I have a really high sense of intuition and I really respect that guide that I have inside myself which I think that we all have and I use that when I play. So I come, will all my music but without a sequence and without really an idea of what I'm going to play, I just use my intuition and look at who's there, feel how they are, and then I play to them. Somehow it seems to be resonating with people and sticking with people, people are really loving it around the world.

RS: You've played parties for some really big celebrities, who are some of the celebrities you've played for?
Donna D'Cruz: I'd really like to keep a lot of that private, but the ones that are public I mean I'm happy to share. I've done parties for Dolce and Gabbana, Gaultier, and Zak Posen, I've played at Denise Rich's party where I had the privilege of playing up on the same deck as Puffy, who came along and danced. He had his new tracks and we got to perform together, that was amazing. I can't even think of them but, you know, the list goes on. I like to think of everyone as a celebrity really. Sometimes you go to these places and it's like so-and-so's here, and you've got to play something for them. It's my privilege to play for everyone and think that there's a Buddha in all of us and so therefore everyone's the same. So no matter who you are, once you're in that door, you're a VIP and no matter who you are, we should all be sort of treated the same. That's very much how I interpret the music.