The first time I saw Los Angeles in flames, it wasn't on a movie screen. News of the wildfires reached me through frantic social media messages from friends. The city that had once embraced me was burning, and I was an ocean away, watching helplessly as the feeds filled with apocalyptic orange skies and evacuation orders.
But to understand why these fires cut so deep—why they feel like more than just another far-off natural disaster—you need to know what Los Angeles means to those who've found their truth in its sprawling embrace. This is my story of a city that embraced me and the music that shaped my time there.
A New Beginning in the City of Angels
Los Angeles is often described as a city of dreams, but that always felt like a Hollywood cliché to me. New York was my go-to city whenever I ventured across the Atlantic. Its energy, its pace—it felt like the centre of the universe. LA seemed like its polar opposite: sprawling, sunny, and slow. From afar it seemed like a city where dreams came to die in endless traffic.
Then came the end of a long-distance relationship. After three years of cross-continental flights, it had run its course, leaving me untethered and unwilling to risk the chance of awkwardly bumping into her on some Manhattan side street. I was truly adrift when Kyle, already a close friend who would become one of the most pivotal people in my life, casually mentioned over a late-night call:
"Why don't you come to LA for New Year's?"
"LA?" I laughed. "What would I even do there?"
"Trust me," he said. "This city is like no place you know."
That conversation changed everything. Within days, I'd booked two weeks off work and jumped on the first plane west. What I found wasn't the LA of my prejudices—no hordes of dejected actors or failed rock stars nursing their wounds in overpriced coffee shops. Instead, I discovered a city alive with possibility, humming with creative energy and genuine connection.
Back in London, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd glimpsed something real beneath LA's glossy surface. When the company I was working for announced plans to expand to Southern California, I somehow convinced my bosses to transfer me. Kyle introduced me to a group of people who would become like family. What followed was a year that would redefine everything I thought I knew about friendship, music, creativity, and community.
A Symphony of Sounds




The first thing you notice about LA's music scene is that it doesn’t necessarily want to be found. Unlike New York’s obvious landmarks or London's well-worn paths, LA keeps its treasures hidden in plain sight. An unmarked door in Echo Park might lead to a basement jazz session that feels like stepping back in time. A nondescript warehouse in the Arts District could house a secret show by tomorrow’s festival headliners.
"That’s the thing about LA," Kyle told me one night as we drove home from a poolside gig somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, the city lights spreading endlessly below us. "Everyone’s too busy calling it fake, but this is the one place where impossible becomes inevitable." He gestured at the sprawling cityscape, a knowing smile cutting through the night.
Music became my compass, guiding me through the city’s landscape. My days were filled with musical discoveries as part of my job. But the nights... the nights were something else entirely.
We found ourselves at private parties in the Hollywood Hills, where industry legends passed guitars around living rooms like family heirlooms. We stumbled into jam sessions so perfect they felt scripted, where strangers became collaborators and songs were born between midnight and dawn. I watched DJs test new tracks in the most anachronistic venues and sat in on recording sessions where the magic happened between coffee runs and takeout orders.
Even the most mundane moments had a soundtrack: taco trucks with their tinny radios playing norteño, cars thumping with g-funk as they cruised Crenshaw, street musicians turning subway stations into concert halls.
The diversity of LA’s sound was overwhelming at first. Every neighbourhood seemed to pulse with its own rhythm: mariachi spilling from Boyle Heights backyards, Korean hip-hop blasting from Koreatown clubs, country twang echoing through the canyons where Joni Mitchell and Buffalo Springfield once found their voice. It wasn’t just music existing side by side—it was conversations between cultures, each adding their voice to the city’s endless song. After finding my bearings, I lapped it all up making sure to savour every second of it.
That’s how Airborne Rabies was born. One night, after watching a talented friend with stadium-sized dreams play to an empty room, Kyle and I started joking about starting our own group. We created an elaborate backstory: we were an experimental noise-folk collective influenced by Angolan ceremonial music and early Detroit techno. Or perhaps it was Angolan techno and Detroit ceremonial music—the narrative was fluid.
We didn’t have any songs, and consequently, we never actually played a single show. But somehow, the joke took on a life of its own. People started boasting that they'd seen us first at Coachella. Other artists listed us as influences. Bloggers wanted to interview us. For a brief, surreal moment, we were the most talked-about band that didn’t exist—proof that in LA, even the most absurd ideas could somehow become real.
The Fires, The Loss, The Resilience
The first images hit my screen like a gut punch: billowing smoke and eerie crimson horizons. At first, I thought it was just another one of those cinematic LA sunsets. Then the reality set in—evacuation orders, homes reduced to ash, studios lost to the inferno. Each new message was a heavier blow: friends uprooted, venues destroyed, decades of creativity wiped out in hours.
The numbers alone are sobering: 25 lives lost, 180,000 people evacuated, over 300 musicians and industry professionals left without homes or workspaces. But the weight of it—the creative and cultural loss—can’t be summed up in figures.
Madlib, the heartbeat of countless iconic beats, saw his home, studio, and priceless archive vanish in hours. Jimmy Tamborello’s home studio—the birthplace of The Postal Service’s sound—was turned to ash. Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden didn’t just lose his house; forty years of lyrics and riffs were gone with it.
The devastation didn’t discriminate. Harbour Studios, where Nicki Minaj and Doja Cat had recorded, was reduced to rubble. At Mix This!, Bob Clearmountain’s studio, the legendary Bösendorfer piano once played by David Bowie melted in the fire.
Then there’s Arnold Schoenberg’s rental score collection, over 100,000 pieces vital to modern classical music, gone without a trace. The LA Philharmonic’s musicians, who’d filled the Hollywood Bowl with sound for years, were suddenly playing benefit concerts with borrowed instruments. The Bowl itself came dangerously close to destruction—a symbol of just how fragile even LA’s most enduring icons can be.
Meanwhile, Session musicians, songwriters, choreographers, producers, engineers, and countless behind-the-scenes professionals saw their homes and livelihoods upended. These unsung heroes, the backbone of the industry, saw everything they’d built swept away in the flames.
And yet, in the face of such devastation, the music community has shown an incredible outpouring of support. Within hours, storied institutions began to rally. Guitar Center and Fender donated instruments to displaced musicians. Storied venues like The Troubadour and The Echo hosted benefit shows. MusiCares, Sweet Relief, and other organizations mobilised to provide immediate aid. In just days, a benefit concert—Fireaid—was pulled together. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Gwen Stefani, Joni Mitchell, Sting, Stevie Nicks, and Lady Gaga have already agreed to perform.
The fires have left scars, no question. But in Los Angeles, even ash sparks new growth. From the devastation, I am certain that new songs are already taking shape—written in motel rooms, on friends’ living room floors, recorded on phones and borrowed gear, forged from resilience and pain. In LA, creativity doesn’t stop—it adapts.
To The City, To My Friends
Los Angeles never was what I thought. It’s not a city of dreams—it’s a city of dreamers, which in my mind is far more precious. It’s not about the stars on the sidewalk or the sign in the hills; it’s the sound tech who knows every venue’s quirks, the promoter who still believes in magic enough to book unknown bands. It’s the DJ meticulously curating her playlist, no matter how many people show up. It’s about Kyle who welcomed me with open arms and introduced me to a whole new world.
To my friends rebuilding their lives: your resilience is inspiring. I send my love.
To the musicians who call LA their home: I can’t wait to hear what you create next.
To the city that taught me to listen deeper: your song will go on, even if the stages are temporarily quiet.
The wildfires have changed the landscape, but they can’t consume what makes LA extraordinary. And when I return—because I will—I’ll find the city doing what it does best: creating, connecting, and transforming pain into poetry we can all dance to.
Take care,
Boaz.






All photos taken by me in Los Angeles, CA.
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