DJ, promoter, music-curator and journalist. Daniel Fernando Wahl alias Daferwa was born 1979 in Tübingen, Germany. Raised in a Mexican-German household, he got familiar with a broad variety of Latin-American music-cultures. From 2001 to 2002 he worked for Ritmo, the Latin music show on Germany’s first music channel VIVA TV.
He left the media-scene to study Portuguese, French and Latin-American History at the University of Cologne.
In 2004 he got a scholarship from the Universade Federal do Ceará and spend a year in São Paulo where he connected with the city’s urban music culture. He ended up writing his master thesis on the ‘Marginal Discourses in Sao Paulo’s Hip Hop Scene’.
Since 2005 Daniel Fernando Wahl has been actively contributing to Cologne’s nightlife under his DJ-name Daferwa. In 2007 he founded the MASH IT UP! platform in Cologne. 2009 Daferwa became resident DJ and freelancing writer for WDR COSMO fka WDR Funkhaus Europa – Germanys N°1 public radio station for Global Pop Music. He conducted in-depth interviews with artists like Emicida, Criolo, Seu Jorge, Sergio Mendez, Marcelo D2, Karol Conka, Mexican Institute of Sound, Lila Downs, Molotov, Celso Pina (RIP) or Anibal Velasquez, just to name a few. As curator and host of the SELEKTOR Show on COSMO from 2017-2021 (RIP) he invited and presented DJs and producers from the global club scene.
At his monthly COSMO Club he’s been hosting and sharing decks with his international DJ colleagues for over 12 years now. He has played Clubs and Festivals across Europe and has been touring his second home Mexico (and lately Colombia too), always networking on the transatlantic exchange of music.
2019 he was music-consultant for the CARI-EU Forum in Frankfurt (a.M.) where he brought together players from the Caribean Music Industrie with European representatives of the market.
Actually he hosts a weekly show (COSMO DJ Session) and is one of the radio’s music-programmers. In 2023 he was invited to curate the WOMEX Club-Summit in A Coruña.