Marshall Jefferson was working a shift at a Chicago post office when the idea for Move Your Body came to him. Forty years after its release, the piano riff still tells a room what to do before anyone sings a word. At the 2026 Nexus Lounge Amsterdam, the Chicago house pioneer sat down with Maxine to talk about making the record and hearing younger producers put their own spin on it. The occasion also marked a career honor for Marshall Jefferson, who received the Nexus Radio Level Legend Award.
Marshall Jefferson has been coming to Amsterdam Dance Event since its early years, when he remembers much of the action taking place in one large room. He laughed about being called in to speak on several panels, a memory that feels a long way from the event people navigate today. Now, he said, you can see the yellow signs all over Amsterdam. For someone who remembers being able to walk into one room and find himself in the middle of things, those signs make the change easy to see.
Back in Chicago, the challenge with Move Your Body was getting the song he could hear in his head onto tape. At the Lounge, Marshall Jefferson recalled letting the piano performance shape the track. You can hear what that choice did for the record. The chords have enough force to drive the song, but there’s also a looseness to the way they land. The piano is the part you can hum, and it does as much to set the pace as the drums.
Decades later, making music during the pandemic presented a different problem. Marshall Jefferson recalled working on Ten City’s Judgement with his collaborators in separate places. The album earned a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album, but the experience left him thinking about what remote sessions could do better. He’d like to be able to make music together in real time, when a collaborator can hear a new idea and respond while everyone is still in the middle of trying it out.
Maxine also asked what it’s like to hear someone else take apart a record he knows so well. Marshall Jefferson admitted he can be skeptical when a new remix comes his way. Over time, he’s come to appreciate what another producer might hear in a familiar track, especially someone who came to house music through a different generation of records. He hears the difference between the rough edges on early house tracks and the clarity producers can get today. What matters to him is whether the person making the record brings an idea of their own.
That openness to trying something different goes back to the making of Move Your Body. In a separate interview with The Quietus, Marshall Jefferson recalled trying to find a sound that felt right for the dance floor. His decision to give the piano a go came down to a simple thought. “Well, let’s try some piano and see how that works out.”
One of the quietest moments in the Nexus Lounge interview came when Marshall Jefferson talked about how peaceful he feels behind the decks. He spoke just as frankly about feeling unsure of himself at times in his working life. It was a personal turn in a conversation that began with memories of Amsterdam and made its way back to a post office shift in Chicago. Hear the full interview on Nexus Radio for more from Marshall Jefferson and Maxine on the making of Move Your Body, the remixes that followed and what still feels good about stepping into a DJ booth.
