Electronic Dance Music
This is when everything ties together. Every summer, on the last weekend of June, my town would throw a “Welcome to Summer” party, complete with a live band and an amazing firework show to close out the performance! Since my birthday falls on June 28th, I was told as a kid that the fireworks were actually for me. And of course, I believed it. The lights, the energy, the spectacle, it all felt larger than life. Those fireworks, just like the music I would later discover, ignited something in me.
Flash forward to the summer of 2012, where I had just celebrated by 11th birthday to kick off the summer season. At this time, Skrillex, Avicii, and Swedish House Mafia all crashed into my musical world at the same time. A perfect storm of inspiration. A few months later at the end of September, Avicii was set to perform at Radio City Music Hall, a venue that held a special place in my heart. The thought of seeing my favorite artist perform there, felt like destiny. Unfortunately, my parents shot that dream down real fast and hit me with the, “No chance. Don’t ask again.” My parents did/do a lot for me, so when they reacted like that, I usually just let it go because of everything else I was given. Little did i realize I was shooting myself in the foot…
A few years later in the summer of 2015, I would get my first taste of it all. The song charting company, Billboard, was launching its first-ever music festival, and it was being held at Jones Beach Amphitheater. The idea that some of the biggest names in electronic music would be playing in my backyard, insane! The first year, the tickets sold out very fast so very few people were able to get access to tickets. Fortunately enough for me, I was asked to go with one of my friends from club lacrosse. A dream lineup: Skrillex, Axwell ^ Ingrosso, Kygo, and The Chainsmokers. You couldn’t have scripted a better introduction to it all for me. Truly was one of the best days of my life.
Not long after, I would watch the livestream of Avicii’s final Ultra Music Festival performance. It wasn’t known to anyone besides Tim Berg (Avicii) that this would be his last Ultra performance. That performance was the moment it clicked that this was the industry I wanted to work in. The show production that happens at Ultra gave me that same spark when I would see those fireworks on my birthday as a kid.
That realization led me to The University of Miami for college. Before going to bed at night, I would listen to my favorite songs played at Ultra and tell myself, “One day, I’ll be in that crowd with all my friends from school, have the time of of lives at the best party in the world that day”. Due to COVID-19, that experience was delayed until my junior year, but that just added to the long awaited inevitable. To close out the Main Stage on Night 1? Martin Garrix followed by Kygo, once again, couldn’t have really scripted it much better than that. After the halfway point in his set, Martin Garrix plays his famous track, “Virus”, and in this moment is when I thought of all those nights listening to this music before going to bed and now, I was finally living it. This was when I knew, I should pursue working in the music industry, specifically electronic dance music.