When I was younger, my dad was really into music. He wasn’t a musician or anything like that, but he was a hippie. He was really into classic rock like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, so I grew up on that. I’m also Brazilian, so Brazilian music also really played a huge role as an influence growing up.
In my teen years — in the late 90s, early 2000s — I really got into hip-hop. I liked dance music, but wasn’t hugely into it. But right after I graduated high-school in 2004, I really started getting into it more. A friend of mine was posting a few videos on MySpace of Tiesto in concert, playing “Adagio For Strings.” It blew me away, so I had to experience myself. So I went to a my first Tiesto concert in Ft. Lauderdale on January 6, 2006. It was everything I expected it to be.
At that time, the big sound in Miami was still open format and hip-hop. But the clubs in South Beach would every once in a while have a big trance DJ come by, but it wasn’t like it is now where it’s a weekly thing. So I started getting into the underground scene, going to Space Miami religiously every weekend. And also Nocturnal, which is now closed, but was located right next door. I accepted that this was what I wanted to do.
I was used to the open format nights where people just wanted to party, but in the underground house scene, people were really coming to see the DJ. I bought myself some cheap DJ equipment and started practicing in my bedroom for a year or two. Eventually I started DJing in the underground scene, doing marathon eight hours sets of minimal, tech house, house, and a little bit of techno.
So my origins are from the underground scene, that’s where I came from and I claimed that for many years. But I like music as whole and I can’t limit myself to one genre. I like my hip-hop, especially the classic old school stuff. I really like progressive house, which kind of changed my approach to how I make my music. As I evolved, I guess you could say I am more of a “commercial” DJ, in a sense, because of what I play or what songs I made. But I don’t really care. I make what I feel and what I like. I don’t limit myself to being in a little nutshell.
Lately I have been seeing a lot of hate from the underground community to the commercial scene of dance music. And I understand where that is coming from. But what a lot of people don’t realize is, the commercialization of dance music is not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve seen a lot of people that start out going to Ultra’s main stage where it’s commercialized, but then they happen to run into another stage that is more underground — and they like it!
Of course, everyone has to start somewhere. By people experiencing the more commercial side of dance music, they begin to discover all these other genres of it. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be underground, but there are so many sub-genres and different cultures that you can learn from.
The “EDM” abbreviation became tainted within our scene because a lot of people did not want it to become commercialized. People started associating EDM as the pop version of dance music. But at the end of the day, EDM still stands for “electronic dance music,” so that includes everything with a 4x4 beat. But the underground wants to disassociate itself with anything that’s EDM, because the definition has changed. But at the end of the day, we are all apart of the same community. Tech is still electronic dance music. Trance is still electronic dance music.
I‘m not here to tell the underground scene that they have to like the commercial side of dance music, but open your mind up. The more that dance music becomes commercialized, it will naturally open more people up to the underground.
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