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Road To Ultra and dressing the part
Remember the days when people used to dress up to go to concerts? When we spent hours, even days picking out the perfect outifit for that special night with our favorite artist?
These days, even the term “dressing down” is a bit of a stretch. At the Road To Ultra Music Festival last Saturday night, the prevailing theme seemed to be “Do I Look Like I Care?” The irony there is people most likely did, and how.
But first, a bit of a backgrounder. Road to Ultra is a series of events across different countries leading up to one of the world’s biggest EDM events, the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Florida. For the first time ever, the Philippines was a stop on this “Road.” Grammy-winning producer and DJ Skrillex, which Forbes magazine listed as one of the top 10 highest earning DJs for 2015, headlined the sold-out event. Other acts on the bill that evening included W&W, Zeds Dead, A-Trak, Fedde LeGrand, Mija, and Vicetone.
If none of these names rings a bell, you’re clearly not part of the demographic, and you should go back to your Spandau Ballet or Maroon 5 (both of which are also recent Manila visitors). Ask your kids, a nephew or niece, or your officemate’s 16-year-old about them.
As a guy in his mid-30s, I harbor no illusions of clinging on to this subset of EDM music fans, although, to be clear, I don’t think age should ever matter when it comes to liking a particular genre of music. To paraphrase the John Mayer-Katy Perry song, when it comes to music appreciation, we love who we love. If teenagers can profess to liking Bob Dylan or Van Morrison, why can’t thirty- or for fortysomethings like Zedd, Avicii or Deadmau5?
In my case, it was more curiosity that led me to check out Ultra last Saturday night. In yet another instance of my rapid acceleration into tito-hood, I had just come from a friend’s birthday party in his condo where we did nothing but eat, chat, drink wine, eat, and chat some more. I left at past 10 p.m. and drove all the way from QC to the Mall of Asia concert grounds.
The de facto uniform for guys seemed to be tank tops, and for girls, whatever covered their strategic areas the least. I felt a bit overdressed in my T-shirt, shorts and sneakers.
For anyone whose idea of music is anything coaxed out of actual instruments, EDM and DJs and the whole clubbing culture will never make sense. But to the hardcore fans, an EDM gig is like a pilgrimage. I’ve been to enough of these shows (Swedish House Mafia, Avicii, Zedd, Neverland, etc.) to know that people swear by the intensity of the emotions they feel on the dance floor, just letting the beats course through their veins and allowing the DJ to manipulate their entire being with the flick of a switch.
“I go to enjoy the music,” said Matt (not his real name), a partygoer I spoke to at the event. “Being in a big venue. Feeling the energy of the lights and sounds. And the thousands of people around.” Matt said he’s been to eight shows in three years, which is somewhere in between those who go to one or two a year, and the really hardcore ones who have to have their weekly EDM fix at clubs like Valkyrie or Pangaea.
At around 1:30 a.m., a light rain started to fall, which had some concertgoers scurrying underneath some of the sponsors’ tents and food booths. But most stayed put, grateful for the temporary relief from the warm September air. W&W had just started their set, and the big act, Skrillex, was up next. People were in various stages of enjoying the evening – some were hunkered down on the ground fiddling with their phones, some were on their feet, drink in hand, chatting with their friends, but many were moving along to the beat, oblivious of everything else around them.
And that’s really what EDM shows are about. Minus the poseurs and the attention-seekers who go to these things to seem cool, audiences go for the experience, and how the music affects them. It’s no different for Spandau Ballet fans when they see the band perform live, or even One Direction, or Joshua Radin, or any artist for that matter. Who says one genre is better than the other?
Similar to our fashion choices, it’s ultimately about how music makes us feel. — BM, GMA News
Paul John Caña is a magazine writer and live music geek. He is also co-founder of libreto.org, an online collective of writers and artists. Email him at pjcana@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter and Instagram @pauljohncana.
