I love all kinds of music, it’s not that I’m indecisive and don’t know what kind of music I like – I just have a seriously broad taste. One of my fav musical genres is Electronic Dance Music. EDM is an umbrella term for various subgenres of music with influences of electronic instruments or computer generated music. Examples of these subgenres are: house, trance and techno.
My First Dance Party
One of the DJ’s that defined my taste is Tiësto. I first saw him perform during a 9 hours long solo DJ set at Dutch Dimension 02.02.2002. I was still 17 years old and actually underaged to visit the party at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, but it’s an event I’m glad I didn’t miss. For those who wonder how I got in: my sister who is 9 years my senior took me to the party. You can see a short impression of the party in the video below.
At that time Tiësto played a lot of ‘progressive trance’. Trance has a strong focus on the melody and often sounds somewhat dreamy. Progressive trance on the other hand has the melody, but also backs it up with a powerful beat. I really like the variation this offers, you can really build up a track and push it over the edge. Listening to ‘progressive trance’ truly stimulated me to truly listen to a track and analyze the musical composition. I must add that I already listened a lot to classical music when I was even younger which might explain my focus on the technical side of music.
The music, the people, the whole event of course made a very big impact on me as a 17 year old girl who was only used to her local disco. It also alienated me from some of my friends and other classmates in high school. Nobody really knew Tiësto back then and definitely didn’t go to big dance parties. My hometown is also far away from Amsterdam at least for a teenager.
Growing As A Fan
After ‘Dutch Dimension 02.02.2002′ I really became a very big Tiësto fan. I also loved the whole ambience on large dance events where everybody dances and feels the love for the music. I visited other big dance events such as Dance Valley, Innercity, Mysteryland and several other Tiësto gigs with an audience ranging from 800 till 35.000 people.
Even though I lost some interest in Tiësto as the years went by, my love for electronic dance music was ignited at that very first dance party back in 2002. Everything came full circle last year. On September 19th, 2009 my hometown was the location for the first edition of Radio 538′s EVOLUTION and Tiësto was one of the big names to spin on the event. When I visited ‘Evolution’ I felt a bit sentimental and thought of the first time I saw Tiësto. I was also very proud of my hometown! You can catch a short clip of Tiësto during ‘Evolution’ here.
Nowadays I feel like I’m a veteran when it comes to dance events. I’ve seen the legends, visited the parties… and I’m often nostalgic. Sometimes I really miss ‘the sound’ of back in the day. But I also believe music needs to be celebrated and there are enough events I want to visit this year e.g. Dance Valley and Amsterdam Dance Event. I’m sure this musical journey hasn’t ended yet!
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