IN THE TUBES: THE MMMMAVEN PROJECT

Last night someone said this to me:

“It really means a lot to me that the Dig kept that focus on electronic music, because it’s my favorite thing to read about, it’s what I look for in the Dig, and no other paper in Boston covers it as well as the Dig.”

Weekly Dig 2000

One of the reasons I wanted to work for the Dig is that it always stays on the cusp of the music scene, often illuminating artists or types of music that people may not have heard of, which leads to new musical discoveries.

Ever since the beginning with Shovel and its column “Tone,” headed up by O.G. Craig Kapilow, the Dig has maintained a relationship with electronic music. Writers like Susanna Bolle kept the Dig on top of experimental music, we brought Thievery Corporation to the original House of Blues, sponsored Soul Clap’s Dancing on the Charles party, and who can forget Roni Size and Reprazent at the Roxy? Then our former editor, David Day, opened my eyes to a whole new world and taught me everything he could about EDM, drawing me into a community of the most passionate, creative people I had ever met, who put music, art, technology, and community at the forefront.

Together Festival this year really drove one idea home in my mind: electronic music is blowing up in the US.

Together brought 20,000 people together for one week, giving us a chance to dance to new music, see mind-blowing art work, and learn about music production technology at panels. But that was only for one week.

The Mmmmaven Project seeks to create a DJ school and the same kind of community around EDM, for people like the kid I mentioned above and, you know, the 60,000 kids who bought tickets to Electric Daisy Carnival within three hours after they went on sale, the thousands who fill stadiums to see the likes of Avicii at IDentity festival or the 85,000 who go to Electric Zoo to lose themselves in EDM.

So I’m thinking there just might be some merit in bringing this revolution to Boston and Cambridge. Redefining music education every day instead of changing our lives for only one week in April. Teaching all of these kids how to use the software and man their mixers, so they can make the music that we love.

You can say this is a biased opinion.

Life-changing moment...

But I’m dead serious when I say that writing about electronic music and becoming a part of the Together family, and the EDM community in Boston, has dramatically changed my life.

I’m also dead serious when I say that I fully support the Mmmmavens and this new DJ school. All of my friends who are DJs and booking managers of places like Good Life and the Phoenix Landing, everyone who has dance nights, are not doing this for the money. They’re doing it because it’s their passion, they don’t sleep much, and I know they’ve touched so many people like how they’ve touched me.

So people say Boston’s lame? It’s not. We have a huge burgeoning dance music community here and a lot of talent. We just need to do all we can to keep pushing it forward. Like helping The Mmmmaven Project get the money they need to buy all the necessary equipment to start this DJ school: mixers, turntables, computers, etc. Then their students can afford classes and creativity will flourish.