I’m back: my Miami Music Week and the Ultra Music Festival 2019

Taking stock of Miami Music Week 2019 and the Ultra Festival number 20 in just a few lines is really difficult for me: I want to tell you the truth about what I experienced and provide you with a spontaneous point of view as a musician and music lover… so let’s try! Here are the 5 Andrea Casta moments to remember and the 5 moments (both beautiful and ugly) regarding the event.

Andrea Casta’s MMW2019 top 5

5- Italians in Miami: Italians are a very important component of the city of Miami and Miami Beach above all; thanks to mutual friendships, I ended up jamming in the garden of an Italian, between good taste and good vibes as citizens of the world: the tricolour always flies proudly.

4- Where to direct my music? I heard so much music in the DJ sets that it almost made me dizzy: I heard many, many beats, but very few notes, and this I didn’t like. I’m more and more convinced that the reason for why the reggaeton wave is gaining ground compared to House and EDM is because, however simple and unstructured, people want melodies, they want to sing and to hear sexy music.

3- My meeting with SJRM! First of all, a huge thank you to Nicola Fasano: months ago I recorded the violins for the new edition of Born Again (Babylonia), a dance hit he remixed that bares the signature of the Dutch duo Sunnery James and Ryan Marciano; always thanks to Nicola I was able to contact the management, get to know them and hypothesize future official live collaborations; too bad that we couldn’t put them into practice during this Miami Music Week 2019, but it’s only a question of time: the Ibiza summer is near …

2- My interview with Radio 105: a second huge thank you goes to my friends Paggi & Costanzi, a couple of Roman DJ/producers with whom I collaborate, and even though they weren’t physically present in Miami this year, they still had a hand in introducing me to Vicky, historical 105 Miami radio speaker! Saturday April 6^th you will be able to hear my interview on radio 105 (from 8pm to 10pm) along with The River (a new single from The Space Violin Project) in preview. Thank you also to my traveling companion Riccardo Celletti.

1- The set at the W: my third thank you goes to Leandro Da Silva, an up and coming Italian-Brazilian producer and remixer; between radio, TV and music, he’s journey is as varied as mine, and with great trust he invited me to play in his DJ set at the “Vice” Pool Party at the W (which also had Tom Staar as its headliner). We had great fun and the audience exploded, so we totally must work together again in the near future… thanks again Leandro!

The Ultra Music Festival and the MMW top 5 in my opinion

5- DJ’s and their ego: first point in net contrast with my 3 personal thank you’s; from the outside, the DJ world is often animated by strong individualism, counterproductivity and certainly motivated by insecurity and “dj console” blindness. Amongst some of the most beautiful moments in Ultra’s history there is the Swedish House Mafia reunion, Madonna sharing the stage with Avicii and Will Smith with Marshmello, and I could name dozens more episodes like this that happened in the name of collaboration. Witnessing, instead, more or less “top” DJs replicating dj-sets that are always the same, by themselves, without any flashes of collaboration, tends to make many of the proposed events rather uninteresting, with Ultra being the first in line.

4- Tom Morello: perhaps you know that the Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist performed with a set during Ultra and was heavily booed while on stage (deservedly so in my opinion). The fusion of instruments and electronic music that I have in mind is very different and, luckily, much more fun!

3- David Lee Roth: Van Halen’s Diamond Dave didn’t sing a note, but his arrival on the stage alongside Armin Van Bureen was a happy and enjoyable moment. Keep jumping Dave, you are still one of my favourites!

2- Marshmello: this edition’s superstar. In order to appreciate his path to success all you have to do is read the masked DJ’s tweet: “four years ago I shared the room with my manager in Miami because we couldn’t afford it, today I’m headlining the Ultra”. Electronic music can still make dreams come true.

1 A goodbye to Miami: kilometric queues, complex logistics, no Skyline to make the artists’ selfies snapped from the stage somewhat unique… these were among some of the consequences of Ultra’s move from downtown Miami to Virginia Key. A further consequence seems to be the Ultra Music Festival’s move from Miami to Los Angeles in the coming year. We shall see, but the fact remains that in order to continue the magic of a Festival that has changed the history of music (and not just electronic music) they will have to come up with something pretty inspired. I will certainly continue to work and keep myself ready to go!