The UCLA Electronic Dance Music Club dropped the bass just in time for the onset of spring quarter.
After two quarters of inactivity, EDMC rebooted this spring, outfitted with a new logo, new members and a new vision for electronic dance music’s place in UCLA’s campus culture. During its first meeting of the spring quarter, members planned to have EDMC DJs perform Wednesday in Bruin Plaza to raise awareness about the club’s return to campus.
Cassandra Cross, a fourth-year political science and international development studies student and returning EDMC member, said she initially feared the club’s lack of involvement earlier this year would affect students’ desire to join this quarter. Her worries, however, were unfounded.
“I was really encouraged to see such a great turnout, really comparable to before the reboot,” Cross said. “There’s definitely still an EDM community here.”
Fourth-year music history student Andrew Conde, who serves as a member of EDMC’s Operations Committee, said EDMC’s inactivity was due to the fact that the club’s leaders all graduated in 2014, and no one was available to spearhead earlier this year. To combat this in the future, Conde said he plans to expand the club’s leadership and implement class representatives to get more members involved.
“We want to delegate responsibilities so something like this doesn’t happen again, where most of the board graduates,” Conde said. “Now we’ll have more people stepping up and wanting to take the club forward.”
Beyond sharing music and connecting members with gigs, Conde said the rebooted EDMC is also about philanthropy and bringing a higher consciousness to a genre of music often tied to party and rave culture. This quarter, EDMC is providing DJs to perform at a silent disco on April 20 for campus organization 7000 in Solidarity in observation of UCLA’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Conde said EDMC’s biggest focus, however, is with “Message in a Melody,” an EDM event that premiered in May 2014 and will be returning again May 6 this year to raise money for pediatric cancer research.
Third-year cognitive science student and EDMC member Kelley Nguyen said she serves as liaison between EDMC and “Message in a Melody” and hopes EDMC’s affiliation with philanthropic organizations will help others recognize EDM as a multifaceted culture that extends beyond just party music.
“I think new ravers are thinking, ‘Let’s just party because that’s our generation: We’re having fun and embracing our youth,’” Nguyen said. “We definitely acknowledge that, and we have members who love that too, but we want to transition into new values so that people know to be responsible and maintain respect for each other and the genre.”
Cross said EDMC provides a community for EDM fans with a variety of backgrounds, interests and skill sets, from outgoing DJs to more reserved engineers, design media artists and general members who simply enjoy listening to the music.
“I really like how inclusive EDM is,” Cross said. “It’s super welcoming of different personalities and wackiness and kookiness.”
Members who are directly involved with music production, such as fourth-year mechanical engineer and DJ Shan Tambat, have used UCLA’s EDMC as a means for finding local performing opportunities. Tambat, who will be performing at this year’s Dance Marathon, credits his entire EDM career to UCLA’s EDMC. Tambat said he began playing live gigs only after joining the club as a third-year transfer student and was mentored in DJing by EDMC alum Bentley Montes.
“Back when I was in community college, I was just a bedroom DJ, so I would just stay in my bedroom, mix and pretend there was a crowd in front of me,” Tambat said. “But EDMC gave me the opportunity to be in front of the college audience … and now, wow, I’m playing at Pauley Pavilion.”