Hello, my name is Tiësto and I’ll be your host for this evening

If you were to ask what former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and South Africa’s venerable Bishop Desmond Tutu have in common, it would be very unlikely that you’d include the name of any DJs in your answer.

But you’d be absolutely correct if you replied that both have praised Tiësto (born Tijs Verwest in the Netherlands) for the work he is involved in.

When the trance DJ got his residency at the tender age of 16 back in ‘85, there really was no way of knowing how much of a dance music emissary he would become. In 2006, he became Dance4Life’s worldwide ambassador, working towards greater HIV/AIDS awareness among the world’s poorer youth. The project involves education, action and, of course, dancing.

When he took the post, he created a song (of the same name as the organization) with singer Maxi Jazz, which he debuted at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto last summer. (“Dance4life is a wonderful example of how the talent and strength of young people can energize our struggle,” Kofi Annan has said of the organization.)
“Bishop Tutu made a special speech for it, and yeah, it feels good,” he says humbly. “The guy who runs Dance4Life is a guy from Holland (co-founder Dennis Karpas) and he gets through to everybody—he even had a meeting with Bono a couple of weeks ago in Africa. He’s a very dedicated guy, and he’s very inspirational for me, too.” Tiësto, though, is inspirational himself, as he’s also accomplished a string of DJ firsts that have helped propel electronica into the stratosphere.

“It’s much more accepted as a full profession, I think,” he says. “It’s a big change, I think, to see DJs as artists.”
It’s a change that Tiësto has helped spark. He was the first DJ to play live at an Olympics opening ceremony (Athens 2004) and the first deckman to play a solo stadium show. The night after he plays Edmonton in support of his latest album, Elements of Life, he’ll be playing a solo show at Vancouver’s GM Place—making him the first DJ to have a solo stadium show of this size (in the neighbourhood of 10 000) in Canada.

It’s hard to say what it is, exactly, that marks Tiësto as such a world-class DJ. His brand of melodic trance is certainly in a league of its own, and repeatedly you’ll read about how attentive he is to his audience. (“I would do something to please people —it would be something in the serving sector,” he says when I ask what he’d be doing if he wasn’t a DJ.) He also works exceptionally hard, including constant touring and a weekly radio show.
But it’s most likely his unwillingness to tout himself too much. A train of aliases chugs through his discography, and it’s likely that only he knows how very prolific he has been since he started recording and producing in the ‘90s.

His fame, however, has come with a seedier side—rumours abound. Last year, there was internet buzz that he died in a car crash in the US, and in May of this year, there were reports of a plot to kill him during a summer show in Lebanon (the show ended up being a huge success and the largest in the country’s history).
All of this kind of dishing is something that he finds more than a little weird. At the end of the day, all he wants to do is what he’s been doing for two decades now—share music with folks.

CAROLYN NIKODYM – VUE WEELY (AUGUST 22nd, 2007)

Comments are closed.