DJ Sasha Headlines at Ultra Music Festival

Posted on Mar 26th 2011 2:35PM by Jesse Ship
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DJ Sasha has never been a purist in his music. The Welsh DJ and international phenomenon, who first cut his teeth on the late '80s, early '90s acid house sound, admits that he's always tried to embrace as many different sounds as possible, especially now, with the schism that happened in Miami, between the Winter Music Conference and the Ultra Music Festival, the latter wrapping up this weekend.

"I think the walls in dance music have really broken down in the last few years, and that's very cool," Sasha tells Spinner. If you look at the Ultra Music Festival, which he's headlining at tonight (March 26), you'd see a wide variety of acts -- from bands like Duran Duran and the Klaxons performing alongside DJs like Tiësto or Carl Cox.

Despite a high-octane line up, there was initially much anxiety surrounding the Miami music festival as for the first time in its five-year history as a tandem event, the Ultra did not occur simultaneously with the Winter Music Conference, due to technical booking errors. "I think a lot of the older, sort of house DJs stuck with the WMC week," he continues, "While the European DJ festival kind of guys played on the Ultra weekend."

Before Ultra was underway, Sasha voiced his concern regarding how the two separate music events would cause a divide amongst music fans. "It's a shame because I think it's going to split the crowd," Sasha revealed. "I think everyone is worrying too much about it. The WMC guys lost their venue and they had to change the date. By that time, Ultra and a lot of people had already made their plans, along with DJ bookings set in stone around that last weekend."

However, all anxiety aside, WMC went off without a hitch and the same can be said for the current happenings at Ultra, which actually sold out weeks in advance, setting unprecedented records in its 13-year history, bringing together crowds of over 100,000 electronic music fans.