Ultra Music Festival 2012

By: Emma

            Selling out 80 days before the festival, ultra 12 went off without a hitch in Miami Florida this past weekend. 160,000 neon ravers showed up for a weekend of peace, love, unity, and respect all united by their love for electronic dance music. UMF is a part of Miami music week, which includes the winter music conference, an awards show and DJ networking opportunity rolled into one. This year’s headliners included edm legends Tiesto, David Guetta, Armin Van Buuren, and Kaskade with new comers such as Skrillex and Avicii, also scoring closing sets. This year the festival tried something new and streamed a lot of the festival live on youtube, for all those who wished to be there in spirit, and over 40 thousand people tuned in from all over the world throughout the weekend.

Large scale EDM events such as ultra are commonly surrounded by one scandal or another and this year was no exception. Madonna showed up at the festival to introduce Avicii, but made a remark during the introduction that assured her short appearance would not be forgotten. During her speech she asked the audience how many of them had seen “Molly” that night, a clear reference to the popular club drug MDMA aka “ecstasy.” It should also be noted that Madonna’s new album that debuted this past Tuesday is entitled MDNA. Earlier this year at the Grammy Awards, Madonna made it clear that she intends to cash in on the new found popularity of EDM by performing a remix of her song done by LMFAO, and her appearance at ultra this past weekend to debut yet another electronic remix is more proof of her intentions to make Madonna and EDM synonymous. Unfortunately Madonna seemed to think the quickest way to accomplish this was by embracing the stereotypical drug culture commonly associated with the electronic music scene. Instead of the commenting on the music, the thing that actually brought the tens of thousands of people together, she chose to promote the stereotype that being a fan of EDM means you’re a drug user, something that DJ’s such as Tiesto and Deadmau5 are fighting hard to stop. Deadmau5 aka Joel Zimmerman seemed to be especially offended by Madonna’s comment, and took to the internet to share how he felt.

Controversy in all Ultra ’12 still looked like a dreamland for any true fan of EDM, and for 150,000 lucky people last weekend was sure to be the best of the year. Personally, from watching the ultra feed on youtube, my favorite sets were Zedd, Armin Van Buurens main stage set, and Hardwell. Check them all out for yourself! http://bleedhouse.com/2012/03/26/ultra-music-festival-2012-live-sets-tracklists/