Today we’d like to introduce you to Shayda Velasco.
Hi Shayda, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Thank you so much for the invite. It’s an honor to be here and I am extremely flattered to be featured and share my musical journey with you guys!
I guess my story starts back to when I was growing up in a family full of musicians. It gave me a life where I was always surrounded by music of all kinds, constantly being encouraged and taught to listen, play, and explore. My dad was in a rock band in the 80’s back in Mexico, and my mother was a solo artist. Funny enough, my parents actually met at a gig where they got paired as a duo. As a kid my father would always have me pick up a guitar or taught me songs on the piano, and my mother always encouraged it as well. As I grew older into my teenage years, my taste in music started to develop its own journey ranging from classic rock, indie, metal, etc. slowly transitioning into the world of electronic music. When I was 15 I was introduced to Trance by the older kids in school and started going to raves and exploring this new world I had discovered in the electronic realm. I fell so in love with the music and culture.
Shortly after this, I moved to Barcelona with my mother, and soon found a scene for the “weirdos” which consisted primarily of Trance, Drum & Bass, and hardstyle. At this point, there was no turning back for me… Haha! I was hooked. A couple of years later I moved back to Miami and started working at nightclubs in the city by age 19. Back then it was Mansion Nightclub on South Beach as well as Club Space in Downtown. These experiences are where my exposure to Techno only increased, and I eventually started DJing.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Hmm… I don’t know about smooth, but it has definitely been a huge learning process in many ways. When I first started I was learning off of a laptop and YouTube videos, I had no idea what I was doing.
Eventually, I started to get a few gigs here and there in Miami which in itself was an entirely different learning experience to play live somewhere and not in my bedroom. However, the challenges I found to be the most prominent for me were first off, the competition. Miami is FULL of DJs that are really amazing. So in order to book something you really had to be connected somehow. A second one I remember quite clearly, was that my sound didn’t always “fit” the promoters or venues booking me. It took quite some time to get to a point of owning my sound and being ok with not playing certain venues in order to stay true to who I was and the music that truly inspired me. Lastly, being female seemed to have its own Taboo. I know, it sounds cliche, but in this industry as a girl or woman, you have to prove that you’re not just a pretty face that gets “lucky.” You have to prove yourself through your music taste, mixing skills, drive, dedication, and relationships with other people. Nowadays, it’s more than just a Dj set. It’s “who are you?” and also “what are you doing for our community as a whole?”
The last challenge I would like to mention because I feel it is important for people to know, as well as something that took time for me to learn, was myself. I realized over time that my greatest challenges weren’t external, but my own internal judgments and criticisms of myself. Worrying so much about if others liked my music or my sets, rather than focusing on how I myself felt about it. I was a bit younger and also exploring a whole new world, and this lesson was one of my favorites to have learned by far. What i mean by this is DO YOU by staying true to yourself. This way you grow but your soul also stays intact and you don’t lose sight of why you started in the first place.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
What I do is DJ and Produce music. I play music for clubs and events that are in the Electronic music scene. My life has always been in raves, festivals, and clubs. It’s actually all I’ve ever known, and I am still exploring it more and more every day as an artist.
As a DJ I started out playing mostly just Techno but then started going back to my roots and playing more Trance.
I also fell in LOVE with Electro and Breakbeats a couple of years back, and that has become more of my “sound” and more what I’m known for these days. I definitely have Florida artists to thank for this road to Breaks and Electro because a lot of the legends are from Tampa and Orlando from back in the 90s and early 2000s.
Once I got better at DJing after first starting, my passion for it turned into opening my own little underground club with an ex-partner here in Miami where we also partnered up with a Techno collective called Ground Zero that became a sort of family for me. We were just a bunch of Techno kids that wanted to play and dance all night with our friends.
Thanks to this and surprisingly to the pandemic, I started playing every weekend several nights in a row and gained a lot of momentum during a time when things were barely moving.
I eventually scored a resident spot on a well-known website based in London that was born during the pandemic called Techno Club Net run by Francisco Ferreira (AKA the Advent) and became a host as well where I invite local Miami artists in order to showcase our CIty’s talent.
One of the highlights of my music life has been the opportunity I was given to play a set in Berlin at HOR which is a very well recognized YouTube streaming channel where many really amazing artists known across the globe have shared their music. These experiences plus many more along the way have shaped who I am and where I am at, and I am eternally grateful for each and every one of them. Including all the people that have supported me along the way whether it be dancers, DJs, promoters, venues, etc.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shyda.ofc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Shyda.ofc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVhdrTVqYiw
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/shydamv
Image Credits
Albert Name, Isabella Hassan Di Guccio.
