Today we’d like to introduce you to Kike Roldan.
Kike, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I started my career at the early age of 19, after taking Piano classes in Colombia which inspired him to get into music.
In 2003, after playing in all the major clubs in Bogota (Colombia), I decided to come to Miami looking for a better life and more involvement in the electronic music scene, since in my country those days, a DJ was not a serious career and the salaries were not serious.
Whilst in Miami, Kike started knocking on doors and showing his skills with a natural and patient progression, at first it was almost a struggle as his progressive style of music wasnʼt fashionable at the time. Nobody in the scene helped me, I was rejected from many places, not because of my talent, was because everyone was super jealous and super… and they didn’t want any new guy success.
In 2008, after several attempts, he finally started a production company called ʻSpeaker Box Productionsʼ, helping him bring artists like Marco Carola, Lee Burridge, Steve Lawler, Timo Maas, Omid 16B, SOS amongst many more.
So, in 2010, I have a very bad experience that makes me quit and look for another life and continue working in my daily office job. I lose a lot of money from November to December in a couple of months, because I meet the reality of doing parties in this city!! and how hard and jealous the people are, and how they want you to fail.
So, after that, I decided Miami was the worst place to do something, the scene was managed for a few people, and they didn’t let others grew up and do something. So, I decided to quit. And continue working in an office job that I had at the same time as the DJ promoter job.
After almost a year of been depressed, I met AtomYard, that motivated me to stand up again and start something new from zero. So, Atom started Djing for the first time, and he joined me and we started Speaker Box once again. We start doing our own little events, in different small venues without recognition. We started calling our friends, and we started doing some open-air events to like is small boats for 40 people, and the good thing is that now we do boats with 400 people. Also, we started a gathering on the beach, Collins and 85 st, to celebrate friends birthdays, with 30 people, now we do a party in an Island call Castaway with 700 people.
After many years pushing and working on the scene in 2016/2017, I got a call from Space Club Owner (Emi Guerra) and he offered me a residence at his beautiful Terrace, for me this was one of the best moment in my life since, my dream as a DJ was always to play in this venue. So, I was there working with them for a year till they decided to sell this Brand to a new group of promoters.
Till this day, they have both managed to play with other recognized and respected names in the industry like Hernan Cattaneo, Nick Warren, Marco Carola, Oxia, Danny Howells, Yotto, MAgit Cacoon, Holmar, , Dj T, Satoshi Tomiie, Steve Lawler, Leon, DJ Sneak, Desyn Masiello, Dave Seaman, Omid 16B, SOS, Balcazar & Sordo, Fairmont, Andrew Grant, Mano Le Tough, Guido Schneider , Djuma Soundsystem, 16 Bit Lolitas, Chaim, Till Von Sein, Francesca Lombardo, Christian Loffler, among many other great artist and DJs.
Currently, Kike Roldan is one of the most in-demand names in Miami (USA), seeing the past year as his most successful so far.
For the last three years, I participated in many festivals around Florida like Okeechobee Festival, III Points, Rapture Festival, Wynwood Life Festival, HOC festival, Love Burn, and a few more.
With a full diary almost every weekend, it’s no surprise Kike regularly plays clubs like Space, Bardot, Treehouse, Mansion, Floyd, Trade, Nocturnal, Coconut Grove, Vagabond, Wynwood Factory, Do not sit on the furniture, Electric Pickle, 1800 Lucky, Barter and all the venues in Miami, also private events including some of the most talked about boat/island parties like CASTAWAY and ON DECK.
With his charisma and unique sound, a dash of humor and not taking life too seriously, Kike Roldan has certainly made Speaker Box an influential and relevant brand in the electronic dance music circuit.
It’s hard being an immigrant, coming to a new city and try to survive in Miami, in this scene. If you can do that, you will easily succeed in any other city in the world.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
No, it’s been super hard, took me almost 14 years to get where I am…
In 2010, my older brothers lend me a good amount of money to make Speaker Box Productions bigger and go to the next level, and unfortunately, I make some bad rookie decisions plus I was going against the big Clubs proposing different options to the city. And because of this there was a guy, that I don’t want to mention, that had a club in downtown those days and used to manage the Police in the area and he did everything he could to shut down two events that I put together, the first one was with Steve Lawler and his Viva Music Tour, for the first time in Miami, we had a party building in Wynwood in a warehouse, before Wynwood was amazing as today. At that time, I wanted to do an underground party in an underground place, so I decided to do it at Soho Studios, so I got all the permits, police, fire marshals, liquor license, city permits, etc. But this guy sent another group of officers he used to managed and they came to my party at 113o pm and while they asked me to show them the permits and they realized my permits were good they shut down the music for an hour and that makes my crowd and the people arriving leave the party making me lose a lot of money!!!!
The second one was planned on Wednesday from Thanksgiving week, at another club in the Downtown area, for this one I had Lee Burridge, Timo Maas, Michael Kleis and a few more, and I decided to do it that Wednesday because usually there were no clubs opening that day in the area. So, when I posted my party, two weeks before the date this other club decided for the first time to open the same day, and they booked Marco Carola, within two weeks prior to the date and I know they pay a lot of money to him, just to cancel his event in Europe and come and play that day, and they put the tickets for free. And not only happy with that, but they also send the same police squad and they arrested the owner of the club where I was doing my second event as soon as we open.
So, one more time, I failed and lose the rest of the money I had left.
Most of the struggles were because in this scene everybody is jealous, they don’t like to work as a team to make things bigger, they just want to monopolize all the business.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Speaker Box Productions and Castaway – what should we know?
Well, I do many things all related to the Music Industry.
First, I’m a DJ, music lover, love to do things with music, share my taste and my experience thru the music, and make people forget their problems, heal their worries, make them happy at least for a moment using the music.
Second, I’m an event planner, music promoter, I do parties, I create them, I connect people. Both of these are connected together.
People really know me as a Dj, and because I create my own label production company called Speaker Box, and because I do one of the most emblematic parties in Miami call Castaway, and the boat parties too. Our slogan is #thinkoutsidetheclub, we are always looking to do events out of the clubs, day or night events but open-air venues.
What is your favorite childhood memory?
Well, there are so many. My childhood was really nice, thanks to my parents, but there is one music, that I loved the most, it was when my parents put me in Piano Classes and didn’t like them at all since the music I was learning was old music, neither classical music. It was a Spanish Latin old music, haha, so I used to hate it, but that makes me get more in love with music and understand how music was made. So, I think that was a good moment in my life.
All the memories of my childhood are really amazing, I grew up in an amazing family, and for me, that is the most important thing in life!!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.djkikeroldan.com (under renovation)
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kikeroldan
https://www.facebook.com/kikeroldandj/
https://www.facebook.com/SPKRBX/
https://www.facebook.com/castawayoff/ - Instagram:@djkikeroldan, @speakerboxmiami, @castawayoff
- Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Image Credit:
Javier Romero, Diego Ramirez
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