MayaVanya - Two (amazing) Croatian DJ’s
(via facebook)
MayaVanya are two Croatian born sisters who now reside in Auckland (aka New Zealand). And you know what? They’re DJ’s! Yup, they’re DJ’s alright, and no, they’re not twins. I can tell you that. Here’s the story, MayaVanya have been on the DJ’ing scene for a while now and recently entered themselves into the “Let’s Mix - Next Generation DJ” competition.
This competition was filled “with more than 350,000 votes placed on the competing DJ’s by over 190,000 people, NGDJ is officially the world’s biggest ever DJ talent search. The NGDJ jury has spent their last week in isolation, pondering the finalists’ mixes, production skills, overall musicality and artistic potential. And the winner is…” (Let’s Mix)
Well you guessed it
MayaVanya!
Thanks to all of your votes, they won this international competition! There were a lot of big names heading up the judge’s posts:
Deadmau5’s Global Manager - Dean Wilson
VP/GP Ultra Records - David Waxman
DJ/Producer - Sebastian Ingrosso
CEO/Founder Beatport - Jonas Tempel
Head of Marketing Pioneer DJ - Mark Grotefeld
Editor in Chief DJ Mag - Ben Murphy
Click here to see the results.
Click here to see their March Beatport Chart.
A lot of notable figures were involved, and going on to winning this competition was a huge success for the sisters. They produced a gem; a mad crazy cocktail of tribal/tropical/ragga beats. They’ll be mixing up a storm at WMC (Winter Music Conference) in Miami if you’re down there. I know we’ll try to be there!
Check out there interview from the Let’s Mix crew ….
First, of course: Congratulations on winning NGDJ!
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Man we’re pretty stoked to be honest…we DID NOT EXPECT THIS AT ALL can we say. When we got a message from Stefan from Let’s Mix asking if we’ll be available to take a call in 12 hours from now, we just assumed he was ringing all the top 100 finalists.
What do you think it is about your contest submission that made it stand out?
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We still aren’t really sure what we did to get the judge’s attention.
We were hoping mainly to stand out with our originality and creativity and overall fun mixes to listen to…guess that worked?!
– O
ur main thing is to stick to our sound and show what we are into, so what we tried to do with the mix was get as creative as possible and make it a mix made up of a whole heap of samples and loops mixed together with some tracks that we like and felt were appropriate. We were trying to be as creative as possible and picking tracks that we thought would work in a place like Miami.
You will do you first set as NGDJ winners at the DJ Mag party at Miami WMC. Pretty huge. What can people who catch you there expect?
– Well we’ve just literally been informed about being the winners five minutes ago, ha ha..So we’re still digesting all this now! Plus given it’s three am here in New Zealand, we’re thinking we were asleep and when we wake up this didn’t even happen.
But okay, let’s pretend we are ready to take this on and can see ourselves in Miami in a few weeks at the WMC…
You can expect a fun vibe, and to hear music we love to play
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Your style is obviously rooted in classic club music, but you also have a very global sound that caught the jury’s ear. How would you describe your DJ’ing style yourselves?
– Our style is influenced by our cross-cultural nature but also the way we resourse our music, which is the internet!
The fact that music from across the globe is now much more accessible via the internet helps us be able to play around and mix more of all these sounds into our sets and makes our style sound more worldly and global.
And yeah, our love for house and club music influences the way we have put this sound together.
Being two sisters DJ’ing as a duo is not very common – in fact we can’t think of any other sister acts like you.
– That’s one of the interesting elements about us, huh? We are very close and always doing things together but we definitely have our ups and downs…as with anyone that you imagine to be your close family/best friend/work buddy all in one.
How did you get into DJ’ing? And who went first, Maya or Vanya?
– We’ve always been surrounded and involved in music to some degree. As young kids in Croatia our parents always encouraged us to get involved with singing, dancing and learning musical instruments. Vanya used her school choir skills mainly to imitate the likes of Nancy Sinatra and The Beatles, while Maya spent her teenage years in her room with music blasting day and night from pop and hip hop to the club music that was on the radio at the time: Daft Punk, Fat Boy Slim and Groove Armada to name a few.
– Both of us were also regular party goers, while Maya was out making up her mind each weekend between going out to watch hip hop DJ’s scratching or trance DJ’s making her wave her hands in the air in slow motion, Vanya would make sure to never miss the funky jazzy club house music events around town.
The same way DJ’ing came about, as a hobby and then the fascination with the art of it.
Maya got involved with spinning initially, and then soon after we naturally became a duo that we are
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For those just starting out DJing, any words of advice on how to get this kind of thing rolling?
– Ha ha…considering we’re up and comers ourselves it’s hard to know what’s the best advice yet, as we still have alot to learn ourselves!
But one really important element to have in this whole thing is passion about the music and the art of DJ’ing itself. That obviously means being and getting creative and trying to find new ways to mix up music of any genre or style together with different technology to come up with something new and fresh.
Becoming a DJ and wanting to get places by being one has become very competitive recently, every second person you meet is a DJ or in the process of being one. So it’s extremely competitive and not only about being a good DJ in terms of skill and music anymore – it’s also about who you know. So your networking and marketing skills play a big part too.
You seem to have an interesting story behind you: Born in Croatia, now in New Zealand, and so on. How did you end up there?
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We were born in Croatia, went to school there for several years, dealt with the war there for a little bit too. Then our parents, who were always pretty keen globe trotting travelers, decided to head over to New Zealand and see what the land of 50 million sheep was all about. Initially it was more of a long visit, but that turned into a very long visit of well over 10 years now!
So, finally: What’s the best part about winning NGDJ?
– Sounds cheesy, but the endless excitement that we’re dealing with right now!!! We’re especially looking forward to travelling to play at the crazy destinations as Miami WMC and what’s coming after that, and being involved with and influenced by some of the biggest global players in this music’s industry!
Maybe ask us this question again in a few days, after we’ve had some time for it all to sink in, ha ha!
Sweet interview. Anyways, we’re glad we’re good friends with them. They’re resident DJ’s on George.fm in New Zealand every Tuesday night 8-10pm and they’re very very pretty :D. Well since most of you readers our there are from America, it’ll be like 2am Monday nights EST. Pretty late! Check it out sometime though, they’re sweet. So here’s the scoop on their entry mix and the final mix!
Go see them, purchase their stuff on Beatport, I don’t know, download their stuff! :)
First mix.
MayaVanya ‘ajmo na chagu’ Mix made for the Letsmix.com NGDJ Competition by MayaVanya
Final.
MayaVanya ‘The New Sound of Miami’ mix for Letsmix.com NGDJ Comp Final from MayaVanya at Letsmix.com.
John
