Hitting the decks at Ultra SA

HOWARD SACKSTEIN

It was not just the deejays who attracted the crowds. With rain pelting down in Cape Town, party animal Dean Immermann became an overnight social media sensation when he produced a bottle of shampoo and washed his hair while dancing in the pouring rain. A video of Immermann’s stunt, in the parched Mother City, has now been watched more than 180 000 times on Facebook. 

Ultra SA is the brainchild of King David school alumni Shaun Duvet and Tony Feldman. Says Duvet: “With Tony, we had been producing large-scale events for many years and when the possibility of bringing Ultra to South Africa came about, we met with the global team and automatically clicked. The rest is history.”

Ultra began in Miami in 1999. Today the Ultra circuit moves between Cape Town, Johannesburg, Korea, Singapore, Tokyo, Mexico City, Bogotá, India and Australia.

While no Jews graced the main stage during Ultra 2018 – unlike previous years when Jewish superstar David Guetta headlined the show – three Jewish deejays played the smaller Samsung and Resistance stages.

With sweeping lasers, exploding fireworks and confetti cannons bombarding the audience, revellers crowdsurfed the moshpit aloft inflatable flipflop-shaped lilos.

DJ Abby Nurock opened the Resistance stage with a magical set of EDM. Says Nurock: “Playing at Ultra was an incredible experience for me. I’ve been going to Ultra fests around the world since I can remember, so being asked to play at one was an honour. For me, the highlight was being able to appear on the same line-up as some of my heroes. It was humbling, to say the least!”

Asked about Duvet and Feldman, Nurock says, “The organisers are top of their game. They demand the highest respect as they are kings of their realm. It isn’t an easy task to get something of this magnitude right, especially targeting the ‘more conservative and fickle’ South African crowd.”

So, how do you break it to your parents that their nice Jewish daughter wants to be a professional deejay? “My parents still don’t really believe I’m a full-time deejay,” says Nurock. “It’s hard to understand that it can actually be taken as a serious vocation. But they are very supportive towards my happiness.”

One of the big surprises of the Ultra Samsung stage was Gil Glaze, the rising-star Swiss deejay, scion of South African parents who live in Zurich.

Playing Ultra SA has been a career highlight for Glaze. “To be able to play in the city where my parents grew up is amazing. To be able to stand on that stage and imagine my parents there years and years ago standing in that crowd… For my parents, they can’t even believe this.”

Another of Glaze’s highlights is playing every summer in Lithuania, from where his grandparents escaped. To play in an area where Jews were killed, he says, is “incredible”.

“Here’s a Jewish guy, standing on a stage in front of all of these Lithuanians who, years ago, didn’t have much respect for Jews. It’s incredible. And now, being able to tell my parents I have played in Lithuania and in their home town in South Africa, I’m checking everything off the bucket list.”

Glaze’s parents have been supportive since day one. His mother was a ballerina and has an ear for music. However, they insisted that their son study, and so Glaze is a graduate of New York University, where he studied both music and the business of music. He shot to fame in 2012 when DJ Tiësto played one of his tracks on his radio show. Guetta and Hardwell soon followed suit. Glaze also toured Australia with the Chainsmokers and counts this among his career highlights.

His big Ultra break came when he realised that Feldman had been at school with his cousin. Jewish geography allowed Samantha Silverman to do an introduction.

The third Jewish deejay on stage was Guy Herman.

Duvet sums up Ultra SA 2018: “The energy from the fans was incredible. Everything was taken to another level. Of course, there were the deejay sets, with Black Coffee doing an incredible job and Armin van Buuren, who brought the rain to Cape Town.”