As far as excuses for missing a DJ set go, this is probably one of the most amusing stories I’ve come across in quite a while. Business techno DJ Charlotte De Witte – yes, she of the totally pointless “Age Of Love” remix – has taken to Instagram with a tale of woe that results in as much eye rolling as it does with laughter.
She was due to appear at the MDL Beast Soundstorm festival. But apparently, she never turned up – and she’s now offered her excuses. It seems that she kept getting stuck in police road blocks in the city of Riyadh, and by the time she was able to get to the festival, she was over 45 minutes late. Nina Kraviz filled in, although surprisingly few on social media seemed to have noticed.
Anyway, whilst on the subject of why she’d missed her set, she decided to do a Jeff Mills and start talking about what else she’d been doing in Saudi Arabia whilst in the country. The gist of her defence for being there was “I don’t believe that progress can be made by boycotting a nation whose inhabitants are only subjected to what their government decides”.
She appears to have swallowed the same brand of hyped-up pill that Jeff Mills also ingested at some stage. De Witte, like the man who was called The Wizard for many years, seems to think that playing music to the people of Saudi Arabia will inspire social change. And as I’ve said before, this line is as insulting as it is moronic.
Let’s be direct here. The truth, Charlotte, is that you went to Saudi Arabia because they offered you a six-figure sum of money to play. It’s that simple. You just saw the opportunity for a nice pay day – just like you did when you started playing plague raves in the summer of 2020.
Your sole motivation for playing here is money, just like it is for Jeff Mills and the other DJs playing here. The idea that this has anything to do with the ideals of the rave scene in the 1980s is frankly a massive insult to those people who were there – but as the fact Carl Cox is also playing testifies, some of them have clearly forgotten their roots too.
Honestly, this line trotted out by big name DJs that they’re somehow changing the world by travelling around it playing bland music was tired by 1992. Anyone resorting to it now is basically trying to warm up a long dead corpse…
