Kaballah Circus Festival in Brazil

If you are traveling to Brazil around May, Kaballah Circus is one of the best options in São Paulo area. It is when they celebrate birthday with a wide range of attractions. This year Deep in NY covered it`s 10th edition and it was not only insane, but the organization proved one more time it`s professionalism.

Main Stage. Photo by Guilherme Ramos

Some years ago Brazilian scene was taken by Psytrance. Then it came Progressive, Electro… and that`s how Kaballah started. It was a tiny rave in a small farm in Campinas, around 100 km far away from São Paulo and an area from where emerged some of the most prominent Brazilian artists. Parallel to this, some Techno parties were popping around. But they would never mix.

As well as the whole scene in Brazil, Kaballah grew up and not only was pioneer adding a Techno stage, but today it is considered one of the best most diverse electronic-music-only festivals in the country. On it`s 10th anniversary celebration, the event presented an innovative line up in Brazil and brought two different publics dancing 20 hours on May 4th to May 5th, 2013. It didn`t left the psychedelic side: the “Psychedelic Circus” stage brought big names of the genre such as GMS, Liquid Soul, Son Kite. The main stage brought electro-progressive-pop with Dirth South, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Wolfgang Gartner, Felguk, among others.

But the reason why I was there are this two stages: Techno Heroes and House Parade. Because it took place for the first time at the giant Brazilian amusement park Hopi Hari in Vinhedo, close to São Paulo, the four stages were ideally separated, so it was impossible to cover everything and I turned to what makes my heart pump. Each tribe was very well represented in it`s own space. Pretty much like this: Hands-up-teenagers at one side; older kids on another and party started!

The scenery of old villages and amusement rides gave the event a retro-intimate-colorful-fun ambiance which was fantastic. And the gigs provided the most diverse emotions in the middle of lights, the huge ferris wheel (which gave a little bit of a “Tomorrowland” feeling), roller coaster and many other fun and original rides. At the time I arrived a Brazilian artist from that area who is filling international cases with good productions, Glen Faedo, was finishing his gig with Tale of Us track “Another Earth”. Later on he announced his first Europe tour in June starting in Barcelona and passing through Berlin, Paris and Portugal.

“It is incredible how Kaballah grew up nationally. I can’t point a better festival than this one in Brazil, everything is very well thought: the line up, organization, the structure… And personally I am on the best moment of my career”, he told Deep in NY in an exclusive interview that you can read here soon.

At the “Justice League” – the park is ilustrated by themes – Eliana Iwasa, another highly sought Brazilian DJ who plays frequently in Europe, put the Techno gears down in the midle of Saturday afternoon. She just released a mix album at Entourage Label, that also produces the festival. She participated of the beginning of the event: “This is the 6th time I play on Techno stage and this year the festival was packed very early, so it was a huge crowd going insane. A highlight of my gig was when I played Josh Wink track ‘Balls’. I think Kaballah has always been in the front roll musically and artistically, because it is made by who really understand about music”, she told us in an exclusive interview that you will be able to read here soon.

While on the “Psychedelic Circus” there were rumors of some artists playing with pre-recorded set and jumping on the DJ booth, on the Techno Herores DJ Murphy showed how to drive people crazy scratching with four decks on a back to back with Mandraks – between Popof and Christian Smith gigs.

As a Techno-girl and being Green Velvet destroyng a dark-funky gig right after the strong Victor Ruiz set, I would never leave that space, specially because walking from one stage to another was not the most exciting thing to do for me -, excepted for one thing: Kink! at the House Parade. His live bears enough equipments, frequencies and carries a lot of the meaning of his own artistic name, to be able to teleport people to another plan. He was the artist I was most expecting to see – and he even surprised me!

Then Butch drove the dance floor to a more intimate-slow but still patchy atmosphere. Definitely interesting, but I needed some more beats so I went to see Sven Vath, who has asked to play two more hours at the festival! So from 4 to 8 am the long corridor were wrapped by his usual Techno variations a-la-Vath and I can`t really say he surprised me, cause his sharp-smooth-dense-fresh-classic-stripped (yes, so many elements) journey switched from some slow movements to good club oriented beats – and I have seen him doing this before. But undoubtly he turns the dance-floor into the best experience. The sun rising was “a plus”. At this time we were all dancing so happy and thinking that it`s not easy to have all this many good techno-house experience in Brazil so often, in one unique space. The bad thing are the high prices of drinks, food and so, as almost everything in Brazil. But if you are spending in Dollars or Euros, it shouldn’t be a big deal. For Brazilians who earn and spend Reais, it is an absurd comparing to big festivals in other countries. But it is the way it is…

The thing is: this line up was most possible because of the other more commercial stages. Putting more than 20,000 people together in a very organized festival, with a not-so-much-obvious line up is not the ea$iest thing in Brazil. They just announced next year location at Hopi Hari again. Hopefully the line up will be even more sassy :)