Touring with Tune Raider

Hi there, my name is Pamm Legg, better known as DJ Tune Raider. In Europe a female DJ is called a Djane; I don’t really dig that terminology but seeing as I’m going to be doing a two week tour of Portugal and Spain, I probably better get used to it.

For those of you who don’t know me or my music, let me bring you up to speed. I have been DJ-ing in South Africa for nearly ten years. I have played all the big Psy-trance outdoor festivals, I also had the pleasure of playing all around South Africa and in playing my part in the journey of South African trance culture.

The South African Trance scene originated in Cape Town and is where most of the festivals take place creating its very own subculture. Trance exists in and around Jozi, PE, Jeffrey’s bay and all along the Garden Route but Cape Town is where it’s at. We have some of the best events in Cape Town and are rated quite high on the global scale.

In 2009 I released my own documentary titled, ‘Under the African Sky’. The film captures the first ten years of Psy-trance culture in SA. It deals with who was responsible for bringing it here, without realising the machine it would soon grow into.

My tour. I am very honoured to have been invited to go to Portugal. I am the first female Psy-trance DJ to be flown over to Europe to play, so I’m proudly South African all the way. It has been a long time dream of mine to play over in Europe. I look forward to the travel experience and the opportunity to meet new people and experience different cultures. The beauty about Psy-trance is that you get to travel to remote venues and see a parts of a country you wouldn’t normally see.

I embarked on my journey on Wednesday the 15th of February, going from the South African hot summer, to a chilly Portugal. Why would I go play Trance parties in the winter in Portugal? Well in February they have a massive carnival where people run around in masks, it’s said that this is Portugal crazy festive time. I know that the gig I play at on the 20th is held in a big boat, and is a massive fancy dress party, should be totally wild!

My gigs start in Algarve on the 18th at the ‘Nostradamus’ B-day party held in a secret location, with DJ Anestetic, Delta, D_maniac & guests. After that we go to the boat party on the 20th held by the Quest4goa and Samavada, where I will be playing along side Nutek’s Mekkanica, Sub-zero, Djane Ganiesha and guests.

On the 24th we venture up the mountains to Covilho for an all girls party with the DJ line up from Magnetika agency held at an indoor venue named, Companhia Club. The next day we hop on a plane and Djane Ganiesha and I play at a party in Barcelona Spain. We spend three days there, after that I then start my journey home back to sunny South Africa.

This should be a crazy experience and hopefully a way to meet people for my summer Euro tour which I am planning for June – Sept with Portugals Djane Ganiesha, but more about that later!

xxx Love & light xxx

TR

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DAY ONE:

Well here we are… ten years of DJ missioning and working really hard in the South African Psy-Trance scene, and now my overseas tour is finally here. I’m feeling so many different emotions, I wanna laugh, cry and jump up and down with crazy excitement… obviously. I am female.

Before I left for my trip I received my new Oakley Sunglasses they are so awesome… and you could win a pair too, yay!

Firstly I had a stop over in Istanbul Turkey for a few hours and then on to Lisbon Portugal. Everyone that I have spoken to about Lisbon has told me what an amazing city it is, and that I will love it. So yes, I am really looking forward to seeing the city and its sites, meeting new people, eating food and of course the parties!!!

It’s strange when one hasn’t left SA for a while, you tend to forget that there is a big world out there, and that people and cultures are just so different to us. Of course I stick out like a sore thumb at the airport, especially in a foreign country like Turkey where women don’t necessarily travel alone.

I forget that it’s very much a man’s world here. Being the kind of person I am I do struggle with that, when I look at some of these arrogant men. They look at me funny probably because of the clothes I’m wearing and the fact that I am travelling alone. At least I have my new Oakley’s sunglasses to hide behind.

I cant help but to laugh to myself at the memories of how I can rock a dance floor at an outdoor, spinning magic and not being a typical house wife when I get the weird looks. Why is it that in the 21^st Century women are still fighting to be heard and respected?

We are not seen as equal in all parts of the world that’s for sure. I think in the least, we should respect each others differences and similarities. Sitting at the transfers one tends to think of these things.

Got some new music and I intend to be spinning some SA tunes in my sets, come on I have to! Even though I intend to be doing some serious ”Tune Raiding”, while I’m here and bring home what’s being played here in Europe, to tantalize our SA dance floors. Can’t wait.

xxx Love & light xxx

TR

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DAY TWO:

Adventure. Myself, Mica, Ricardo and Joao started off our journey by eating an early lunch a little café in ‘Sinta’ a traditional village with tiny cobbled streets and laundry hanging out of the upstairs apartment windows. Most of the buildings also have painted tiles next to the front doors. So Quirky.

The mouth watering smells coming from the bakeries were out of this world. It’s just like the movies where you have old people in cafés watching the world go by from their windows.

The fact that the cars drive on the other side of the road is something that I’m still getting used to. After the village experience we missioned to the ‘Palacio da Pena’ (Palace) and the Contessa’s gardens. There it is legend that a prince created this garden for his true love by sailing around the world to bring back rare plants, but she went for his brother instead. Poor guy, what a rip off!

We walked through the ”woods” to the highest point to check the views, my God what a mission, the boys practically dragged me up. When we got to the top it was well worth the view.

The attention to detail in the architecture is fascinating and there are sporadic natural water fountains to drink from everywhere, most of them are a few 100 years old. So medieval.

Joao took us to a traditional bakery called the ‘pastei de nata – belem’ famous for their baked custard, holy sh*t possibly the most divine thing I ever tasted! We finished the day off with a sunset drink by the beach. I know, superb.

Tonight myself, Valac, Anestetic, Delta and D-Maniac will drive to a town called Algarve and play at the ‘Nostradamaus Bday party‘. We are going to stay at a resort or something we need to rest before we play. Most of us are on after 1am, not to fret, the party only gets going after then anyway. Looking forward to it and to be honest I’m actually quite nervous.

xxx Love & light xxx

TR

South Attack by VaLaC OneFootGroove
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Day THREE & FOUR

On Saturday night we drove quite far from Lisbon to Algarve, which is a small costal village like three hours away. The Venue was on a small farm, we missed the turn off a few times, can you believe that? But we finally arrived, to be greeted by the guy who was throwing the event.

Nostradamus is the name of the promoter and he has been doing parties in Portugal for fourteen years, so it had a really cool old school feel. Nice.

The party was small but vibing, everyone had a great time. I played my set at 5am ( Yep 5am) and rocked it! I gave them all the SA ‘gees’ I could, and it seemed liked they were loving it.

Now I’m off to Porto for the ‘Carnival‘ event, I’m meeting the lovely Raquel (Djane Ganeisha). It is carnival time, all the little children in the street are dressed up in costumes, it is so very cute. Once I arrived Raquel and I went shopping, yay!

Then we had dinner with the organisers, Pedro Matias from Quest4Goa, Pedro & Carolina from Samaveda, Nikka- Mekkanika (Nutek artits) and Raquel. The Party was on a boat, the dancefloor literally submerged in water, so it kinda gave a weird vibration with the sound. Defintely an interesting experience.

It wasn’t a packed out party, I enjoyed it though, had a rad set. I’m told that the reason it wasn’t full is because there were four parties happening just in the Porto area.

This is a major problem for the scene and the promoters, as no one communicates or respects each others dates, so someone generally loses out. I’m definitely grateful to know that at home our scene is strong. Our love for it needs to be maintained and respected. We have a really good thing going. This just reminds me why I love Cape Town! Tomorrow Raquel and I will hit the streets of Porto for more adventures and of course some shopping!

xxx Love & light xxx

TR

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DAY FIVE & SIX

The day after the Party, we all stayed in bed and mega chilled, ordered a massive pizza and ate chocolate pudding, so good to relax, you know like on a Sunday but on Tuesday.

Wednesday is shopping day, been so looking forward to this. Raquel lives on a hill, which is quite the walk to the bus station but the transport system is brilliant. I wish we had that at home, so convenient.

Firstly we walked the ‘Santa Catarina’ street which is the center of Porto. I was in heaven, even though the shops are modern and fashionable, the buildings are old and rustic. Some of the walls are tiled with patterns and colours and I find it really fascinating.

The attention to detail in the old architecture of the buildings is divine.

Next we had a sushi lunch which definitely sealed the ultimate girls shopping day, its weird to see the Japanese restaurant hosts speaking Portuguese. Wow, the mission home from the malls with all the bags was like walking home from a trance party, we totally collapsed onto the couch, shew!

Tomorrow Raquel will be taking me on the tourist tour. Yep, it has to be done. I hope to see the cultural and historical side of Porto. Perhaps we will do a little bar mission in the evening, apparently the port here is a must try.

xxx Love & light xxx

TR

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DAY SEVEN & EIGHT

Today was a typical tourist day, we started off with a mission into the centre of Porto to the big churches and towers as Raquel likes to call them, again the architecture is beautiful, the town square is the business district and is massive.

The one thing that I noticed is that there are little tables and chairs sporadically placed in the square for the general public to sit on, almost like a cafe. They must be put there by the city council or something. Next we missioned through the gardens and the center of town, the narrow streets and apartment buildings are typically European, and exactly how I imagined it.

They are all built on a slope, and almost every street has an old women sweeping the area of her door way off the street.

Once we got down to the ‘River Douro’, I get a better understanding of Porto’s city lay out from there./ I bought some typical touristy things to take home.

After that we did some more shopping, and we finished off the day with the traditional drink Port, so good, warms you up from the inside out.

We chilled for the evening because we have a massive mission ahead of us, Friday evening we are playing in Covilha at the ‘Mystika Vol II’ which is a Magnetika Agency event. After that it’s the long mission to Barcelona where we will play the ‘Sinful and Magnetika agency party – Psygirls Unite Party’.

Magnetika Agency is an all female DJ agency run by Raquel (Djane Ganiesha) and Nilza (Djane Tamiris) based in Portugal.

xxx Love & light xxx

TR

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The Final Weekend

Friday early evening Raquel, Pedro, Carolina (both from Samavada) and I embarked on a 3 hour drive from ‘Porto’ to ‘Covilha’ for our gig at club Companhia.

The club is apparently one of the best clubs in Portugal, it’s really fancy and has awesome sound to play on. They even have a dressing room back stage, which is unusual to see in a night club, maybe it’s because MTV does a lot of parties there.

The best part for us was when the club owner remarked to Raquel that this party, is a how a party should be, and when can she come back to do another one?! When we arrived I went straight to our hotel room to rest before my set. I was on from 4-6am, that’s like prime time in Europe, as people only come out to party at 1 or 2am. I know sounds crazy, but it’s great how different it is to how we do it in SA.

The crowd was really responsive and looked like they had a jol the whole night dancing to all three of us DJanes play. Straight after the party, we took down the décor and drove back to Porto. Raquel and I rested for a few hours, then made a taxi mission to the airport. We took a plane to Spain where we were meeting up with DJane Moira who was hosting the party.

For dinner we were taken to the main street in Barcelona city, it was humming with activity, people from all over the world just walking around, drinking, eating and partying even though it was late winter. Once we were fed, both Raquel and I were feeling the fact that we only had like three or four hours sleep, and the only place for us to rest was the floor of a van, with a blanket parked at the back of the club. And this we did.

We had to rough it because we were running out of time to rest before our sets, we were warrior women that night. We pushed on through our exhaustion to give the Barcelona party an awesome two hour banging set each.

We literally crawled out of the club at sunrise so ready for bed which only came at about 10am. Later that afternoon we missioned into the city centre for a bit of the tourist experience, trying not to think about our exhaustion we kept on going. One of the attractions I enjoyed was seeing independent street theatre, my favourite was a guy playing a piano and an old couple ball room dancing circled by the cheering crowd, so cute.

We had an expensive tapas dinner with sangria’s of course and we felt satisfied with our Spanish experience. The next morning was the longest journey back to Porto, and then a couple of hours later a train to Lisbon, where Joao (Anestetic) took me for my final tour of the city, so beautiful at night, I will miss that.

Now I have reached the end of my tour, it has been the most insane experience, meeting different people and seeing how the European trance scene works. Playing for non South African crowds for the first time, was not easy, but with all the love and support from all of you at home, I definitely gave them a taste of the SA gees! Mission accomplished.

Thank you so much to Raquel, Joao and everyone else involved for making my first tour of Europe possible, love you guys ‘lank’!

Lastly I would like to just add that we in SA have an amazing trance scene and its up to us to remember why we all do it. This includes the artists, DJs, party promoters, stall holders and especially the people on the dance floor. We need to keep our parties real, alive with love, light & of course good old fashioned gees.

xxx Love & light xxx

TR

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