THE WHITE PANDA play KAABOO Del Mar Festival Sep. 18
Mashup kings DJ Griffi and Procrast of The White Panda will bring their high-energy live act to the inaugural KAABOO Fest at the Del Mar Racetrack and Fairgrounds on Sep. 18.
Over the past six years, The White Panda have achieved massive online fame, releasing 32 No. 1 singles on Hype Machine and collecting more than 50 million SoundCloud streams. Within two years of their formation, the duo became one of SoundCloud’s top five most streamed artists.
The group brings a wealth of festival experience to KAABOO having performed at other festivals like Lollapalooza, Firefly, Bamboozle and Electric Zoo. The duo has also shared the stage with an endless number of prominent artists like Steve Aoki, Mac Miller, Tiesto and Flo Rida.
Concert Guide Live talked to The White Panda about their decision to offer their music for free online, the importance of standing out in a sea of active DJs and the most surreal moment they’ve had on tour.
CONCERT GUIDE LIVE: All of your music is available for no cost on your website. In a day and age where millionaire artists are complaining about losing money to free downloads, why have you decided to allow your music to be accessed for free?
THE WHITE PANDA: Three reasons. One: we appreciate everyone that listens and supports us. We don’t want to put a price tag on that. Two: what better way to get your music widely distributed than to offer it for free? At no cost to download, there’s very little reason to not try out White Panda and see if you like us. Three: much of our music contains samples. Sampling is a grey area in copyright law and asking for money in exchange for sample-based content without paying the rights-holders would be a dangerous game.
CGL: Have you ever received any type of feedback from the artists you’ve remixed?
WP: All the time. It’s usually just a thumbs up or a retweet or something of that nature, but it’s always good to hear from the artists. They’re the people we’re ultimately trying to do justice, so if they’re happy, we’re happy.
CGL: How do you differentiate your music from the endless number of DJs releasing music online?
WP: The quality of the production. There are a million people releasing electronic music online these days, but a lot of it just flat-out isn’t any good. Keeping your production tight and being able to write strong catchy melodies is what gets your tracks noticed.
CGL: I think there is a common misconception that mash-up music involves little-to-no musical talent. What would your response be to those people with this idea in their head?
WP: I understand why people think that, but what it really requires is a different talent than original production. Now that we’ve dabbled in both of those arenas, it’s even more clear to us. It takes a really developed ear to be able to assess exactly which tracks will work well together. It’s not as simple as just matching BPM and Key Signature. And on top of that, you need to release mixes that millions of people will like in order to be successful in this business. Having enough knowledge of the current musical environment, and sufficiently good taste to be able to achieve that is also no easy task.
CGL: In 10 words or less, give us a description of what a White Panda live show experience is like?
WP: Exhilarating, loud, sweaty, bright, colorful, harmonious, unifying, love, energy and pandas.
CGL: What has been the most surreal moment for you guys while on tour?
WP: Tough to say. We’ve been to a lot of places and seen a lot of crazy things. Probably when we took the stage at Lollapalooza in 2012. We had an early set time and weren’t expecting very many people to even be at the festival at that point, let alone show up for our show. But somehow we amassed a crowd of about 15,000, the largest we’d ever played at that time, and seeing them rock out to our music in front of our home city’s skyline was pretty unbeatable.