Ryan Gawn: Pete Tong, this is your third time here in Buenos Aires -
you've been here for Creamfields and the South American Music Conference. Can you tell me a little bit about those events and Argentina?
Pete Tong: I think Argentina is one of the main destinations in South
America. A load of my friends were coming down here and just raving
about Pachá in particular. I felt I knew a lot about here before I
ever came here and it's quite ironic that I've never got to play the
club that everyone's talked about, but that's just the way it's been
so far - I've never played Pachá Buenos Aires. I also think that I
knew about it through my experiences in Ibiza, as there are a lot of
people from South America there, and just getting to know different
characters helped me get to know the place. I kind of felt that I
already knew what I was getting into when I first arrived in
Argentina. Creamfields was great, I got looked after really well and
played before Hernan Cattaneo.
Ryan Gawn: Was it what you expected?
Pete Tong: Pretty much, yeah. I think out of all the places in the
world I've played, the Argentinean crowd is the closest to the Spanish
/ Ibiza crowd. And then when I played the South American Music
Conference it was great. It was well-attended, and I thought that in
their first year it was great. I had a few issues with the technical
way it was set up - for some reason, even though I was top of the
bill, I ended up playing the side room instead of the main room, I
don't know why that was, but other than that I thought the event was
good.
Ryan Gawn: What do you think about the South American music industry?
What are they contributing to the international scene?
Pete Tong: I think at the moment it's still quite limited. I think
that events like the South American Music Conference give more
exposure to what's going on down here, and the first successes are
obviously Marky from Brazil and Hernan from Argentina. They have
definitely been contributing and providing more talent to the world
stage, given the size of the market. It's early days, it's a positive
start. It's an amazing destination, I love Argentina and fell in love
Brazil as well. They really are great places to play.
Ryan Gawn: Why do you think Radio 1 chose Skolbeats and Brazil for their first live Essential
Mix from South America, instead of
perhaps the South American Music Conference in Argentina?
Pete Tong: I think it's a very expensive thing to do when you take
the radio station abroad like that and I think, first and foremost,
that it's a public service radio station funded by the public and
every time we go abroad we have to feel that it can really be
justified. I think it's simply a thing of merit and the right time in
the market for Skolbeats. It's been running for six years, and so it
has the right to be covered in the same way as Sonar was in Spain. I
think English listeners want the kind of romance and journey of going
to exotic places and I think it takes time. The South American Music
Conference was the first one and it's currently in its formative
years, so who knows what the future holds.
Ryan Gawn: You are aware of the nightclub fire here in Buenos Aires
in December and the subsequent clamp-down by the authorities on venues
- can you see how that has affected the industry here?
Pete Tong: Yeah, massively. I think it's devastating. Obviously there
are issues that needed to be tackled out here. It's not that Buenos
Aires has been singled out or victimized, I think that any city in the
world that had to encounter that kind of incident, would respond the
same. It doesn't really matter whether one person dies or it's as
horrific as it was here where 200 people died, but it does take
something like that to shake people into action and sort things out. I
remember growing up in London and probably one of the most notorious
fires was actually at a house party in South London, and that changed
a lot of things concerning how clubs were licensed, fire limits and
fire law etc. What Buenos Aires is experiencing now is probably a very
severe knee-jerk reaction to try and correct things. I'm sure most
people that go to clubs in Buenos Aires would feel that 90% of what's
being done is unfair, but that's what happens. It's tough. I didn't
realize until I got here that Pachá was still closed.
