01/10/2026
❤️❤️ THE UNIFYING FORCE OF MUSIC ❤️❤️
💃🏽🌍 ☮️✌🏼🕊️
Hello, Dancing Friends. It's been a heavy week on the global affairs front, and there have been tears. I wanted to end the week on a bit of a happier note and to share a little personal stuff. Indulge me, would you?
A little more than a quarter century ago, I was wooed into this magical electronic music scene about 12,000 km away, early on in what would become a decade of travelling and living abroad. The music was hypnotic, transcendental, uplifting, powerful, yes. Something more exciting than the electronic music I had been dancing to since the early 90s. But what really captured my heart was realizing the diversity of the crowd. People of all walks of life, ages, ethnicities, styles, they were all there, smiling and dancing together on that sandy dancefloor. I was hooked. That day/night changed my life forever, and exponentially elevated the quality of people in my world.
Over the years, I've been lucky to experience some of the biggest OG festivals and the smallest, sweetest little parties in forests and on beaches, in farmlands, and in cities. Over and over, I see the same thing: the unifying force that is electronic music. It's as though we recognize each other, even though we may be strangers in strange, far-off lands. All one family.
The last time I was at the Boom Festival in Portugal, I worked 12 days in a row managing the Lost and Found at the Info Stand (that's a whole hilarious book in itself). On the last night, they shut down the Alchemy Circle and all the other little stages, so everyone, EVERYONE, was overflowing out of the one gigantic main stage. Between guests and staff, there were almost 40,000 people there, get this, from 187 COUNTRIES. There are only 195 countries in the world. That means 96% of the nations on this planet were represented there ON ONE DANCEFLOOR. No words, just powerful beats, weaving this unbelievable thread between each and every one of us, all pulsating to the exact same rhythm. Every colour in the rainbow. People from warring nations dancing together, smiling together, hugging each other, sharing together, changing the world together. It was jaw-dropping and awe-inspiring, and everywhere I looked, people were moved to joyful tears.
I truly believe that music and dancing in this beautiful scene have contributed so much to deeper understanding, compassion, love, joy, connection, empathy, kindness, and yes, ultimately to a greater degree of WORLD PEACE. This is why I am here. This is why I play music. This unifying force is more powerful than we can imagine. WE ARE ONE.
There's a really cool function on Soundcloud. It allows us to see where people around the world are listening to our music. It's one of the coolest things ever. In the past two years, it just tickles me so much to see that my sets have reached people in 50 countries, in every corner of the globe! Check it out in the visuals. Okay, still 145 nations to go, but you have to admit this is so freaking cool.
Let us keep dancing together, keep bringing more diversity into our dancefloors, keep loving each other and hugging each other. Even in hard times, remember that we are making the world a far better place, every time we come together to dance. Hard times call for furious dancing.
https://soundcloud.com/balenciamusic
