With one of the most exciting lineups on the North American summer festival circuit, VELD Music Festival is slated to bring in the hottest names in electronic music to Toronto, Canada. Expanding for the first time from two to three days, this year’s rendition welcomes headliners Alesso, Armin Van Buuren, The Chainsmokers, Martin Garrix, Porter Robinson, and Marshmello to the main stage. In addition to their dance-forward lineup, VELD continues to attract a growing audience by expanding their musical curation into other genres, namely hip-hop and rap. This year’s edition also welcomes hip-hop headliners City Girls and Polo G to the bill.
Dancing Astronaut has partnered with VELD Music Festival to giveaway a pair of weekend GA wristbands to one lucky winner to experience the 2022 edition. Taking place from July 29 – 31, 2022, VELD continues to be a must visit festival in Canada and will only continue to grow as the years go on. Dancing Astronaut spoke with Talal Farisi, Music Director of INK Entertainment Group, to understand more about the history of one of Canada’s most celebrated music festivals.
Single day and weekend passes for VELD can be purchased on their website.
How does VELD go about balancing the amount of dance acts vs hip hop acts on the lineup? How has this strategy shifted over the years since the festival’s inception?
While VELD started out primarily as a dance music festival, each year we look for ways to broaden our reach and diversify our audience, to make the festival bigger and better.
Hip-hop felt like a great opportunity given there is already a lot of crossover between the two genres and there is a huge hip-hop fan base in Toronto. We’ve gradually been building on that hip-hop offering each year and now have an entire stage dedicated to the genre.
What are your favorite differences between VELD and other dance music festivals? How do you keep things fresh each year?
As Canada’s largest dance music festival, we always aim to have the most robust line-up, across multiple genres, from EDM and house, to bass and hip-hop. This year we’ve also extended the festival from two to three days, to offer even more music for our fans to enjoy over the long weekend.
Competing with festivals like Lollapalooza the same weekend, how do you address challenges when booking the lineup each year?
We aim to set ourselves apart by securing artists that you don’t typically see on festival line-ups, who don’t tour as much or participate in the festival circuit, that we know will be a draw for a lot of our guests. For example, women are typically underrepresented in both the EDM and hip-hop genres, so made a conscious effort to include more women on our roster for VELD 2022 to ensure representation across the board.
There is also something special about VELD being located in Toronto, as we have acquired the support of the ‘home-town’ crowd that looks forward to VELD every year, which guarantees a great atmosphere and performance experience for the artists on our line-up.
How many people can be expected to attend VELD over the weekend? What kind of attractions can attendees expect this year?
We are expecting around 40,000 people to attend VELD each day. We’ll have our usual attractions, such as our ferris wheel and other fun activations for fans to enjoy.
We have carefully curated a balanced line-up over three stages, with EDM and trance music featured on the mainstage, hip-hop and bass on the second, and house on the third stage, with each one providing a unique viewing experience, from our Sirkus Tent with a more intimate and underground-feel, to the Remy Martin hillside stage with views of the entire festival grounds, and then our main stage which is on par with some of the top festival stages and productions in the world.
Overall though, this year we are just excited to bring the community back together to enjoy an epic few days of music.
Anything you might want to say to someone who is attending VELD Festival for the first time? Or someone who’s never been?
For those attending VELD for the first time, you couldn’t have picked a better year! Not only will this be our biggest festival yet, with three days of incredible artists, but since this will be our first year back since 2019, the atmosphere is going to be electric, above and beyond what we’ve seen and experienced previously, and we are looking forward to celebrating the return of live music and events with everyone next week!
Featured image: Visualbass Photography Team
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