The 15th annual Voodoo Music + Arts Experience will be held this weekend in New Orleans with some of the biggest names in music performing in City Park. With electronic dance music gaining popularity in the past couple of years, many of the big-name acts at this year’s festival are DJs.
This year, music blog Earmilk.com teamed up with Voodoo for VooDuel, a talent search for one lucky DJ to play a set at the festival. DJs submitted a 30-minute minimum live mix and fans were able to vote online for their favorite one.
To avoid a popularity contest, Voodoo and Earmilk created a panel of judges to listen to the 10 mixes that received the most votes and ultimately chose the winner based on their expert opinions.
Out of 75 DJs who submitted mixes to the contest, 24-year-old Jay Fernell from Carencro, near Lafayette, was named the winner.
“I have always dreamed of playing at a major festival, so this is like a dream come true for me,” Fernell said. “It makes it even more special to me because not only is this my first festival, but I will be performing on the same stage three hours before Calvin Harris, who is one of my favorite artists.”
Fernell said he always had a passion for music, making his own hip-hop beats in middle school. During high school, his friend was a DJ and would sometimes play Fernell’s tracks while DJing in Lafayette, which made Fernell realize he’d rather be playing his own music than listening to it in the crowd, he said.
Fernell began DJing at venues in the Lafayette area at 18, but his career truly took off when he moved to New Orleans in 2012, he said. The ample amount of venues that cater to house music, his genre of choice, and the huge house music following in the New Orleans area really helped to get his name out there, Fernell said.
House music, a genre of electronic dance music, has always been Fernell’s passion, he said, because he finds it soothing and euphoric. Originating in Chicago in the 1980s, house music is becoming mainstream and Fernell said it’s even being called “feel good music” because it makes people happy and doesn’t contain explicit language.
By focusing on house music, Fernell has set himself apart from other DJs who bounce around from one EDM genre to the next. This helped to build Fernell’s following because he has worked to perfect a specific genre, he said.
The night the winner was announced, Fernell said he assumed he didn’t win because he didn’t receive an email and was competing against bigger name DJs. The next morning, he woke up in shock as he read the email congratulating him on winning the contest.
“I remember taking my iPhone out of my pocket and reading the subject line on the email that said, ‘Congratulations,’” Fernell said. “At that point my heart dropped. I read the email several times before I even said a word; I was just blown away that I had won the chance for such an opportunity.”
Fernell will play at the LePlur Stage at 2:40 p.m. on Friday.
“I remember taking my iPhone out of my pocket and reading the subject line on the email that said, ‘Congratulations,’ … at that point my heart dropped. I read the email several times before I even said a word; I was just blown away that I had won the chance for such an opportunity.”