Interview with the Wonder Manage team

Wonder Manage has been working for more than a decade in the music world on Italian territory, dealing specifically with Scouting, Promotion, Management, Booking. Today, Wonder Manage now has a roster of top-level acts and talents that have recently completed the brilliant organization of a festival in the Archaeological Park of Selinunte, Sicily, which sees as a headliner the young prodigy of electronic music Martin Garrix.

We contacted the executive team to find out more about the EDM phenomena in Italy .

#1 What is Wonder Manage?

Wonder Manage is born from the passion for the entertainment of music and the so-called “Dance” environment around which orbits mostly artists, producers, and DJs. The company is inspired by a boutique concept in which management, booking, and organizing of festivals blend together alongside exclusive events in Italy and abroad. All this comes from the many years of experience in the world of radio, before, and in the discography then, of its founder Antonio Ciotola.

#2 How do you select the artists? How does scouting work in this sector?

It all starts from spontaneity strictly tied to talent, choosing to follow who is moved by passion becomes a mission, and the only talent can determine the beginning of a business relationship and possibly a successful career. Everything starts from creativity, from music.

#3 How did electronic dance music evolve in Italy?

The scene has undoubtedly followed a North-European trend that in the past decade has moved from dynamics linked to the traditional record system (with physical media sales), to the digital world where music first became mp3 and then perceived almost exclusively via streaming. All of this has led to an evolution where the Swedes first and the Dutch then had dominated the scene; just recently, with a return to more house sounds and "lowering" bpm, Italian producers have managed to reposition themselves by showing their talents on the European scene.

#4 EDM is a growing phenomenon, especially in Italy. How would you define the current state of the EDM scene in Italy and in Europe?

Indeed, EDM had a worldwide explosion in the past 5-7 years that led to saturated the market first in the US first and then in Europe and it has been living its boom in Asia just in these months. As for Italy, the creative scenario (sterile or intermittent for a few years) is slowly reshaping itself towards a phenomenon of apparent contraction such was the boom and, to be honest, there has been also a redesigning of the sound and, therefore, there are lots of new tricolor names that have already been spotted in the world of dance music.

#5 Are there big differences in the European EDM culture and in the one overseas?

Undoubtedly, music in the United States finds its roots in different sociocultural contexts and in the black matrix that, along with the contamination from different ethnicities, has led to a substantially different evolutionary path. The most popular genres, in fact, have always been Hip Hop and R&B, together with Rock and Country .... rarely Dance songs have found space both in the media or among people. However, there was a sparkle when European producers such as David Guetta about 10 years ago contaminated electronic music with collaborations with American artists whose popularity served to quickly free the genre that in Europe we defined “Dance” from as an almost underground perception by turning it into a much wider spectrum and popular phenomenon.

In Europe, EDM's development has first stepped up the German minimum wave of mid-2000, then at the progressive house of Swedish mold ... and then opened the doors to bpm and other "Dutch" decisively more rave and festival oriented sounds, which nowadays very superficially and reductively are associated to the acronym EDM.

#6 The culture of electronic dance music is from the very beginning tied of fashion. How would you describe this link?

Simply as a natural love relationship. They have been together forever, they are chatting to each other and are a successful couple when you see them and listen to them together. Music gives to the world of fashion, to its fabrics and outlines a rhythm, a beat of life, that fashion then translates t as if giving a soul to what we hear.

#7 Festival culture seems to be one of the founding elements of EDM's success...

Certainly yes, the festivals have contributed to the promotion of this genre, which is based on the most unrestrained dance, made of "jump" and "hands up" as much like real concerts.

#8 Speaking of festivals, you have been involved in the organization of an event in Sicily that sees the young DJ Martin Garrix as a headliner. What are the difficulties in organizing a festival in Italy?

Undoubtedly the bureaucracy and the length of the institutional system - made up of too many interlocutors - does not help and this factor, coupled with rigid taxation, is undoubtedly a tremendous break on the potential that our country, not just the Sicilian territory, could offer to young people. Recent experiences, including the one at Selinunte Archaeological Park with Martin Garrix, have been extremely motivating and the success is also evident in the great availability of local operators and the management of the host structure.

On Saturday, July 29, Martin Garrix will play at the EDM festival organized in the stunning location of the Archaeological Park of Selinunte, Sicily.
A unique and evocative event that raises the potential of the dance scene on Italian territory, to which Wonder Manage has actively participated in the organization, find out more here. 

in cover

Antonio Ciotola and Martin Garrix, courtesy of Wonder Manage