therefore, come October, i move to mexico. i have a lady friend that lives there currently, teaching english (although she is a citizen there, and in italy). my goal is to move to cancun or some other beach community and try to DJ, or barring that (all ive heard is the music in those areas is TERRIBLE) work in the tourist indursty somehow: event coordinating, sound/stage tech, djing, wahtever.
really, id like time to sit on the beach and produce music, while still being able to dj to crowds pretty regularly. that cant be THAT hard, can it?
I wish you the best, Freakaholic! I made the move to Mexico (I live up north in Monterrey, far from nice beaches) 2 years ago and I have not looked back. However, starting up was not easy, even as a native Spanish speaker with Latin America experience and lots of help from my Mexican girlfriend and her friends and family. I now do climate change-related consulting work for NGOs and state governments and do the dj thing on the side, and I really could not ask for more.
I don't expect anything but travel money and drinks for me and my friends when I play out - art spaces, private flats, parties, the odd inner city bar or radio show - and I'm happy not to have to do it for a living. In Europe the djing at least paid for all music-related expenses, but I find it difficult to believe that could be done here. I have two close friends who are really committed, full time dj's, work 5-6 hard nights a week playing everything from Latin house, psytrance, reggaeton, MTV hip hop and norteño, have tremendous deck skills, winning smiles and know everything about how to work a crowd, posess an encyclopedic knowledge of every sort of hipster music scene you care to mention, but they still do car audio work/jingle production during the day and live with their parents.
Music and event culture in touristy Mexican beach resorts is truly soul-destroying, you're lucky if you run across a fairly quiet bar that is not mobbed by tequila slamming American frat boys looking to pull, coked-up businesspeople from the capital and middle-aged Germans slurping happy hour strawberry margaritas. Forget about playing anything but the safest chart business or building up a vibe because clueless requests come thick and fast and you will be playing "Las Mañanitas" (the birthday tune) about 6 times a night. I would not recommend the dj rental equipment route either because I guarantee a lot of sleepless nights (in a bad way), slashed cones, robbery and/or your equipment being held hostage against some insubstantiated claim. After border towns, beach resorts with rich gullible tourists are the biggest magnet for the worst sort of human scum you can(not) imagine. Competition for and in any job - real estate, bartending, sports instruction, etc. - is very, very tough, and life in general tends to be more expensive than in the rest of the country because of the steady influx of foreign exchange.
I hope this doesn't sound patronizing, but if I can give my two centavos' worth to a fellow Dissensian...
- If you don't already speak Spanish, make every effort to learn it asap
- Get a paid job and working papers (FM3 visa) as soon as you can and register as an employee with a company you trust. You are nothing and nobody without papers, not even worth keeping a promise to
- Be prepared to do a lot of legwork to get what you want, and, unless you have some cash reserves, be prepared to do a lot of things you would usually resist doing
- ACAB
Good luck and keep in mind, if it were easy, why isn't everyone doing it? :slanted: