HousePlanet.DJ - Your House Music News Portal - HousePlanet Distribution

• http://www.myspace.com/mayavanya

• http://twitter.com/MayaVanya

• http://www.letsmix.com/

After a week of deliberating, spinning the NGDJ finalist mixes back and forth, the jury has finally reached a verdict: The winners of the NGDJ finals are Croatian born, New Zealand based sister duo Maya Vanya!
According to the jury, Maya Vanya ”are intriguing in a ‘what’s next?’ way. A Croatian sister duo residing in New Zealand, they are purveyors of global club music and serve up the most unique party starting sounds around in Next Generation DJ. The sisters have proven themselves by mixing their own masterfully laid out edits, spanning three decades of tropical music fun, with a big room friendly tech house sound ready for next generation dancefloors everywhere.”
Let'sMix caught up with the two sisters on the phone in New Zealand, read the interview below! Interviews and presentations of the runner-ups Jeremy G and Adeline Supreme will follow. To hear Maya Vanya’s winning mix, scroll down the interview.

First, of course: Congratulations on winning NGDJ!

– 
Man we’re pretty stoked to be honest…we DID NOT EXPECT THIS AT ALL can we say. When we got a message from Stefan from Let’s mix asking if we’ll be available to take a call in 12 hours from now, we just assumed he was ringing all the top 100 finalists.

What do you think it is about your contest submission that made it stand out?

– 


We still aren’t really sure what we did to get the judge’s attention. 

We were hoping mainly to stand out with our originality and creativity and overall fun mixes to listen to…guess that worked?!




– O

ur main thing is to stick to our sound and show what we are into, so what we tried to do with the mix was get as creative as possible and make it a mix made up of a whole heap of samples and loops mixed together with some tracks that we like and felt were appropriate. We were trying to be as creative as possible and picking tracks that we thought would work in a place like Miami.

You will do you first set as NGDJ winners at the DJ Mag party at Miami WMC. Pretty huge. What can people who catch you there expect?




– Well we’ve just literally been informed about being the winners five minutes ago, ha ha..So we’re still digesting all this now! Plus given it’s three am here in New Zealand, we’re thinking we were asleep and when we wake up this didn’t even happen. 


But okay, let’s pretend we are ready to take this on and can see ourselves in Miami in a few weeks at the WMC…
You can expect a fun vibe, and to hear music we love to play


.

Your style is obviously rooted in classic club music, but you also have a very global sound that caught the jury’s ear. How would you describe your DJ:ing style yourselves?




– Our style is influenced by our cross-cultural nature but also the way we resourse our music, which is the internet!

 The fact that music from across the globe is now much more accessible via the internet helps us be able to play around and mix more of all these sounds into our sets and makes our style sound more worldly and global. 

And yeah, our love for house and club music influences the way we have put this sound together.




Being two sisters dj:ing as a duo is not very common – in fact we can’t think of any other sister acts like you.

– That’s one of the interesting elements about us, huh? We are very close and always doing things together but we definitely have our ups and downs…as with anyone that you imagine to be your close family/best friend/work buddy all in one.

How did you get into dj:ing? And who went first, Maya or Vanya?




– We’ve always been surrounded and involved in music to some degree. As young kids in Croatia our parents always encouraged us to get involved with singing, dancing and learning musical instruments. Vanya used her school choir skills mainly to imitate the likes of Nancy Sinatra and The Beatles, while Maya spent her teenage years in her room with music blasting day and night from pop and hip hop to the club music that was on the radio at the time: Daft Punk, Fat Boy Slim and Groove Armada to name a few.
– Both of us were also regular party goers, while Maya was out making up her mind each weekend between going out to watch hip hop DJ:ss scratching or trance DJ:s making her wave her hands in the air in slow motion, Vanya would make sure to never miss the funky jazzy club house music events around town.

 The same way DJ:ing came about, as a hobby and then the fascination with the art of it.




 Maya got involved with spinning initially, and then soon after we naturally became a duo that we are




.

– Ha ha…considering we’re up and comers ourselves it’s hard to know what’s the best advice yet, as we still have alot to learn ourselves!
 But one really important element to have in this whole thing is passion about the music and the art of DJ:ing itself. That obviously means being and getting creative and trying to find new ways to mix up music of any genre or style together with different technology to come up with something new and fresh. 





Becoming a DJ and wanting to get places by being one has become very competitive recently, every second person you meet is a DJ or in the process of being one. So it’s extremely competitive and not only about being a good DJ in terms of skill and music anymore – it’s also about who you know. So your networking and marketing skills play a big part too.






– 


We were born in Croatia, went to school there for several years, dealt with the war there for a little bit too. Then our parents, who were always pretty keen globe trotting travelers, decided to head over to New Zealand and see what the land of 50 million sheep was all about. Initially it was more of a long visit, but that turned into a very long visit of well over 10 years now!

– Sounds cheesy, but the endless excitement that we’re dealing with right now!!! We’re especially looking forward to travelling to play at the crazy destinations as Miami WMC and what’s coming after that, and being involved with and influenced by some of the biggest global players in this music’s industry!




 Maybe ask us this question again in a few days, after we’ve had some time for it all to sink in, ha ha!