One can confidently say that DJ duo Tenishia hold the record when it comes to the most gigs performed abroad by a local act. With over than 155,000 fans on their official Facebook page that adds an average of another 3,000 fans per week, Tenishia who will be celebrating their 10th year anniversary this year, have risen fast and steady from their studio in Marsascala to become a worldwide recognised DJ act.
Only in the first five months of this year Tenishia had already performed in all six continents including performances in top clubs and events in China, Australia, Malaysia, Canada, the UK, Argentina and Egypt, among other countries
Tenishia also holds the record for the biggest crowd a Maltese musician, singer or performer of any kind has ever performed to. This only dates back a few months when some 300,000 people (that’s as big as three quarters of the Maltese population) flocked the main square and streets of Hanoi in Vietnam for a Tenishia performance on New Year’s Eve.
Just by looking at the events on their international gig diary, which includes some of the biggest events in the world such as Tomorrowland, Ultra Music Festival and their weekly residency in Ibiza with Gatecrasher, one can easily compare what Tenishia have achieved in the last years to a football player playing in the Champions League finals. Their successful career and achievements have not only aspired a whole new generation of local DJs, but also revolutionised the whole local scene, changing DJs from being just event organisers to music producers
Tenishia met in summer 2004 when Joven Grech, already a DJ for seven years at the time, and Cyprian Cassar, a skilled piano player met in a small bar through mutual friends. The two had a long discussion about music that night and discovered that they both had the same music tastes and ambition which lead them to their first sessions in the studio.
Their efforts were soon recognised by one of the world’s Top DJs called Markus Schulz who signed their first track onto his label in 2006 after the duo handed him a CD while he was performing in Malta. This quickly turned the pages for Tenishia as soon enough, five times world’s number one DJ Armin van Buuren also took notice of Joven and Cyprian and also gave them a three record deal on his very own label, Armind in 2006. This gave Tenishia a great introduction into the international scene as Armin gave huge support to the Maltese duo on his famous radioshow, A State of Trance, during his international gigs and also included several of their tracks in his best selling CD compilations.
Tenishia quickly became local music idols, winning several awards and also starting to build a huge local and enthusiastic fan base. Loved for their music, supported for their determination, and followed for their charming charisma, Tenishia’s gig diary started to slowly fill up with various international events. In 2011, the duo was also nominated for an International Dance Music Award (IDMA) in Miami, following the release of their first chill out album Frozen Roads.
Tenishia became the very first, and till now the only Maltese DJ / producer to make it in the prestigious DJ Mag World Top 100 DJs. In 2011 they broke into the poll at the 91st positioning and climbing to the Top 50 just a year later. An estimate of 35,000 DJs from all over the world try to get into the prestigious poll organised by the popular UK magazine, DJ Mag every year. At the moment Tenishia rank 65th in the world.
In their own words
What are the advantages and disadvantages of living in Malta in terms of a music career?
Cyprian: Strictly speaking, Malta is surely not the best place in the world to start a music career but along the long list of disadvantages, it also comes with some unique advantages that probably are very hard for DJs in other countries to have.
The biggest problem we face every week is obviously flights and with Europe going through recession, surely made the problem even worse as it is more likely that we play in Asia, Australia or the Americas rather than playing in Europe nowadays. Our flights from Malta to most of the other countries need a connection flight, making us more expensive to book than any DJ living in England, Holland or Germany for example. To give you a better idea, an English DJ that is playing in South East Asia would pay half of what someone from Malta would pay in flight expenses and this makes it even worse since we are a duo making that expense four times as much. This obviously leaves much less money to spend into promoting ourselves and income. If one connection goes wrong, you lose all your earnings of that event. Another major disadvantage is that Malta has a very weak music market, selling music here is almost unheard of, and royalties from local radio stations are so cheap that it is almost not worth the energy to collect them. These situations put us on a very bad spot with event organisers, record labels or any organisation that will want to invest in us.
Malta also has its own advantages and the main advantage is the support from the local fans who are very sharp to recognise professional from amateur. Our local fan base was, is and will always be the backbone of our motivation. Besides the few that still have the 1980s mentality that a foreign product is always better than a Maltese, we have found the strongest support from our Maltese followers in the hardest times. Even though their spending power is quite low and not many would put their hand in their pocket to buy music or pay a decent entrance fee at a club, their support when voting on the internet and social media comments is a great encouragement for any local artist. We can still remember the time when playing at Tomorrowland in Belgium – right at the front there was this Maltese flag saying Tomorrowland Taghna Lkoll! We consider our local followers as our friends and we feel totally home when they’re present. Being from Malta also makes you some kind of unique, considering there are only 400,000 of us in the whole world. It is not normal for people around the world to meet a Maltese person, moreover to see a Maltese DJ… that is if they ever heard about our country to start with anyway. Another good thing is that with Malta being so small, competition is also quite small within the country so winning Music awards, being on TV, and do some stuff that only world’s top names will do like TV interviews, TV adverts and playing with the national orchestra is just the stuff that will help enhance your biography beautifully.
One other good thing with being Maltese is the passport which is not only an EU passport, that makes it easy to travel to Europe, but it’s also good because Malta is a friendly country, so getting visas to perform in different countries comes easy with not so much hassle. One would think that after all this travelling, we would forget, but we are VERY proud to carry the Maltese flag, taking our country’s name to different places in the world.
What is it like living the life of a World Top DJ? What is the truth behind it all?
Joven: Like every job, being a Top DJ comes with its ups and downs. Obviously no one wants to hear the negative stuff so one would just promote the positive as it will make you more sellable. But the truth behind the job goes beyond that. People will just see you on stage, having fun or at least pretending you’re having fun, depending where you’re performing, but behind those few hours there is a whole lot of things that stage people need to face.
We have made all kinds of sacrifices to achieve all this (personal sacrifices included) and some of them surely weren’t easy. Unless you’re a top 10 DJ, money is not good as it seems to be (living in Malta makes it much worse) and life is also not as fun as it seems to be. We have spent long hours, days, weeks in studio creating something that you just hope you’ll get somewhere with. The music industry is also a very unfair industry, it’s business after all and being talented is simply not enough. Some think these things happen only in Malta but stay assured politics are much worse when it gets to the bigger picture. As much as people think it’s cool, travelling tops up the negative list. Long hours on flights, delays and transfer waits in airports kills the buzz, besides being away from your loved ones for a long time while touring is also not so nice. Maltese people are very family orientated and both Cyprian and I are not different.
But hey, enough with the negative stuff, there is a lot of cool things with being a World Top DJ. I think we are experiencing the world in a very unique way, we have played in all continents, made friends and fans in lots of countries and we are treated as VIPs everywhere we go. Even though we wouldn’t care much if we get picked up by an expensive Mercedes or a Volkswagen Beetle, most of the promoters treat us very highly. Five-star hotels, a driver, a host and a waiter to pour us expensive champagne are quite normal on our tours, but again not sure if it’s because we’re a bit too modest, stuff like this doesn’t do much for us. The coolest things would be seeing the big crowds flocking, in some far away country just to see us, or some big line at some shopping mall for an autograph session. We’ve played to thousands of people from around the world that sang our songs by heart. It is amazing how much our tunes, from that studio in Marsascala, are recognised by in Asia, Australia and South America.
How do you describe the music you play? Does it have anything to do with what Guetta, Hardwell and Avicii are doing?
Joven: Even though our music falls under the category of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and also have some similarities, we can be quite different to those popular DJs. Our genre of music is actually a sub genre of EDM called Trance. It is most of the time far more emotional than the music played by David Guetta or Avicii who play EDM. Pop EDM is mainly made for the radio and is very commercial. To be honest we are not fans of EDM as even though it’s the most popular music at the moment, we find it quite noisy and actually lacks music and good melodies. Nevertheless, I cannot really argue that some of the songs from these DJs are topping the charts and sell a lot, but one simply cannot do the music that you don’t feel. We like music to be more emotional, sad and melodic and that is our style. Try to picture a Pink Floyd track in dance version and you’d probably understand what we mean.
How hard is it to get with the World Top 100?
Cyprian: Being ranked with the World’s best DJs surely was a dream coming true. We have dreamt it, worked for it and surely have put lots of effort for it. Love it or hate it, any DJ in the world would like to be in the Top 100 List as it gives the DJ a big selling point. We only started to consider the possibility of one day being in the list, when we started to travel and met lots of other DJs. Like many other people that like us live on an island, we always felt inferior to foreigners at first just because we came from a small country. But suddenly we came to realise that we were standing in the same position as DJs that once were our own idols, playing in the same events, treated the same by promoters and doing the same thing that they do if not better! Over 35,000 DJs try to get their name on that list but ranking in 207th position without even promoting in 2010 opened our eyes to work harder.
At first some people in Malta were quite wary about it, and thought we were getting a little bit big-headed when we started to ask for some support with voting. Some said we never stood a chance as we come from a small country but that same year we managed to just make it at the 91st position. We were over the moon as we knew this would break the ice with lots of new fans. In 2012 we produced an artist album entitled Memory of a Dream and this gave us the extra push to even make it to the 50th position. This year we went down to 65th but considering that our genre of music is not the most popular at the moment we are already happy to maintain our rank within the top 100, moreover being in the 65th.
By the way voting for 2014 opens again this month so if you are reading this interview, please check our Facebook page to find details on how to vote.
Do you think you have enough to ever make it with the Top 10?
Joven: If you would ask if we will make it again this year, we would say… we simply do not know. This is no easy thing and with EDM booming in America this year will be even harder than any other year. Being in the Top 10 is also another story. Even making the best track in the world wouldn’t be enough as one would need a lot of backing with a lot of PRing which obviously costs a lot of money. If it comes down to having the ability and talent to be in the top 10, then we would confidently say yes, we believe we do have it. Some of the top 10 DJs do not even produce the music themselves but have ghost producers that do it for them. Some are not even as half as musical as Cyprian is on the piano for example but yet they managed to find their way there. The list is based on voting and anything that is highly promoted sells and attract fans. Just to give you an example one of the Top 10 DJs is best known for throwing cakes in people’s faces so ability wise we can surely be a very good competition.
With Malta being such a small country, how important is your local fan base? And how much to you perform here?
Cyprian: The Maltese fans have been there from the very beginning. They have seen us growing from the very start and gave us their trust so we will surely treasure that forever. As one would expect, with all the travelling, we now had to decrease our shows in Malta.
What is the first impression people get when saying you are from Malta?
Joven: That depends on where we are. Most of the people in Asia for example never heard of Malta and would actually ask What is Malta? rather than Where is Malta? The rare Asian that has heard about our country thinks that we are part of Italy. Most Europeans actually think that we are Italians when they see us and people from the Middle East have to be told that we don’t speak Arabic and amaze themselves how some words are similar when we say we are Maltese. Must say that they also find it funny how some bad words are the same. In Australia we always find that Maltese immigrant that comes to talk to us about Kinnie, pastizzi and rabbit stew while in South America they pretend to know where the country is when they have no idea.
What do people not know about Tenishia?
Cyprian: Being in clubs and events all the time most people think that we must be some kind of party animals but on the contrary we hardly drink any alcohol. We prefer drinking soft drinks or some energy drinks while performing. Besides music we also like to keep fit and I always leave enough time for a daily gym session, while Joven loves doing some boxing and playing football. Music and sports… What’s better than that?