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Pura Vida friends - It’s with goosebumps that I share with you the recording of my sunrise set at Envision 2023 in the jungle of Uvita in Costa Rica.
It was an honour to have the chance to soundtrack the last sunrise of the festival on the Lapa Stage.
It’s my second time participating at this powerful gathering, but the first time doing a deep dive and camping on site for 7 days. What an incredible experience! The jungle comes with its challenges, including the heat, the humidity, the bugs and the lack of sleep. But it’s so much worth it!
I believe these moments outside the comfort of our home are actually allowing us to feel alive, bond with our fellow camp companions, and appreciate the highs even more.
Apart from being an incredibly unique festival experience with a beautifully diverse music programming, the one thing that is blowing my mind is its focus on sustainability, innovation and environmental initiatives.
Let’s not fool ourselves, a lot of foreigners including artists are flying from around the world for this event like many other destination festivals, so there’s clearly an important carbon footprint coming from that movement.
But once you get to the festival grounds, you can instantly feel that respecting Mother Nature is at the core of the intentions of Envision. From the bamboo used to build the stages to the respect of the land, from the water consumption to the fully compostable food merchants, from the waste management to the Eco Hub where you can learn about ecology…
The most exciting thing I discovered is the “SOMOS EL CAMBIO” project that is a reforestation initiative in partnership with the local indigenous communities that invites the participants to adopt trees and plant various species to create a natural corridor that links the top of the mountain to the sea, which is essential for water systems, fauna and flora.
In addition to that, Envision offers an abundance of workshops, discussions, meditations, sound healings, women’s circles, vegan food, healthy drinks…proof that a large scale sonic gathering can actually evolve into a transformative experience beyond entertainment. That’s in my opinion an important vessel for change on the individual and collective scale and I’m hopeful a lot of events around the world will take this direction that is more aligned with Earth’s frequency.
Days and nights flew by, and suddenly it’s Sunday morning…time to get ready! All the stories, conversations and inspirations from different events during the week lead me to collect clues and pieces of the puzzle along the way which brought me have a better idea of what I would want to play for the sunrise moment.
The Sunday programming was awesome, with music from Marques Wyatt, Zach Walker, SIS and Township Rebellion. I started at 4:30 am as the night was still dark, following up Township who played a really cool energetic nocturnal session. He landed with quite a groovy track and it felt the energy was really high on the floor when I got to start.
So quite in the opposite polarity of a traditional evolving set, this one started with a quite electric feel, blooming into a warmer and light daytime morning vibe.
The first beams of light started appearing as I played ‘Tantale’ - Rafaelle jumped in at this moment to add vocals and it felt like a symbolic timing to transition from Luna to Sol energy.
Thanks to my partner Ashley for joining me in this journey, my awesome Montréal friends Dexter, Gabrielle, Patrice, Rafaelle, Thibault, Caterina, Hellan and so many more that brought such a good energy so we all give everything we’ve got to land the astral plane. Thanks to all the amazing humans who danced with us!
Also thankful for Driss, Uma and all the Envision crew for the invitations. Kudos to the sound team who worked tirelessly to make some miracles happen in the wild jungle.
May we keep dancing to connect a little bit more with who we are: nature.
I hope you’ll enjoy this set!
Kora
- Genre
- Electronic