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ELECTRO FEST: SPACE COWBOY

Written by Katy Moncada

Photographs by Thomas Corcoran

From CD Mixes to Festival Grounds

From tarp-covered decks to 4,000-person crowds, the soul of Electro Fest hasn’t changed — it’s only gotten louder.

Before the lights. Before the stacked lineups. Before thousands danced beneath the Inland Empire sky.Electro Fest was just two guys, a white tarp, and a CD deck in the back of someone’s car.

“That first stage? It was my CD setup on a fold-out table with a tarp behind it,” Dion laughs. “And they still called it Stage Three.”

That was years ago. Since then, the festival has grown, not just in scale, but in structure, sound, and soul. Full teams, lighting rigs, production — the operation’s legit. The last fest pulled nearly 4,000 people and this year passed that!

But the spirit? That’s the one thing that’s never changed.

“Humility is non-negotiable. We want people who still care more about the music than the clout.” says Dion

“We’re constantly changing. But we can’t forget where we’re from.”-Dion

Because this isn’t just a genre shift, it’s lineage. It’s backyard quince mixes and Sunday carne asadas. It’s cumbia fading into house under the SoCal sun. It’s memory, family, culture

And beyond the decks, there’s a bigger mission: to launch the first major electronic artist out of the Inland Empire.

“No D-Ro. No Valentino Khan. Not yet. But we know they’re out here.”-Dion

It’s not just possible — it’s personal.

Because if this crew can turn a tarp-covered CD deck into a movement… just imagine what happens when the IE finally takes center stage.

Electro Fest has a vision of building a community for the people of the inland empire. They built a space where people can come and dance, and give growing artists the opportunity to grow as performers and artists as a whole. They are learning as they host each event, trying to make sure they can host a safe and fun event.

Built Like a Honeycomb

If the heart of Electro Fest is the music, the body is the team, organized not like a business, but like a hive.

The five-sector system wasn’t drawn from a textbook. It was shaped through trial, error, late nights, and the realization that building something sustainable requires more than passion. It takes process.

Electro Fest’s core now runs on five lanes:

Artists
Vendors
Media
Logistics
Promotions

Each zone has a point person, someone who knows that lane inside and out. They don’t just do the job, they take ownership of it. Orlando oversees artist coordination, from set times to hospitality. Henry brings structure and experience to logistics. Sebastian bridges performance and production, making sure transitions sound as good as they feel. Janelle leads vendor and art installations, working with visual artists across Pomona and beyond. And Dion checks in with each team, offering direction and support to keep things flowing.

“Now everyone has a lane,” Dion said. “And they get their flowers for it.”

Many of the artists on the lineup are close friends — the kind who clap for their openers, the kind who still stay to dance.

It’s that care — not ego — that sets the tone.

When the crew reconnects, it’s not in meetings. Not in press kits. It’s on the decks. In the mix. Through sound.

“Music is the one place where no one’s faking it. That’s how we stay real.”

For Dion and the team, DJing isn’t just a performance, it’s a language. Transitions get dissected like film. BPM shifts get debated like politics. Every session becomes part therapy, part critique, and all love.

“We’ll tell each other straight up: ‘That transition into melodic techno? Crowd dropped. Should’ve stayed in Latin House.’”- Dion

There’s no ego in that kind of honesty. Just a mutual understanding that the sound deserves their best. Every time.

Staying true to their roots, the crew took a defining step forward this year, introducing open format and reggaeton into the lineup. Yes, it brought more bodies, 500+ new attendees. But it wasn’t just a strategy. It was soul work. A love letter to the rhythms they grew up on.

It’s a system that’s brought new balance to the fest, a structure that opens space for learning, growth, and clearer communication between departments. While no festival is perfect, this framework is a move toward deeper care: for the crew, for the community, and for the culture it’s trying to build.

There’s still room to grow and the team seems aware of that. As the festival scales, refining how these sectors operate becomes part of the work. Timelines, internal communication, and role clarity are evolving in real time. That’s part of the grassroots reality. But it’s also part of the opportunity: to keep improving how festivals function behind the scenes.

“Everybody gets acknowledged now. That’s why people are drawn to this.”-Dion

Electro Fest doesn’t feel like a faceless production. It feels like something built in real-time, with love, with intention, and with people who want to get it right.

Holding Space While Everything Shakes

What does throwing a party mean when your community’s in survival mode?

For the Electro Fest team, this wasn’t just a question, it was the weight in every group chat, the pause before every meeting. As ICE raids swept through SoCal and the National Guard was deployed to nearby cities, festival season didn’t feel like festival season. And yet, the team didn’t rush past that feeling. They sat with it.

“We asked ourselves if it should still happen. That’s the first thing we did.”-Dion

Dion, one of the core organizers, speaks with the kind of clarity you only get from building something real and protecting it through chaos. While corporate promoters rolled forward, trusting their scale and bottom line, Electro Fest moved slower. They observed. They considered it. And then they turned inward, toward the Inland Empire, toward their artists, toward their people.

“We’re not just throwing shit to throw shit. We’re checking in with our audience. That’s the difference.”-Dion

This wasn’t a knee-jerk show-must-go-on moment. This was a conscious choice to create something soft in hard times. A reminder that joy is still necessary. That gathering even with heaviness in the air, can be resistance in itself.

Where some festivals exist to flex scale, Electro Fest exists to nurture scale within. They knew people weren’t just looking for a night out. They were looking for safety. For belonging. For that sacred middle space between grief and release — the dance floor.

And so they chose to hold it. Gently.

This is what “curation” looks like when it’s not just about who’s headlining. It’s about who you’re holding space for. And why.

Because if everything else is shaking — sound might be the only thing that keeps you steady.

GOODIE BAG

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