Waves of student supporters packed the back room of the Prairie Moon restaurant Monday night to witness Northwestern’s top electronic music artists duke it out in Mayfest’s Battle of the DJs for a chance to play on Dillo Day’s main stage.
Guns and Sons, a duo consisting of Medill sophomore Brendan Klinkenberg and Weinberg sophomore Killian Coate, who both DJ for WNUR’s show Streetbeat, took home the title over the five other contestants. This is the second year in a row that the winning performers have been Streetbeat DJs, after Practical Tactical, who also played Monday night, won the competition last year.
“We learned from the best and we are taking over for our predecessors,” Klinkenberg said. “We are so pumped!”
This year, Mayfest had 15 DJs send in applications to perform at the battle. Mayfest then held a listening party in which they selected the top six to perform at the event. The six were chosen based on their originality, creativity and overall “fun-ness,” according to SESP sophomore Mary Mattimore-Malan, who organized the event for Mayfest.
“We wanted people who could really get the crowd moving,” Mattimore-Malan said.
The five judges based their decision on five different factors: playlist choice, technical ability, showmanship, audience reaction and originality.
Members of the audience supported the crowning of Guns and Sons.
“I think they were great,” said Weinberg senior Anil Wadhwani. “They were definitely the best ones up there and I am excited to see them on Dillo Day.”
This event precedes a number of other Mayfest events, such as Wednesday’s annual Disney Sing-A-Long on the Norris Lawn, a campus wide water balloon fight on Friday and Battle of the Bands next week.
“We want to celebrate that it is May,” said Mattimore-Malan. “I feel like a lot of it is just keeping it fun because everyone else is out of school and it’s easy to get sad about that, but we keep a lot going so it’s quite fun.”
All the proceeds from the Battle of the DJs are put toward improving next year’s Mayfest events. Though Mayfest receives most of its funds from the student activities fund, Communications sophomore Louise Hunter, who headed promotions for Battle of the DJs, says that the money they collect goes to the supplement events leading up to Dillo Day great.
“We really want to make each year better than the next,” Hunter said. “We are just trying to make Dillo Day even better for students.”
Editor’s Note: Brendan Klinkenberg previously contributed to North By Northwestern.