A&E

The first SKAM Summer Music Summit has major Vegas nightclub connections

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Eric DLux, Lil Jon and DJ Five are among the SKAM Artists luminaries set to spin at the company’s upcoming music summit.
Illustration: SKAM Artist / Courtesy

One of the most significant summertime events across the Las Vegas nightclub landscape will be taking place next month in Hollywood.

SKAM Artist founder and CEO Sujit Kundu is switching gears for his annual birthday bash, transforming it into the first SKAM Summer Music Summit on August 22-23, taking over the entire 180-room Dream Hollywood hotel in Los Angeles. The rooftop Highlight Room club will be the epicenter of a series of DJ and artist performances and conference-style events throughout the weekend designed to attract other club and music-industry executives, movers and shakers.

“Every year I do the birthday party, and it’s always a big production and a huge fiasco, but it’s always fun,” says Kundu, who started one of the country’s leading DJ and talent agencies in 2004 and later expanded into radio programming. “Last year with COVID we couldn’t do it, so instead we did a 24-hour stream on Twitch with 24 DJs.

“During the pandemic, Twitch really brought the DJ community together, and some people who had never met up before became friends that way. So I thought it would be cool to do sort of a Comic-Con for DJs — bring in all the DJs and streamers with moderators and Twitch people and mesh it with my other business, which is radio promotion.”

Like clubs and DJs, radio had a tough pandemic year, he says, since people weren’t in their cars very much. All the regular industry gatherings haven’t happened for a long time, so Kundu decided to create a new one, initially figuring out how to hold the summit under capacity restrictions. It’s currently planned without any restrictions or registration fees. (More information can be found at skamartist.com/skamsummer.)

SKAM artists Lil Jon, Eric DLux, DJ Five and Nick Rockwell will collaborate for the main event, with Angie Vee, DJ Lezlee, V-Tech and the Deux Twins taking over at night. Different DJs will rotate through another 24-hour marathon streaming set from Dream’s penthouse, and Kundu will be revealing more events for the second day soon on social media.

Whether they had big-time residencies at Vegas clubs or they’re lesser-known names who tour across the country, most DJs faced immense challenges during the pandemic. And it didn’t get easier when some clubs reopened with limited guest capacity.

“Everybody had to find a happy medium with the venues that wanted to come back and each individual’s willingness to work,” Kundu says. “You have to have that point where that’s the lowest you’re willing to go and you can’t work for less than that. At the beginning, they were sometimes deciding if they wanted to risk their health for 500 bucks, so many of them decided to stay home.”

Kundu usually bounces between LA and New York with plenty of stops in Las Vegas throughout the year, but he’s stayed on the West Coast for the last year, remaining focused on rebuilding his business. With so many of his peers following suit, the summit seems like a crucial event for industry reconnections.

“I haven’t been back to my apartment in New York since February 2020. I haven’t been on a plane. I’ve just been doing so much because I’m the only one in the office,” Kundu says. “It hasn’t been the right time to travel, but hopefully that time is coming sooner than later.”

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Tags: Nightlife
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Brock Radke

Brock Radke is an award-winning writer and columnist who currently occupies the role of managing editor at Las Vegas Weekly ...

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