Celebrating Dance Music History on Greece’s Party Island

John Martin cuts a towering figure, and when he's standing on a DJ booth in front of a psychedelic projector screen with his head thrown back, he looks larger than life. His voice is humongous, too—it's got a dry texture and an anthemic quality matched only by the likes of Bono, Steve Perry, and Freddie Mercury—and the songs he performs are stadium-sized power ballads. The singer's performance at the Mykonos nightclub Cavo Paradiso last Saturday night was the theatrical culmination of Olmeca Night Assembly and, in a sense, some 50 years of electronic music history.

The Olmeca Night Assembly brought top-notch DJs like Daddys Groove, Arno Cost, and Wally Lopez to the Greek party island for a weekend of festivities in celebration of Switched On, a documentary by THUMP that examines the history of electronic music. Four trailers for the film played on loop at Olmeca's pop-up museum, so interview subjects like Moby, Morgan Subotnik, Frankie Bones, and Nick Catchdubs talked over each other about early electronic explorations and pioneering nightclubs like David Mancuso's loft and the early LA rave scene. The gist of the exhibit, which included a timeline of major events in electronic music history, suggested that decades of experimentation and partying have led to a climax: the contemporary EDM boom.

Thus, the performances at Cavo Paradiso were meant to exemplify that history and where it has led. That's a tall order to serve, but the weekend's talent brought their A-game. Cost, a French electro house producer whose star rose when he released "Strong" earlier this year, took the decks before Martin and rolled out a relentless stream of bangers. There seemed to be a breakdown, drop, and/or dramatic transition every 45 seconds, which kept the dancers on the floor beneath him engaged in every kick drum and flick of the knobs. They cut shapes through heaps of fog, shuffling with blow-up headphones wrapped around their necks and cartoonishly big glasses perched precariously on their noses. Cavo Paradiso's colossal sound system blasted Cost's unreleased tunes and dynamic selections to all corners of the club, which is perched above Mykonos's Paradise Beach, and fog from the dance floor floated off the balconies and out to sea.

Before Cost came Wally Lopez, a Spanish DJ and producer who performed earlier that day at the Super Paradise beach club. Compared to the apocalyptic best-night-of-your-life energy that Martin and Cost manifested at Cavo Paradiso, the day party was low-key and relaxed—but no less enjoyable. Instead of dancing, partygoers at Super Paradise lounged on recliners in the sand, splashed around in the turquoise water, toasted shots of Olmeca tequila, and noshed on a tasty buffet.

The sum total of events that made up the Olmeca Night Assembly amounted to a tireless tour of Mykonos, Greece's answer Spain's clubbing mecca, Ibiza, and an insightful look at the past via the Switched On trailers and Olmeca Museum.

Partygoers had the opportunity to experience contemporary club culture in its most decadent form, but it also provided a deeper insight into the origins of that environment. Olmeca set its sights high by aiming to represent the apex and totality of decades of electronic music history, but if nothing less, the Saturday night festivities certainly felt like the culmination of an intense, unforgettable weekend. Is there a better way to celebrate history than that?