Meet the man behind Thailand’s iconic Wonderfruit music festival
Jason Swamy’s dad arrived to Hong Kong from India, living in Chungking Mansions in the 1960s – and Swamy grew to love music thanks to Guns N’ Roses and Jimi Hendrix
My dad came from humble beginnings. He arrived in Hong Kong from India in the 1960s with just spare change in his pocket and lived in Chungking Mansions. He built an amazing company in garment manufacturing and trading. He married my mum, who is Chinese, and I was born in 1975. I went to Kennedy Road Junior School and Island School and was a minority in expat-heavy schools.
Sweet child o’ mine
When I was 13, at Island School, I watched (the music contest) Battle of the Bands. I saw Simon Garcia – who was a few years older than me at school and looked very cool – do a Guns N’ Roses cover. My dad said he saw me light up. It created an energy inside me. I went to boarding school in California when I was 14. I was going through my rebellious phase and had a mohawk and piercings. I was voted student body president, but it was a preppy school and I didn’t fit the impression of what the student body president should be.
Star appeal
I went to Bentley College (now Bentley University) in Boston to study marketing, but what I was really interested in was electronic music. As an intern at Star TV in the summer of 1995, I got to know the sandwich delivery guy who was organising raves. It was at these raves that I saw (the DJs) Sasha and Lee Burridge.
Finding my tribe
The light bulbs really went off during my study abroad year in London. I immersed myself in-house music, going to record shops and buying my first turntable. I skipped school and learned the art form and culture of DJing. I went to my first festival, Tribal Gathering 1996, which had a legendary line-up with The Chemical Brothers and Carl Cox. Daft Punk was in small font on the flier, they weren’t even headlining it.
