30 YEARS ADE: Our history as told by Gary Smith – Part One

From its earliest days, ADE has simultaneously been a platform for the music and musicians filling dance floors around the world. ADE is a place where next-gen stars are mentored, empowered, and guided towards a career in music. This combination of respect for the people making our 'now' just that bit better, allied with a recognition of the mountain that every young musician or future label head is going to have to climb, lies at the core of ADE's raison d'être.

Step forward John de Mol Sr. At the time, he was running Conamus, a Dutch non-profit foundation founded in 1962 to support, promote, and export Dutch popular and light music. It changed its name to Buma Cultuur in 2006, run by Frank Helmink. De Mol agreed to support the first edition of ADE after much lobbying by Maria Jimenez and Peter Schmidt, the latter also being the founder of Eurosonic Noorderslag (ESNS). At the start of a meeting in Hilversum to nail down various final details, he looked at us and said the immortal words: 'But it’s just not music, – dance music – is it, really?!'

1996 was, after all, the year that electronic music was embraced by mainstream tastes and also the point at which it became the dominant sound of the charts.