Every dance music festival has a headline story. At the first EDC Colombia, it belonged to Armin van Buuren, the Afrojack and Green Velvet back-to-back, Boris Brejcha and the Colombian-born Funk Tribu, all on the Sunday bill. But every festival also has a quieter story, told on the smaller stages, where artists most of the crowd has not yet heard get a real chance in front of an audience that came for someone else.
On Sunday, October 11, between 6 and 7 p.m., that story belonged to Zolo & Craith.
The duo, two Colombian friends who make house music, took over the Boombox Artcar on the festival’s second day. For an act whose own origin story is a friendship built over years of making records together, it was a debut on a stage that carries real weight: the first edition of one of the biggest dance music brands in the world, held in their home country.
A festival nearly three decades in the making
EDC launched in Southern California in 1997 and has since traveled to Mexico, the United Kingdom, Brazil and beyond. The Colombian edition, held October 10 and 11 at Medellín’s Unidad Deportiva Atanasio Girardot, is Insomniac’s ninth international EDC and only the second in South America, after São Paulo in 2015. It was produced with Páramo Presenta, part of OCESA, the same entertainment group that partners with Insomniac on EDC Mexico.
The scale matched the ambition. More than 80 artists were booked across two days and five stages: kineticFIELD, circuitGROUNDS, neonGARDEN, bionicJUNGLE and stereoBLOOM, with brand takeovers that included Factory 93 and Time Warp. Colombian press reported that VIP and GA+ passes had already sold out by the time the lineup was announced in June.
Insomniac framed Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, as a place shaped by history, transformation, art and passion, and promised local cultural elements woven into the festival. The pitch, in short, was an EDC rooted in its host city rather than imported wholesale.
When the Colombia edition was announced, founder Pasquale Rotella said EDC “must have a purpose” and should leave a positive impact where it lands. Páramo Presenta’s Santiago Vélez, for his part, predicted that Medellín would become “the center of the electronic world” that October. Against that backdrop, a place on the lineup means more to an emerging Colombian act than a single booking. It is a front-row seat to a moment the local scene had been waiting for.
Why the Boombox matters
The Boombox is not just another stage name. Insomniac’s Boombox art car is modeled after a 1980s ghetto blaster and joined the company’s fleet in 2012, after starting life as a Burning Man project known as the Rockbox. Insomniac’s art curator summed up the appeal simply, calling it “a giant boom box.” It has since appeared at EDC Las Vegas, EDC New York and Beyond Wonderland, among other events.
At EDC Las Vegas, the festival’s art cars are where fans catch more intimate sets from rising stars and established names alike. That context frames what a 6 to 7 p.m. Sunday slot on the Boombox Artcar means. It places an up-and-coming duo inside the festival’s art-and-experience layer, where discovery tends to happen, on a day whose bill also included CamelPhat, Kaskade, Subtronics, Vintage Culture and Showtek. For a young act, sharing a poster and a set of grounds with names like these is exposure that is hard to replicate by any other route.
Euphoria built for the dancefloor
Zolo & Craith describe themselves as two Colombian friends making euphoric dance music. Their project, by their own account, was born from friendship and built over years of creating together, guided by a simple idea: music is better when it is shared. They say they make records for dancefloors and late nights, the kind of moments that bring people closer and make everyone feel part of the same crowd.
Their catalog is still young, but other DJs have noticed it. Tracklists logged on Spotify show a track credited to Zolo & Craith, “All That Matters Is You,” in three mixes during February 2026: Physical Phase’s Progressive Vibes 146 on February 2, Light Sessions 035 on February 19, and Plutian’s Observation Theory 026 on February 28. Another, “Lost But Free” in its extended mix, turned up in Adam Valor’s Solid Mix on March 15.
Selectors playing a duo’s records months before its biggest booking is the kind of grassroots signal that helps explain how an act like this ends up on a lineup like this. Read together, the titles fit the way Zolo & Craith present their work: euphoric, communal, made for crowds.
What a debut like this signals
A debut at a first-edition festival is double-edged by nature. There is no history to lean on and no ritual to follow; the festival is writing its own tradition in real time. For Colombian electronic music, that is an opportunity. For an act at the start of its career, it is a rare convergence: a global brand opening in the artists’ home country at the moment they are ready to be seen.
The business logic is simple, even if the path to it is not. A festival lineup works as shorthand for credibility. It tells promoters, labels, bookers and listeners that someone with global reach decided a name belonged on the poster. Zolo & Craith now appear on the official EDC Colombia lineup alongside more than 80 other artists, and on Insomniac’s artist directory, one of the most visible shelves in the industry. What they build on that shelf is up to them.
What comes next is theirs to write. The first EDC Colombia will be remembered for its scale, its headliners and the weekend Medellín spent at the center of the electronic calendar. For Zolo & Craith, it will be remembered for something simpler: the Sunday evening two Colombian friends played the festival that finally came to Colombia.
Follow the duo on Instagram at @zolocraith, along with the individual projects @zolo.col and @craithmusic.
