Fifty years ago, when Raffi Nalvarian was a kid, he saw Pele play against the San Jose Earthquakes at Spartan Stadium. Now his DJ company will handle all the World Cup games at Levi’s.
When Nalvarian formed Sound in Motion with Adrian Cavlan, an old childhood friend, they were both already DJs, but working independently. After joining forces, the adventure led to tons of wedding gigs. They landed at every single Sharks home game. Once Levi’s Stadium opened, they were the go-to folks for the 49ers. Now his senior sports DJ, Oliver Gomez, will handle the FIFA World Cup matches at Levi’s.
While Cavlan has since moved on—Nalvarian bought him out a year ago—the World Cup games coming to Levi’s triggered Nalvarian to reflect on his entire journey, which began with the sport of soccer. He remembered watching the Earthquakes train in the ’70s.
“I’m probably in fourth grade, and it was at De Anza College, and the Earthquakes were practicing there,” Nalvarian recalled. “Mark Liveric, Mark Demling, Buzz Demling, Ilija Mitic, all those guys. Paul Child. We would go watch them practice.”
Fast forward a few years, he met Cavlan on the soccer field between seventh and eighth grade at Kennedy Junior High in Cupertino. When they grew up and started Sound in Motion, sporting events were always part of their goal, from the get-go.
“It’s exciting to think where we started and growing up a soccer fan,” Nalvarian said. “My dad grew up in France playing soccer. My neighborhood was a bunch of Italians, there were Czechoslovakians, and all kinds of people. And all our parents were immigrants and they all played soccer. So it was pretty cool. That’s what we grew up with.”
DJ-ing large sporting events is not a walk in the park. You don’t just sit there with your feet up and watch the game in-between playing tunes. You don’t text your friends. Everything must happen exactly on cue, not a few seconds earlier or later. It can get stressful. Especially with fans, teams and employees present from all over the world.
“This is an international game,” Nalvarian said. “This is not just an American thing. So you’ve got to understand the music from all these different countries and find who the big artists are. So you get a real feel for the teams that are playing and the vibe and you’re trying to make them almost feel like they’re at home, but for both teams. So you’re crossing both sides musically, early on, or halftime, or whatever the case is.”
The larger the event, the larger the blowback if something goes wrong. You can’t get distracted. The minute you get comfortable, you’re done. And then people trash your musical choices all over social media.
“You go in and you’re sitting in a stadium of 50,000 people and you’ve got to be on,” Nalvarian said. “You’ve got 50,000 critics. That’s more critics than most people see in their lifetime. We get them every day.”
As the game unfolds, being able to mix and play music is really only a small part of the job. The DJ is not just reading the room. He’s reading the stadium. When the DJ is in the slot, he pays attention to everything, not just on the field, but also in the crowd. He watches for momentum. Is the crowd energized? Do they sound flat? How can we ratchet up the energy?
“Soccer is a little different because you can’t have as much, obviously you can’t have a ton of music during the game,” Nalvarian said. “You’ve got to be very careful. There are certain spots for it. But it’s still exciting. It’s still fun. There’s energy, there’s adrenaline and you don’t realize how mentally drained you are after doing a game.”
Even in the group stages, the World Cup is the greatest show on earth. This is the big dance. It doesn’t get bigger. There could be 100 countries watching any particular game.
Yet for Nalvarian, it does indeed feel like a massive full-circle moment, since he started out playing soccer as a kid in Cupertino. He wouldn’t be here otherwise.
“It’s pretty neat to be able to sit here today and look at it,” he said. “We get to be a part of this again, but in a different way.”
