Kaskade: Mormon DJ
Ryan Gary Raddon produces electronic dance music under the name “Kaskade.” He has produced nine albums. In both 2011 and 2013, DJ Times voted him America’s Best DJ. He tours 250 days annually, and in 2015 he was the seventh highest-paid DJ in the world, with an estimated $18 million in revenue (according to Forbes magazine).
Raddon was born on February 25, 1971, and grew up in Northbrook, Illinois. He attended Brigham Young University and after serving a full-time mission to Japan for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he is a member, he graduated from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in communications. During his college days he worked on his DJ skills in his dorm room, worked at a record store in Salt Lake City, and bought studio equipment.
In 1995, Raddon began DJing his first weekly Monday night party at a basement venue called Club Manhattan. In 2000 he moved to San Francisco where he worked at OM Records. During his work there, he continued to DJ and developed his alter ego Kaskade after seeing a picture of a waterfall in a nature book. His wife, Naomi, thought people would think of the dishwasher detergent Cascade. He released a single, “What I Say,” in 2001.
He was offered a three-album deal with OM in 2003. The first, It’s You, It’s Me, helped him garner a prestigious Dance Star nomination for Best New Artist. He also released several singles that gave him three consecutive top ten hit on Billboard's Hot Dance Airplay Chart. He was nominated for three Grammy Awards: Best Dance/Electronica Album for Fire & Ice (2013), Best Dance Recording and Best Dance/Electronica Album for single “Atmosphere” and album Atmosphere (2014), and Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical for “Smile” (2015).
Kaskade left OM Records in 2006 and signed with Ultra Records. He has headlined at a many music festivals, including the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Florida; Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, California; and Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Raddon and his wife have three daughters and he says he has a “nightclub guy” and a “dad” mode. He also says he does not participate in many of the activities that surround his vocation. “I don’t party at all!” “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I’m a bit of a freak that way because I’m completely different from what you would think.”[1]
