Meet Ruben Diaz | DJ & retail manager

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ruben Diaz and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ruben, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
Really I was born in San Diego, California, but my parents decided to move to Texas shortly after I was born. I come from a family of hard working immigrants, and they were the reason as to why I work so hard. Thanks to them I currently work 3 jobs and can handle any situation thrown at me.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’ve been a dj for a little over 2 years now. Really it started off as a hobby. Just mixing and messing around with tracks in my room.
Grew up with sort of a music bone in my body. Picked up the saxophone in middle school and along the years music just became my scape goat for anything. Grew up listening to almost everything due to this really cool babysitter I had back when I was just a kid and being Latino as well, really widened my music taste and expanded my music library even more.
I really never thought about perusing djing or even consider it a source of income, but somehow I knew it was my calling since music was such a big part of my life. It wasn’t till after covid when I started venturing out to clubs and markets just enjoying the sets of my local djs and it was actually my cousin who put me in contact with one of my favorite local djs and I actually got him to mentor me a little bit. From there I started doing small markets, soon after that they picked me up for the clubs and eventually ended up making it to boilerroom all within the first year that I put my name out there. My objective with my art is to make people feel like they are going on an amazing time traveling journey with music and hoping they feel rejuvenated afterwards. I feel like what sets me apart from others is that I’m constantly trying to look for new sounds. I spend hours and hours deep diving into any music genre going back as far as the 70s to the up and coming hits.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If they were visiting Austin I would definitely have them check out coconut club, it’s where I have most of my sets, but it’s literally 6 different clubs all under the same building complex and you can almost always catch plenty of good Djs there. But that’s just the night life. If we were to do something during the day I would take them to south congress street, where you can find plenty of good food spots, with chill hotel bars and plenty of other regular bars as well.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Really want to shout out my uncles Salvador and Ricky, they were good dj’s back in the day in the state of Chicago. If it weren’t for them I would’ve never been inspired to peruse my music dream of being a dj. They gave me my first control and all the tools I needed for my dream to come true. AND also my cousin Alan for just introducing me to the right people at the right time.

Website: https://poplme.co/hash/nxFNIQeu/1/s

Instagram: https://instagram.com/rruuex

Image Credits
@512c0wb0y @scam_likely