When now construction management senior Alex Alvarez joined the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity his freshman year, he was looking for a sense of community. Within a year, he would become known as DJ Alvy, providing the soundtrack to game days on the Parade Ground and late nights in Tigerland.
Alvarez, 21, started his DJ gig as a hobby, but it soon became the foundation of his time at LSU, connecting him to unimaginable opportunities, lifelong friends and crowds larger than he could have pictured when he spun his first few tracks in his dorm room.
Alvarez was gifted his first DJ board for Christmas during his freshman year of college. Since ATO didn’t have a DJ at the time, Alvarez seemed like the natural fit for tailgates going into the following school year. During the summer before his sophomore year, Alvarez decided to commit two hours a day to honing his craft of mixing music.
This role in his fraternity ended up transcending just football season. Because he was already working at The Revelry when he started DJing, Alvarez was able to build connections within the nightlife scene that helped him land other gigs down the line.
“All it takes is one transition for the workers to be like, ‘Oh, that guy’s awesome,’ because they’re not really paying attention the entire time,” Alvarez said. “All I need is one little moment that they recognize, and then it’s just all word of mouth.”
Alvarez leads with intuition when it comes to his tracklist. Though he tries to be proactive about what songs he will likely play, he prefers taking an in-the-moment approach to match what the crowd is feeling.
“If I were to plan out 20 songs beforehand, and I were to play the first three songs and the crowd’s not feeling it, then what are you gonna do?” Alvarez said. “I just learned that you can plan all you want, but at the end of the day, if you’re truly playing for the crowd, you’re not gonna be able to predict what they want to listen to or what’s working at the moment.”
With this approach, he described his music style with one word: jambalaya.
“It’s a little bit of everything,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez believes that, as important as the music is, much of DJing comes from how you interact with others.
“It’s really all just social networking — just giving people a reason to say a good thing about you,” Alvarez said. “Even if it’s not your music, just being nice to people.”
Past the value of networking, this interest has allowed the DJ to develop a handful of soft skills.
“It taught me time management,” Alvarez said. “When I’m doing a transition, if someone’s talking to me, you still have to be able to focus on that, because, again, you’re playing for the crowd. You have to be able to balance conversation and working, and then just overall tolerance.”
Alvarez credits LSU’s class offerings — specifically the ability for students to make their own schedules — as an important part of how he is able to maintain work-life balance.
When the San Antonio native was applying to colleges, he was already familiar with the South and knew he wanted to avoid harsh winters. With his favorite color being purple and having just watched LSU win the 2019 College Football Playoffs, he thought to give LSU a shot. Seeming like fate, Alvarez received his LSU acceptance email on Christmas Eve.
Once he first got to campus, Alvarez joined ATO as a way to meet like-minded students.
“We’re a very out-of-state fraternity, so that’s really nice,” Alvarez said. “You’re not going into high school 2.0; we don’t really get guys we knew in high school. I think that when everyone comes in and they have the same ambition to make new friends, that’s really helped. I think we’re a really close chapter.”
Alvarez’s former roommate and continuous best friend, senior general business major Sammy Ponce, was introduced to the DJ through ATO and has been with him from the beginning of his side hustle.
“I had met him before he started, or when he was picking it up as a hobby,” Ponce said. “I stayed over at his house for two weeks in the summer, and that’s when he got really into it.”
Ponce, 21, experienced more of Alvarez’s learning process than most of their fraternity brothers likely did at the time.
“From seeing him just being in his room and doing it as a hobby — kind of [Alvarez] saying, ‘Oh, it’s cool, but I don’t know if I want to do this’ — to seeing him perform on a bigger stage with the crowd going crazy is pretty cool,” Ponce said.
Alvarez has even built friendships on the foundation of his musical venture. Political science sophomore Luke Hill, 20, was first acquainted with Alvarez due to their shared musical interests.
“I met Alex during rush because I was like, ‘I DJ too,’” Hill said. “Ever since then, we’ve just hung out and made a really good friendship through that.”
Hill, originally from Ashburn, Virginia, found solace in the community of ATO, especially in that of Alvarez, who was later assigned as Hill’s big brother in their fraternity. As a big, Alvarez acts as a mentor and friend within ATO.
“Being from so far away, finding someone with such a niche common interest made it where we had a connection right away,” Hill said. “That just made me actually get to know him. It’s really easy to not only be co-workers with him, but also just friends with him.”
After Hill joined ATO, he was prompted to join Alvarez in DJing for tailgates during football season. When Alvarez had work commitments at The Revelry, Hill, known as DJ Stutter, would start a set, allowing his big to join in after work.
“Usually I’ll start just because I had to be out there a little bit earlier,” Hill explained. “After a couple hours, he’ll hop on … then towards the end, we play for an hour or two just together because it’s always a lot of fun when you have two minds on it instead of one.”
Though DJing became an important role for the duo within their fraternity, the pastime remained enjoyable for the pair to bond over.
“About once a week, we try to go to mine, and we’ll play for, like, two hours just in my room,” Hill said. “We’ll just DJ together, and we just show each other weird stuff that we’ve been thinking of.”
Keeping this pursuit fun is a focus of Alvarez’s. Though he initially struggled with imposter syndrome, he tries not to take his work too seriously.
“You’re always gonna be harder on yourself than the crowd,” Alvarez said. “At the end of the day, you’re trying to play for a crowd, so eventually you’re gonna have to throw yourself out of the nest.”
Hill can attest to Alvarez’s struggle with doubting his skills. In November 2024, Alvarez competed in Tiger TV’s Battle of the DJs. Despite being anxious about his performance, he ended up winning the competition.
“I remember sitting in his room while he was trying to plan out what songs he was gonna play and him just being so in his head about it,” Hill said. “Then he went and he played it and it was insane. It was so sick to watch. I’ve seen some sets live, but that was one where I watched it and I was like, ‘This is actually a level above.’”
To Hill, seeing his friend’s success is all the more motivating.
“With Alex, we both kind of feed off of each other,” Hill said. “It’s like a friendly competition.”
As the DJ approaches his graduation this December, he isn’t planning on continuing with music after college. Though he would definitely spin a few tracks if a friend asked him to, he doesn’t feel any pressure to make the hobby work out long term.
“It’s definitely not about the money and the business of it,” Alvarez said. “It’s just for fun. I think it’s like one of those where you never want that to be your plan A. If you rely on that too heavily, I think you kind of lose the love for the art that it is itself. At the end of the day, you shouldn’t be DJing for yourself; you should be DJing for the people in the bar.”
For more information on upcoming sets, visit DJ Alvy’s Instagram.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source lsureveille.com ’
