Scream organizer fights for your right to party

Boodang's massively successful Scream dance-music event is sold out for 2026, marking another milestone for a one-time introvert whose love of music brought him from chat rooms to the big tent.

"I went to my first event when I was 16 years old at the New City Lounge in Edmonton," said Viet Nguyen, partner and talent buyer for Boodang. "I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I went there with a bunch of friends and had the best night of my life."

Smash-cut to today: Boodang is an events juggernaut that made $10 million in 2025 by providing such nights out. The company will host Tiësto, a titan of electronic dance music and an early inspiration to Nguyen, as part of an international electronic-dance-music lineup spread between Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 at the Edmonton EXPO Centre. Nguyen and company expect more than 30,000 attendees to find (or lose) themselves on the dance floor at the event, similar to the two nights and four stages of music, lights, immersive performers, and communal joy at the 2025 iteration.

Nguyen's first event in 1999 was at the ACCA Banquet & Conference Centre, where he lost all of the $5,000 loan he'd taken out to produce it.

"We stayed up for three days, scraping gum off the floor, cleaning the hall up so that we would get our deposit back," he told Taproot. "But that's how I got into it. From there on, I was hooked on watching these events come together, watching people of all different ages and all different backgrounds just getting together to dance and enjoy music."

Edmonton's city council and police have scrutinized late-night EDM events, often referred to as raves, since the late 1990s — around the same time that Scream began. It took until 2020 to share comprehensive research findings and pass Bylaw 19166, which sets a legally recognized framework for EDM events. Nguyen had a front-row seat for the process, taking part in an advisory committee that bridged understanding and cemented processes with the municipal government for EDM.

"This happened multiple times during my career, where they put a Footloose type of demand on the city to stop dancing past a certain time," he said. "Yes, obviously there are some drugs at (this type of) event, and throughout the years we had to start taking more responsibility as a community and as an organization to ensure that it never put a strain on our healthcare system."

Boodang and Scream offer harm reduction, an intervention practice positing that you cannot control whether people take drugs, but you can reduce the risks they face if they do. And while safety measures over the years have been costly for Boodang, Nguyen said working with the city on a blueprint was worth it because Edmonton now attracts ravers from around the world.

"I'm glad that we went through it because the city now not only accepts that we do these events, they support it because it brings tourism; it brings people into the city," he said. "They come from all over the world. We have people travelling from as far as Australia."

Dance music may have been singled out in the past, Nguyen said, when other events for revellers tend to get a pass.

"It was deemed normal to go to a country bar, get drunk, cause trouble, and fight," he recalled. "(Even at a) rock concert, people are taking LSD and whatever it is they're doing — that's OK. But with electronic music, it was like, 'Oh, this is something new that we haven't seen before.' I feel like every genre of music may have gone through that at some point."

Attitudes towards late-night dancing have gradually changed. Edmonton unveiled a nighttime economy strategy in 2024, which was met with some skepticism by venue owners. In 2025, now-Mayor Andrew Knack campaigned on a promise to "ambitiously implement" the strategy, indicating this city council may be more open to rave culture than its predecessors. (Knack has attended at least one rave since becoming mayor.)

Will Knack be at Scream? We'll see. But Tiësto, Alesso, Chase & Status, and around 200 other performers definitely will be. So too will Zyra Premium Vodka, a local spirits brand that secured a partnership.

Meanwhile, Nguyen continues to work on AGNT Technologies, a company that won the hearts (and wallets) of Startup TNT investors in 2023 for its streamlining of talent-booking. The company now operates in 27 Canadian markets and 13 in the United States, with about 125 more jurisdictions on the horizon.