Devon Soltendieck

Devon’s MuchMantra:  “Surround me in music.”  This stylish Montrealer beat out 2,500 hopefuls in The MuchMusic VJ Search in January 2004. These days, he still considers himself the “essentially the same kid who got the chance of a lifetime…just older, wiser and slightly more sarcastic.”  Jessica Simpson, Hilary Duff, Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen, Audioslave, Orlando Bloom & Kirsten Dunst: just some of the A-list stars he’s interviewed while hosting various Live@Much exclusives.

Comfortable in his own skin, Devon’s always ready to voice his informed opinion and dish an intelligent take on the topic at hand – two of many abilities he is honing on the job at Much.  Not one for influences, Devon strives to be his own person at all times.  Meshed with his journalistic instinct and crack musical knowledge is his free spirit:  he lives for the moment, vows to have fun and believes in keeping things on a positive tip.  According to Devon, one shouldn’t “cross karma…just breed positivity and it’ll come back to you tenfold.”

What music are you listening to these days?

Queens Of The Stone Age, Young Galaxy, Elliott Smith, Smashing Pumpkins, Interpol, Feist, Belle and Sebastian, Broken Social Scene, The Raconteurs, Clipse, Klaxons, MSTRCRFT, Rufus Wainwright, The Rapture, Sigur Ros, U2, The Clash.

Why should people, especially youth, vote?

Other than the fact that you get the unique opportunity to get your opinions heard and you get a say in who handles many of the policies of your daily life, voting is, in many ways, a self reflection, a way of looking at yourself in the mirror and asking yourself, “What is really fundamentally important to me?”.
 
For you, is there a connection between art and democracy? What is it?

The connection for me, is that when democracy fails, when elected officials renege on their promises, historically it's always been music that has paved the way towards a change in the zeitgeist; whether it be socially or politically.
 
Why do you care about community when it is so easy not to?

Being socially involved when it comes to something as small as your individual community for me is very much in tune with being self aware. “Who am I, what do I want, how do I want to live, what do I stand for, how do I want to affect others?,” All questions people ask themselves on a daily basis, all of these things come into play when dealing with your community. It’s easy to be apathetic or socially nihilistic, but it just seems incredibly lazy to me.
 
What do you look for in a politician? What do you expect from your MP?

A couple years ago, a friend of mine ran for local office in Montreal, he couldn’t have been older than 22 at the time, and it caused a HUGE stir among people my age, even those who had never voted before. There needs to be more youth infused into politics, especially at the grassroots level. Younger candidates with original youthful perspectives. The way parties are built in both the US and Canada makes it painfully slow to climb party ranks, at that level it all becomes about favors and donation pledges, something that obviously needs to change.