Tributes have begun flowing following the death yesterday of DJ Magu.
A crowd-favourite at dance festivals and parties across the North Coast for many years, Greg Melhuish finally succumbed to the cancer he has been battling since being diagnosed in November 2015.
He was surrounded by family when he died.
Despite his illness, DJ Magu remained a constant presence at parties around the region, checking himself out of hospital just two weeks ago to play a gig at the New Tattersalls Hotel in Lismore, followed by another gig in Nimbin.
After spending much of his early years involved in the surf industry, DJ Magu turned to music at the ripe old age of 46 years.
‘I played guitar but my fingers were clumsy so when I discovered parties I sold my beautiful Maton guitar to buy my first set of decks,’ DJ Magu recounted on his Soundcloud page, which features many hours of his music.
‘I was lucky to have a vibrant underground scene to start up in. I could grab my sound and go and set up in the bush and people would appear otherwise I would have been confined to my bedroom.’
Over the next two decades, DJ Magu cemented his reputation as a master of the dance floor, known for his marathon sets that covered all genres of electronic dance music.
He has played at most of the region’s premier festivals and nightclubs, and also recorded music with an Italian label, as well as winning a North Coast music award.
During his last years, DJ Magu spoke publicly of his battle with cancer, urging people in a similar situation not to turn their backs on modern medicine.
In October last year he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper that alternative medicines had almost killed him.
After first rejecting chemotherapy, he finally agreed to the treatment and although is was ‘difficult’, it was worth it, he told the newspaper.
DJ Magu moved to Byron Bay in the 80s after spending most of his youth surfing the breaks around Sydney.
