Jul. 21, 2010 - Issue #770: Draw It Yourself

Enter Sandor

No genre generation

Every year, Toronto's Harbourfront Centre hosts a series of free concerts at a beautiful bandshell that backs right onto Lake Ontario. It's a fantastic place to see shows; the venue is intimate and, if you take your eyes off the stage and look behind you, you'll see boats on the lake, looking out towards Toronto Islands. As the sun is setting, the ambience is spectacular.

One weekend out of every year is dedicated to the Beats, Breaks and Culture festival, which in the past has brought together electronica artists, hip-hop tacticians and a lot of bass.

In previous editions of the festival, we've seen Juan Maclean, Zero 7 and Prefuse 73. We've danced to MSTRKRFT as they went behind the decks.

This year, though, the Friday bill featured the Heavy and the Slew, a collaboration between a couple of members of Wolf Mother and turntablist extraordinaire Kid Koala.

The Heavy is a very cool band; it plays very organic funk rock, influenced strongly by Grand Funk Railroad. It's very groovy, very danceable, but not at all ultramodern or electronic. And the Slew's set, save for a few opening jams by KK alone with six turntables, was basically a '70s-ish Led Zeppelin jam with a few scratches for augmentation. It's owes much more to its Wolf Mother roots than it does to Kid Koala.

It was a very '70s night in a festival that's supposed to have us looking forward, not back.

But that's the way things are nowadays, right? I mean, folk festivals, electronic music festivals, jazz festivals, they're all just names. While these fests advertise themselves to be genre specific, they're not.

Heck, back in the '70s, the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland made waves by booking big meaty rock bands. Heck, the fire that claimed the Montreux Casino was the genesis for Deep Purple's "Smoke On the Water."

And it's just gone from there. Today, for the most part a jazz or a folk or a world music festival is simply a music festival. In a world where kids load their iPods with Johnny Cash, death metal and hiphop, genres don't mean a thing anymore.

Really, the only Canadian major festival that I can think of that stays somewhat true to its roots is the Edmonton Folk Music Festival; pretty well the entire lineup is, well, at least somewhat rootsy. Same can't be said for the Calgary Folk Music Fest, which is pretty well a free-for-all. This year's lineup included hip-hop — DJ Logic — and Canada's own pop-ensemble megagroup, Stars.

Heck, Ontario's famed Mariposa Folk Festival, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2010, proudly advertised that its lineup featured "folk, roots, acoustic, indie, folk rock, gospel, pop, blues, rock, jazz, soul, Americana, country, western swing, bluegrass, Latin, world, funk, cowboy, rockabilly, Celtic and more, there's plenty of great music for everyone!"

Wow, how about inviting Children of Bodom? Then you'd have all the bases covered!

What kind of festival would have '70s classic rock kings the Steve Miller Band and the Doobie Brothers on the bill? Well, that would have been the 2010 edition of the Montreal Jazz Festival.
And the Slew, the '70s rock again, played the Edmonton Jazz Festival.

The thing is, we don't have that many touring Lollapaloozas or Ozzfests anymore, where every band on the bill is familiar. Most Canadian grassroots festivals depend on faith from the attendees. Each attendee may have heard of a band or two on the bill, but trust the rest of the bill will be up his or her alley.

So a musical curveball really can take people by surprise.

Next year, though, I'm gonna wear a Slayer shirt to Breaks, Beats and Culture. Just in case a metal show breaks out. V

Steven Sandor is a former editor-in-chief of Vue Weekly, now an editor and author living in Toronto.  vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus