SOUNDS FROM HOME
The eclectic and ethnically diverse Eagle Rock Music Festival offers 65 reasons to party in the streets Saturday
By Carl Kozlowski 10/01/2009
Sure, you can spend $40 or more for a ticket to the Gibson Amphitheater, or the Greek Theatre, or the Wiltern and see one or two bands perform.
But why do that when you can enjoy dozens of bands in numberless musical genres while strolling from one stage to another in scenic Eagle Rock — all for free?
On Saturday, the 11th annual Eagle Rock Music Festival is back, rocking local fans with its eclectic array of sounds and sights from 4 to 11 p.m. Rather than just paying lip service to the goal of inclusion, festival organizers stress that they’ve searched the City of Angels for groups that represent nearly every popular musical style.
But more than inclusion of musical tastes, “I think it’s really about our focus on localism and diversity,” said Brian Martinez, director of events for the Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, presenters of the annual festival. The 27-year-old Martinez has been working with the Center for several years in bringing bands to the popular event, and this year he’s found a number of great acts.
Included in Saturday’s daylong lineup are 65 bands and deejays, such as French Semester (pop-rock from a group formed by musicians from India, Mexico, Vietnam and Europe) and Happy Hollows, a hard-rocking trio with a strong White Stripes influence. The packed program, played across 16 venues, marks a strong rebound from last year’s drop in corporate support, with Time Warner Cable and Target (as well as Pasadena Weekly) among dozens of sponsors this year.
The festival should also draw more people than usual due to the fact that The LA Weekly Detour Festival in nearby Downtown LA — sometimes held the same day as the Eagle Rock event — is not happening this year.
“Each stage is co-produced by us and a certain collective, and this makes us stand out from the other festivals in the city,” Martinez said. Festival exposure has helped some groups take their popularity to a whole new level — Cambodia-influenced rockers Dengue Fever, for example, which headlined at the festival two years ago, went on to a world tour that was filmed for the acclaimed documentary “Sleepwalking Through the Mekong.”
This year, said Martinez, the spotlight will be on No Age — perhaps best known for its “very DIY” (do it yourself) punk sound — as one of the groups to watch. Martinez believes Jail Weddings and Free Moral Agents, two other groups set to appear Saturday, will also appeal to fans of that style.
But the biggest development this year in the eyes of Martinez and other organizers is that the festival has teamed up with Dublab, a local Web-radio collective of deejays, which is celebrating its 10-year anniversary during Saturday’s musical mélange. The goal of the festival, Martinez explained, is to present the best possible music of today with an eye on the future.
“We’re working with them on the festival’s Global Stage, and the theme of that is future roots — having acts that are tradition-based yet future-forward, with every style in the middle,” Martinez said of Dublab, which consists of deejays who will curate a combination of other deejays — including The Gaslamp Killer (deejays playing ’60s and ’70s Middle Eastern funk) and the Dub Club Echodelic Sound System (mixing live reggae singing with recorded reggae beats) — and live music.
“The entire global stage lineup is worth focusing on, and the emerging stage also deserves a lot of attention because it features the hottest rising bands in the entire Los Angeles area,” he added.
Martinez’s excitement was echoed by the center’s festival PR director, Maryam Hossenzadeh. She feels the festival’s message of musical multiculturalism is perfect for LA in the 21st century. And this year, Hossenzadeh said, music fans will be able to learn all about each band in a free program being produced for the event.
“We’ve dug deep into Los Angeles and all the layers and cultures that make up the city,” said Hossenzadeh. “We’re not looking at it through the lens of ‘here’s a specific time of folk music.’ We have a Filipino deejay and a Filipino cover group of ’60s through ’90s pop rock and soul music, which together highlight the spectrum of ages and styles in the Filipino music community,” she said of Chris Alfaro (who deejays under the name Free the Robots) and The AM/FM Band.
“We have Buyepongo playing cumbia in its raw organic sense. And then there’s country and Americana band Leslie and the Badgers offering a different take on their rootsy genre, because they have a classically trained Taiwanese violinist as their fiddler,” Hossenzadeh said. You won’t see that too often at the Greek, certainly not at this weekend’s prices. n
The Eagle Rock Music Fest runs from 4 to 11 p.m. Saturday along Colorado Boulevard between Eagle Rock Boulevard and Argus Drive. Admission is free. There is free parking at and shuttle service from Eagle Rock Plaza. Visit centerartseaglerock.org.
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