We wanted to be excited about Bumbershoot this year. On paper, the 44-year-old festival looks so good: it’s a non-profit organization. the mission is not so much to make money, but to share music and the arts with the people of Seattle. OneReel Executive Director Jon Stone described the festival’s recent realignment to its core values to The Stranger a few weeks ago, elaborating a conscious decision to
“double down and get back to our roots in terms of our commitment to local artists. We said, ‘we’re not going to shell out stupid money for Bob Dylan, for superstars, especially not nostalgic superstars.’ There’s a smarter way to spend that money and better stories that we’re uniquely positioned to tell.”
So what exactly does that mean? The article in The Stranger went on to describe the difficulties OneReel has experienced, notably with competition from other festivals and the rising cost of bringing big name acts to perform. We think One Reel is trying to gloss over the fact that times are tough, and Bumbershoot is struggling to break even and put together a billing of varied genres that will draw crowds and keep the spirit of the festival alive.
We wanted to give the underdog a chance just as much as the next guy. After all, smaller acts don’t necessarily lack talent. But we’ve got some critical feedback from our experience as well.
Our attendance at the festival was focused primarily on checking out the Electronic acts (hopefully for obvious reasons!), but we also checked out other genres, art exhibits and comedy in the spirit of the festival. We believe that even the most hardcore dance music fans appreciate other genres of music (occasionally) and are open-minded about entertainment.
Let’s take a look at the good, the bad and the ugly parts of Bumbershoot 2014. We’ll conclude with our thoughts on the future of Electronic music at Bumbershoot and what we recommend our fans keep in mind when making a decision about attending next year’s Bumbershoot.
[divider]OUR THOUGHTS ON BUMBERSHOOT 2014[/divider]
[button color=”white” size=”normal” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”samewindow” url=”https://www.dancemusicnw.com/looking-back-bumbershoot-2014/2″]THE GOOD[/button]
[button color=”white” size=”normal” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”samewindow” url=”https://www.dancemusicnw.com/looking-back-bumbershoot-2014/3″]THE BAD[/button]
[button color=”white” size=”normal” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”samewindow” url=”https://www.dancemusicnw.com/looking-back-bumbershoot-2014/4″]THE UGLY[/button]
[button color=”white” size=”normal” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”samewindow” url=”https://www.dancemusicnw.com/looking-back-bumbershoot-2014/5″]CONCLUSION[/button]
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