Culture, locally grown
Bluebird Festival presents Midwestern culture for a local audience.
Nov. 11, 2008
Brian Roberts leads Ha Ha Tonka during its set before The Avett Brothers show Sept. 17. Ha Ha Tonka's Bluebird performance is Friday at The Blue Note.
Zach Combs of Kanser performs Monday night at Mojo's. The underground, Minneapolis-based hip-hop group will perform Friday at The Field House for the Bluebird Music and Arts Festival.
For all the stereotypes that circulate about the Midwest, one that seems to prevail time and time again is the idea that those who find themselves smack dab in the middle of the country are culture consumers, not producers. It's an argument - bear with me here - that says the two coasts are the hubs of the culture that eventually trickles down and finds a reluctant home in, say, mid-Missouri. Columbia's own Bluebird Music and Arts Festival is looking to change that.
"The idea for the whole festival was hatched because a bunch of us who are artists and musicians got started talking about Midwestern culture," co-director for visual arts Hannah Reeves says. "A lot of times people think that culture gets imported from the coasts and that we here in the Midwest just accept it."
It seems like a simple perspective - and an affront to all that Midwestern culture has to give.
"We're sort of offended by it," Reeves says. "We shape Midwestern culture. Midwesterners shape and build American culture."
Festival co-director Pat Kay agrees. For him, Bluebird isn't just a music festival. It's a forum for recognizing and appreciating the artists and musicians behind the music we hear every day and a way to draw on common roots.
"The real mission for the Bluebird Festival is to be a showcase and a celebration of all of Midwestern culture," he says.
From the musicians to the artists and audiences, everyone in some way can call the Midwest home.
And a lot of them, Kay says, were picked up right here in Columbia, like local acts Bald Eagle and the Hooten Hallers.
Although he doesn't have an exact figure, Kay ventures to say about half of Bluebird's musical acts are from in town.
"A lot are also from the St. Louis area or Chicago. No one is from the East Coast or West Coast," he says. "The real focus of this is just to celebrate the Midwest."
Inspired by the South by Southwest festival, Bluebird has been in the works for about a year and a half, Kay says. By keeping the events indoors, organizers worked out a few kinks that often plague other festivals.
First, it's cold. Who wants to be outside when the weather sucks? By enlisting local venues such as The Blue Note, Mojo's and the Cherry Street Artisan, celebrating arts also means celebrating the local economy.
Keeping things indoors is environmentally friendly, too.
"It helps keep down on the environmental impact by making it more eco-friendly because we're not doing any big outdoor events with a stage," Kay says.
While festivals have been springing up around Columbia lately, Kay says Bluebird isn't in town to compete, just to serve a purpose.
"It's very different. I don't see it as a competing type of event," he says. "I think the success of Roots 'N Blues has inspired other people with ideas for doing festivals like this. There are a lot of people who set out to do it that haven't gotten all the way."
In the spirit of encompassing all aspects of Midwestern art, Bluebird will also include an art crawl.
"There's so many facets to this whole thing," Kay says.
Presenting and showcasing culture is no easy task when culture itself is a hard term to define.
"Culture is kind of a vague term," Reeves says. "But I think it extends to philosophies of living and ways of thinking about life. There's unique music that's coming out of the Midwest. There's art that's really specific to the Midwest. All these things are part of our culture."
Reeves points out that having a visual art aspect to the festival wasn't just a haphazard idea tacked on as an afterthought. "That arts portion was really there from the beginning," she says. "It's all a part of that idea of having a kind of mission to showcase our culture, and art is a part of that culture."
Festivalgoers will have a lot of art to work with, too, as Bluebird organizers were sure to include pieces by nonprofessionals.
"I'm really proud of the work of emerging artists," Reeves says. "For some of these artists, it's their first opportunity to exhibit work that is really just excellent."
Showcasing student work is also a priority for the festival.
"There are some really great artists who happen to be students or just getting going with their bodies of work," Reeves says. "Sometimes there's kind of an attitude that student work doesn't belong in these galleries. In some cases, students are thinking harder than professionals already in the art world."
While Bluebird is about celebrating the vast contributions of the Midwest, it's not about warring with coasts. It's also about reminding Midwesterners that, well, it's okay to be Midwestern.
"The big goal, of course, is we want people here in Columbia who attend Bluebird and people who come in from out of town to get the big picture and the big idea that American culture is shaped by Midwest culture, too," Reeves says.
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