Garden City Grooves reminds me of everything I love about music.

Watching a music festival spring forth from the nothingness is a beautiful thing. It’s an even more beautiful thing when the festival exists to serve under-serviced genres like funk and afro-beat. This past weekend brought the first annual Garden City Grooves here in Victoria, a festival dedicated to music that make people want to dance their faces off…and let me tell you, good people, it was really a beautiful thing.

The brainchild of Nathan ‘musicofmymind’ Ambrose (Who does one of the most powerful radio shows around, check it here) and Reuven Sussman (Powerful drummer and member of party-animal band the New Groovement), Garden City Grooves rounded up some of the most exciting local funkiness, as well as importing a few from Vancouver and even one brother, the masterful Gabriel Palatchi, from Argentina.

The festival scene has seemingly become dominated by the quest for big names. I’m guilty of it sometimes myself – looking at the first few names on a list and forgetting about it once I don’t see anyone recognizable jumping off at the page at me. But the immense talent and passion on display at Garden City Grooves overshadowed the slightly mysterious marquee.

The weekend kicked off at Publik, an establishment I hadn’t been inside of in many years. The sound was great, the bands seemed genuinely excited and the crowd was ready to get down. By the end of the opening set by Victoria’s the New Souls, the crowd had filled up the dance floor, getting their collective grooves on. (This process was expedited by staff from Publik pulling people out to the middle. Another reason it’s good to have handsome, beautiful staff.) Gabriel Palatchi took the stage next with his deep Latin rhythms and put on a masterful display of musical prowess. Flanked by a piece-work rhythm section, Palatchi had smiles plastered across the face of everyone in the room and kept the asses of those same people moving non-stop.

Gabriel Palatchi and his hit-man bass player, spot-reading the shit out of some funky music. Photo by me.  

Honestly, I’d love to say I stayed through the night for both the New Groovement and Truth Soundsystem’s ‘For Dancers Only’ set, but it was Friday night, the last of a long work week and I was exhausted. Having seen the New Groovement three times since the Victoria Ska Festival, I can confirm their high levels of both awesomeness and fun, but sadly, after about 25 minutes of their set, I was forced to go home and get my rest. I can only imagine Truth Soundsystem was as much fun as the last time I saw them, a short month ago.

Wandering into Lucky Bar the next night (Saturday, September 28) was kind of like walking back into time for me. It’s a place I used to go all the time for music and haven’t been in years – this was a sort of homecoming. I walked in to the awesome tribal beats of Masala, a gigantic drum collective who was in a semi-circle at the front of the dance floor. (I doubt they could have all fit on the small stage.) Let me tell you friends, Masala was awesome. Tremendously communal vibes and deep pulsing rhythms had my rump shaking like crazy.

The rest of the night at Lucky continued down the same path and turned out to be something really special. Victoria soul masters the Chantrelles took the stage for their final performance. I knew going in that this would be the group’s (tragically) last show and was interested to see if such an announcement would be made on stage. It went from “They’re going to be taking a little hiatus after this,” to, “We’re going to be gone a long time.” And while some members of the band seemed to be waiting for the set to be done, the group sounded fantastic and had the crowd in Lucky jumping and bouncing to what has to be some of the best soul music to ever step out of Victoria.

Vancouver’s afro-beat kings Miami Device came out after to close the show. I had a great time watching them, but I know very little about the genre apart from the obligatory Fela Kuti knowledge, so I won’t comment on their abilities, except to say that I had a great time watching them and danced with what one might call reckless abandon.

The moment that crystallized everything for me was seeing Ambrose and Sussman introduce Miami Device. The joy that was radiating from the stage was more than palpable and it was entirely clear that this whole event was nothing more than a couple of friends with a shared love of music creating a place to watch that music together. It fills the festival up with a sense of love and really, it highlights the reason I love music so much. It’s a sense of community, of friendship and respect, a connection to something more than ourselves. Music, in its purest form, represents the best parts of us as people and - like its close ally and one of my absolute favourites, the Victoria Ska Fest - Garden City Grooves, even in its inaugural year, is completely representative of those qualities and I can only hope that they got enough traction to make it happen again next year.

Keep on funkin’ in the free world.

Love and respect.

The New Groovement funking up Publik. Photo by me, Rags.  

The Shambhala Journals - #4 in which a coffee line forces our hero to confront Evil.

Music festivals have become one of the main releases my generation has. They are places where we can come together in love, respect, mutual admiration for aural art and the need to escape from the modern condition for a few dusty, sweaty days. They are unarguably important cultural touchstones that breed creativity and openness. But there are prices to be paid, yins to our yangs. 

I’m standing in a line for coffee with my cohort somewhere around 11:30pm-12am on the Saturday night at Shambhala and am overcome with a thought… “This entire event, no matter how gloriously happy it’s making everyone, is built on evil.” I pointed it out loud and we both immediately knew I was right. We are kind of awful people. We laughed nervously/awkwardly at the thought, made a couple snickering remarks and thought nothing more of it. It was time to get our delicious caffeinated beverages.

The coffee tent is a perfect example of the excess and privilege that these festivals celebrate. In the middle of a field at midnight, we can get an iced chai-mocha drink and why? Because we fucking deserve it, that’s why! We are young, rich, beautiful and want our every whim catered to at any given moment!

Lights? Fuck, we have so many we can shoot them around for nothing more than enjoyment. Remember all those Power Smart presentations we had in elementary school teaching us the importance of conserving energy? Fuck ‘em! All the warnings we hear about global warming and the impact of travel? Not our problem. At least not this weekend. We’re free to drive from all over the place to get here and take two hours to get from the camp ground to the highway. (This is much the same problem I have in my heart with flying. Just because we’re lucky enough to be somewhere that allows us the opportunity to go where we please, it probably doesn’t mean we SHOULD.) Plastic is getting used to house glowing goo in tubes because it looks pretty and enhances my party experience.

This all sounds like I’m really down on the whole festival experience, but I’m really not. It’s just an interesting thought. It’s all quite evil. And everyone there, somewhere deep in their hearts, knows it. We are a generation who has watched the people before us squander money on military budgets and government waste while people, not just in our own countries but all over the world, go without basics like food, water and shelter. I, like many of peers, always bemoan the fact that if a mere portion of our country’s defense budgets went to social programs and helping the poor a huge, immediate positive impact could be felt. What if all of us young, relatively rich festival goers took a year off, took the money we would have used for a weekend of hedonism and gave it the causes we actually give a shit about? We could probably do some amazing things. But will we? Probably not.

And that’s fine. I’m not above the fray. I love these festivals. I loved my time at Shambhala. Fucking dearly I loved it. I loved flying to Tennessee for Bonnaroo. I loved taking a bus to Sasquatch. But deep in my heart I know that what I’m doing is hurting the Earth I claim to love so much. Much in the same way I’m completely content to pack up my car full of shit and drive two and a half hours to bask in the glory of nature, when it would be far more beneficial for nature if I just stayed at home and looked at pictures of it on the internet.

Apparently I’m happy to stick my head in the sand for four days and wallow in excess with friends and strangers. It’s cool if you want to join me to. But it’s probably also good to acknowledge, even for a few brief moments between awkward laughter with friends, the evil and the damage that we ignore each time we make these trips to these gatherings of Pranksters.

Gentlemen, to Evil!