Final weekend approaches for iFest 2007
Many of you probably have already read John Nova Lomax's Houston Press column on the 2007 International Festival, which got underway last weekend (I was out of town).
Houston's best festival, some will recall, nearly died a few years ago, when shortsighted political leaders allowed it to move to the parking lots of Reliant (and the city's parks director at the time seemed to welcome the move, stating idiotically that it is very hard on the city's parks for people actually to use them -- heaven forbid!).
Now, it's back downtown, and no longer on life support. Even better, the indomitable Rick Mitchell is heading up the music end of things. Lomax has more on that excellent news:
This year's model finds the festival in finer fettle than at anytime since the fiasco of '04. As in the glory days, there will be four music stages, as opposed to the measly three of years recently past. Rick Mitchell, the former Chronicle music critic and the owner of one of the more finely tuned sets of ears in town, returns in his role as music curator. (He also did the Ireland-themed fest in '01, '02's French version and Mexico in '03, but has only served in a part-time role once since then.)
Back in those palmy pre-exile days, Mitchell was dispatched to the honored nations to scout for talent, but in the case of this year's honoree — China — he didn't get that chance. “The regional Chinese governments we dealt with this year decided to send us acrobats,” Mitchell says. “With Jamaica, they didn't choose to send acrobats, they sent music. Thank goodness! For China, that's what they are really known for culturally in international circles — martial arts like the Shaolin Kung Fu Spectacular and amazing acrobats like the Shenzhen Acrobatic Circus, so that's what made sense to put onstage.” (Not to mention the fact that the Wu-Tang Clan was too expensive.)
“And this was also the case with India,” Mitchell continues, “but it didn't make much sense that year to put a sitar-based Indian raga out in the middle of a big outdoor music festival. That music takes an hour to build and requires a different type of venue.”
Another of this year's new developments is the late closing time. Look out, Vegas, Bourbon Street, all you other round-the-clock gilded palaces of sin — here comes Git-Down H-Town! For the first time ever, iFest will be running until 10 p.m. on the two Saturday nights of its run.
“This was one of those things we'd talked about every year, but changing the closing time affects not only the people running the stages but also all of the vendors, food vendors and arts and crafts people, too,” Mitchell says. “We'd talked about closing all but one of the zones and trying to drive people over there, but ultimately that seemed like it wasn't going to work. So basically we had to go to all the vendors and say, ‘Look, this is what we're gonna do this year.'”
The festival has always been a fairly PG-rated affair. Mitchell implies that the last couple of hours of each Saturday night this year just might kick that up a notch to PG-13. “The festival takes pride in being a family-oriented event. We want families to be comfortable, we don't want a bunch of drunken people staggering around,” he says. “But if we stay open from eight to ten, hopefully by that time a lot of the families will have gone home, then maybe we can sell some more beer those last two hours and do what every other festival does. And obviously, the acts that we booked on the Saturday nights, particularly George Clinton, show that we had that in mind. We'll still be who we are during the daytime.”
Mitchell has always had a finely honed sense of the “who we are” part, at least in terms of our musical identity. “I've always felt that the Houston International Festival should reflect Gulf Coast Texas music in the same way that JazzFest reflects Gulf Coast Louisiana music,” he says. “Now we can't do the $100,000 headliners like they do in New Orleans, because we don't have a racetrack. Or $100,000. I do think that part of the mission is to bring international music to Houston, but the other half of it is to showcase Houston to the international community.”
The return of Mitchell on the music side of things is the best news for the Festival in ages (or at least since people had the good sense to figure out it belongs downtown). The later hours are another good development, meaning that the Festival is growing up -- and maybe, just maybe, the city of Houston is also.
I'm looking forward to catching the International Festival this weekend, especially the Lucinda Williams show (her last appearance at the Festival was excellent).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/25/07 09:14 PM | Houston Life | Print | Comments (2)
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