Suoni Music Festival Suggestions and Stories

Suoni 2008 poster by Bree Ree – watch for a podcast interview coming soon!

Over the past week I’ve had the opportunity to do some accidental interviews with organizers of and performers in the Suoni Per il Popolo music festival currently underway here in Montreal. Sometimes you go find an interview, and sometimes it finds you.

One interview happened this week while sitting in the back of Casa del Popolo, one of two venues where the Suoni festival is measured out in its steady way throughout the sunnyrainy month of June. I commented on the Celtx sticker on the guitar case of a scruffyhandsome gentleman at the table facing. He didn’t know what it was, someone had put it there, I told him it was possibly indirectly our fault, since we’d brought the Celtx swag into town for a project last year. He didn’t seem to mind too much about it, showed me others from artists around the world.

I was meeting Peter, one of the four main directors of the Suoni festival, at Casa to talk about our upcoming collaboration on a workshop with the Sun Ra Arkestra (June 13 2008 – Ah!) Peter arrived during this idle, sunny afternoon beer chit chat about stickers between strangers and introduced me to my interlocutor, Sam Shalabi.

Sam Shalabi has 2 shows in the festival this year, one with Shalabi Effect and one with Land of Kush.

Peter and I worked out some Sun Ra details, and he regaled me a bit with stories from the last time they were here, which involved some late night partying with the octogenarian experimental jazz ensemble. Awesome. Then we shifted briefly into interview mode, and Sam joined casually in.

I asked about the chaos 3 days before the festival and Peter (after rubbing his trim, tall head and checking to make sure I was right about only 3 days left, only half joking) described immigration juggling, volunteer coordinating, thousands of emails, and acts converging every day for a month, from all over the world. This month is an all-year job for Peter, and he loves it, and we giggle mischievously together planning a show with dance troops and the Sun Ra Arkestra and agree this work rocks. Above all he believes in the festival’s mission, someone intones “8 years ago Mauro and Kiva had a vision!” and after the laughter I ask what the Suoni Mission is.

Both in terms of the music and the organization, the mission of Suoni is a challenge to the values of mainstream, profit driven music, it provides liberation music and “it poses an alternate model for how culture can function” treating artists and audiences well, first and foremost. This makes me glow quietly as I reread it, I feel validated; being nice and working with nice people has often been as close as we can get to a mission for young Indyish, and it’s amazing that people I admire have been guided by something so similarly simple.

The most obvious ways this mission to treat people well manifests itself is in low admission prices, a non-frantic pace that allows a local audience to take it all in, and an emphasis on seeking support through community and government resources to pay the artists well and help them with their travel plans and posters without having to be branded all over with corporate sponsorship. They’re not against it entirely, but it definitely doesn’t overwhelm the music the way it can do.

I ask Peter who he’s looking forward to seeing in particular and he mentions Sun Ra Arkestra as an ‘of course,’ then the Evan Parker Trio, Roscoe Mitchell, and all the artists he’s never seen before that he looks especially forward to discovering.

Sam Shalabi agrees, mentions the Bishop Brothers, but mostly jokes soft-spokenly, until he brings up Roswell Rudd. Roswell Rudd, he says enthusiastically (well, calm enthusiasm, but still) mutates the space around him when he plays in a physical, inexplicable way, like doing drugs.

I also ended up doing a brief phone interview with Malcolm Goldstein today over the phone, and tried to calm myself and clear my mind of thoughts of John Cage composing for the person on the line, as we chatted comfortably, rescheduling our podcast interview for sometime in October when he’s back from a tour and some time in paradise (a place in Vermont where he works hard, but, as he says “one works in paradise”). He expressed a sincere interest in Indyish and how we got curious about the Suoni project, and spoke seriously about the good Mauro and Kiva – founders of Suoni, as well as Sala Rosa and Casa del Popolo – have done in creating a support system and home for this music in Montreal.

When asked about what shows in the festival he was looking forward to, Malcolm Goldstein said that, though only in town for a few nights for his own show and kind of under the weather, he was, like Sam Shalabi, going to see Roswell Rudd tonight.

So it seems from my small sampling that the greats in town agree, tonight the show to see is trombonist Roswell Rudd. James Finnerty will be there for Indyish, so you’ll hear all about it if you can’t make it. And if you’re really feeling this fest, check out Panpot for more Suoni articles and interviews.

Here’s some more info on the artists performing at the Suoni Festival mentioned in this post:

Sun Ra Arkestra Workshop and Jam – June 13, info here.
Sun Ra Arkestra major performance – June 14
Shalabi Effect – June 1
Land of Kush – June 9
Even Parker Trio – June 26
Roscoe Mitchell – June 29
Bishop Brothers – June 18
Malcolm Goldstein – June 3
Roswell Rudd – TONIGHT - June 4

Get the schedule and artists bios and ticket information for Suoni here.