Too hot to blog, too stoked not to

Oy, it’s sticky in Mtown tonight, it’s June, that ain’t right! Well, it’s midafternoon, but still. The sidewalks are damply sizzling and the small groups and framentary crowds of tourists and marijuana dealers are circling slower then usual, making flurries like dandylion cotton when intercut by the sweating, irrepressibly active jogging types on Mount Royal. Inside, with the windows open to the bare breeze, we are tidying up a bit for an Indyish meet, the last before our Fringe adventure begins again.

We are again among the special events producers for the big, mad indie fest that opens Thursday. Our first contribution to the events at this year’s Montreal Fringe outdoor site is some live graffiti art. Peru Dyer and Lou from Yves Laroche and 00G Gallery are coming with some special guests to make large scale art that should be up in the park throughout the festival, adorning the stone archway that backdrops the outdoor site’s stage.

Friday is our major event, our Monthly Mess comes early this month so we can be onsite at the Fringe. Having the Mess at the Fringe presented a cool opportunity to collaborate. I approached the Suoni per il Popolo festival, which goes on throughout the month of June (and which our artist writers have been previewing and reviewing most rousingly, check the Suoni tag) to see if maybe there was an act in their festival that might be interested in participating in our Mess show, cross-promote, make friends, etc. Peter from Suoni was into the idea right away, and we looked at the schedule to see who was performing near our Mess date. His eyes bugged out a tiny bit and he laughed “well, if you can come up with some money you could get the Sun Ra Arkestra!” At first my brain went No, we don’t have it, ah well. But then my brain went Yes!

Well actually, I went over to James and Angela’s house for some tea, and thought about my options out loud, and realized, with prodding, that we could probably get help from good sponsors to have Sun Ra do a free outdoor workshop. Over the weekend I wrote up a proposal that basically told some of the story of the Sun Ra Arkestra and the impact they’ve had on contemporary music, and some of the financial difficulties the group has had since Sun Ra died and they stopped receiving any kind of share of royalties from their first 50 years of recording. After sharing this info in one page, I listed the sponsor visibility we were comfortable with and the price tag. I sent it to Soundcraft Canada, who do local distribution and marketing for AKG mics and have been sponsoring the Mess for a while. I guess it helped that our friend and contact there had been keeping his boss informed of our awesomeness, =P because he said yes, and just like that, ta dah, SUN RA ARKESTRA!

Ok, it really is too hot to blog, so this is a shorty story, and I’ll add a little taste of Sun Ra for you before I go soak my head:

Ok, don’t those guys redefine showpersonship? Now picture that, plus belly-dancers. Our goal is for everyone in the tent to be playing an instrument, or shaking their bellies. Ah heck, here’s one of the Ethereal Tribal dancers too, I can’t help myself, I’m too excited:

Ok, very very last thing, which is just that MAN, belly dance can be powerful! You watch it and you just want to cheer and clap in time and shimmy, it’s cosmic, and it’s our tribute to Sun Ra, way back home on Saturn, I hope he can see us.