Sounds and Faces of the Emerging Music Festival
At 5:20 pm on a Saturday afternoon, I arrive at The Emerging Music Festival, a free concert in New York City’s Bryant Park showcasing small, distinctive, and innovative artists in front of a few hundred New Yorkers on picnic blankets. A bit late for the first set, since the A train is running local all week, I sit down front and center. Families and their children play in the grass, and college kids my age – tattooed and tote-bag-clad – are scattered around the park. Eccentric, elderly couples sit on the dozen or so folding chairs next to us. The summer day is pleasant and gentle, especially compared to the recent weather here in the city; humid and hostile. I look around the crowd and feel a collective exhale.
The first band in the lineup is a two piece project called @. “Look us up,” they say, “you won’t find us.” Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczack’s performance is easygoing, nonchalant, but transfixing, at the same time. The crowd is attentive, and I notice a striking and blessed lack of phones out. @’s presence seems to hold the huge stage lightly on their shoulders, just the two of them, an acoustic and electric guitar. Their sound has an almost ancient music feel to it, with tense wavy harmonies like Gregorian chant mixed with Animal Collective. When they finish playing, Rose gets off stage and goes to say hello to a group of fans, or friends, or both. They stand in a circle of Carhartt pants for about ten minutes before she and Filipczack run off, Vox amp in hand, leaving the park before the next set begins.
The next artist, Bloomsday, project of Iris James Garrison fills the park with a presence significantly larger than @. They have 6 band members, and their sound is bigger, but still light. Garrison has been a part of the Brooklyn DIY scene for several years, and with friends visibly in the crowd, their confidence shines through. A ‘jam band’ moment comes in the middle of “Artichoke”, their album’s namesake, when the band takes a minute or two dedicated entirely to ruminating on the pedal steel and the twinkling of gentle harmonics, and ambient noise and cymbols. The last Bloomsday song, “Old Friend” is a perfect closer, Garrison’s performance feels strong and declarative even as they sing the lyrics “I’m on the outside, I can’t get in, can’t seem to get in” over and over. The bands album just came out on June 7th, and already they already sound seasoned and comfortable performing it.
Ten minutes later, Greg Mendez comes on stage, sits down in a chair, picks up his guitar, and starts playing. No introduction. I’d been listening to his music incessantly for the last few weeks, and every time I’d pictured the show in my mind, he was sitting just like this. I think it might be the effect of his music, melodically brushing over you, but lyrically disarming. Sitting down is probably a good idea. There’s one other person on stage with him, a bassist and friend introduced as “Bea,” whose bleach-blond hair matches his. He hasn’t lifted his head for three songs, but his message feels clearer than anybody, yet. What I couldn’t hear from the lyrics of Bloomsday and @’s performances comes out clearly in Mendez’s acoustic set. The audience knows just what he’s saying. The closing song ends with a dissonant harmony that Bea builds with palpable tension, resolving to a consonant one, and tying a bow on the set.
A line forms in front of Greg Mendez’ merch stand. I buy a CD for my best friend. I walk to the food stands and get a vegan wrap. It’s seventeen dollars, which I guess I should have seen coming. The cashier tells me she thinks the music has been “a bit boring,” and I laugh “I don’t think so,” I respond. Difference of opinion, we shrug.
Dusk brings Hannah Jadagu to stage, a 21 year old NYU student whose songs have the most pop-sensibility of anyone that night. She carries a white Stratocaster around with her, but the presence of synths and programmed beats are new in the lineup. The drummer pulls out a pad in the middle of a song, giving the set a more synthetic disposition, especially in succession with Mendez’ set. Her bassists’ lines shine through in her live arrangements, groovy, offering a rhythmic complexity that’s compelling. Jadagu engages with the crowd again and again, asking them to clap or sing along to certain lines. Her extroverted presence brings an energy back into the show, demanding attention and prompting an involuntary foot tap and head nod. It’s hard to capture that kind of engagement from that sort of public crowd, but I watch Jadagu and her band do just that.
It’s practically dark now, and the three members of Horsegirl (the band) walk on stage, in bangs and skirts and boots. They begin singing in unison, supported by simple riffs and strong rhythmic hits. It tastes like indie rock gold. Dads in the crowds nod along. On “Worlds of Pots and Pans” they sing, “Emma was my brand new friend…and I dreamt of Horse and Verlaine.” It’s my first time hearing this one, and I only make out the line when it comes around a second time. It hits me in the heart, right between my best friend, named Emma, and my fascination with Patti Smith and Television, growing up in New York. On the song “Ballroom Dance Scene”, Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein take turns staggering their lines of speak-singing off-beat, but locked in tight. During a tuning break, drummer Gigi Reece performs a crazy drum build that’s almost overbearing, and shockingly complex. The band talks to the audience infrequently, only to say awkward things like, “Oh, yeah, we have merch.” The occasional “Thanks for being here” is thrown in.
As the last song starts, a small group of kids my age move to the side, avoiding blocking anyone’s view, and start jumping around. It feels fitting: doing a scene band like Horsegirl show justice by giving it a hint of DIY show energy. The seven-person mosh becomes 20 or 30, and as they dance and jump and push each other around, it starts to rain. It’s perfect timing, as everyone turns to gather their things. But the group dancing stays. They put their arms in the air, as if to catch the raindrops. I shield my camera with a book to take a photo. The rain cuts the show off a couple moments early, but stirs a moment of joy that cracks the summer heatwave open; raw, exposed, and adolescent, like Horsegirl’s songs. Like dancing in the summer rain with your friends.
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