What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?
Let’s start on a high note. The Micca concert and choral festivals concluded this past weekend. That’s an annual event operated by the Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors Association dedicated to showcasing instrumental and choral talent in public schools around the state.
It’s a massive event. In three days, running Friday to Sunday, more than 80 schools made the trip to six locations from Belchertown to Bellingham to give a total of 162 performances in a festival open to high, middle and elementary schools.
More than a mere showcase, the festival experience includes “adjudicators” (sounds like less “judgy” judges to me), music professionals who mobilize their expertise to provide educational clinics, along with feedback and scoring. It’s a general “feel good” event, but there are some competitive aspects.
Just what the most anxious generation in human history needs – more opportunities for withering criticism from adults. But seriously, if you do this the right way, spiking the festival with a stiff shot of competition can make the experience all the more meaningful for the students. It’s for realsies, it’s for keeps. And better that they’re competing for likes performing music on a stage with their peers instead of dancing alone in their basement on TikTok, right?
Speaking of realsies, one of our local public school orchestras walked away with the only gold rating on its day of competition. Congratulations to all the musicians at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, who knocked the socks off Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” Brian Balmages’ “Dreaming” and Mozart’s “Confutatis Maledictis” from the Requiem Mass.
And tip of the cap to music director Laura Umbro. When she took over the program 16 years ago, there were only six kids in the orchestra. Fast-forward to 2024, she’s bringing almost 40 young musicians to the festival and they’re taking the honors in their first competition ever. She must be doing something right.
Okay, now for the bad news. In a press release sent out Friday by The Democracy Center in Cambridge’s Harvard Square, the “21st century meetinghouse” announced its closing as of July 1. The Whys and Wherefores remain vague. The center is closing for “necessary renovations” but the verbiage is ambiguous with respect to whether it will ever reopen to community groups again. The center “hopes” it will. The local music, arts and activist groups that depend on the center’s event space deserve clear messaging. Hope floats – but so does shit.
There will be two community meetings (from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Thursday and 7 to 9 p.m. Monday) in-person and online, where you can find out more. RSVP here. Is the community center “evolving” to no longer involve the community? Will these meetings be a kind of civic performance art where locals are invited to speak their mind only to be steamrolled by top-down policies decided months ago? Or is there no cause for concern except that the Democracy Center is just really bad at writing press releases? Like Philip Seymour Hoffman said in the “The Big Lebowski,” “Well Dude, we just don’t know.”
We’ll find out soon enough. If The Democracy Center closes to community groups, Harvard Square has become an increasingly impossible location to host DIY music. Charlie’s Kitchen is out, Tasty Burger is out. What’s a young punk to do?
And what’s a Cambridge Rindge and Latin School student to do? The high school is less than a half-mile from The Democracy Center. Music education is a public good that doesn’t always happen when the teachers, directors and adjudicators are in charge. It doesn’t always happen within jazz, classical and whatever other adult-approved genres.
When spaces such as the center’s free and low-cost event rooms disappear, opportunities for young musicians to showcase their own music their own way disappear too. That’s not how you nurture your local arts and culture community, that’s how you kill it.
Is it the final curtain call at 45 Mt. Auburn St.? Stay tuned as this story develops.
Friday: The Roland High Life, Cold Expectations, The Ghouls, Never Gonna Make It (Middle East, Cambridge)
We covered The Ghouls at a Middle East gig in early March, and now they’re back for more at the Rock N Roll Rumble. No home court advantage, because this band’s from Lowell. But at least they already know where the latrines are located. The Roland High Life are local pop rockers with emo persuasions. All four of these bands have been watching and waiting as the first weekend of competition unfolded. Are they dying of anticipation or learning lessons about what works from the early cannon fodder? Both and neither.
Wednesday: Metz, Gouge Away (Crystal Ballroom, Somerville)
Metz was a Pitchfork buzz band back when Pitchfork was a thing. Okay, Pitchfork, the little indie music blog that could, is still a thing. But who knows for how long? With its parent publisher Condé Nast laying off staff and reshuffling the organization under the direction of GQ, it’s clear that the suits want to refocus their coverage to attract everyone’s favorite demographic: 18-34 males. Probably white, probably love to spend money and probably earn more for the same work than their counterparts by race and gender. GQ’s prized demo will have no quarrel with the post punk outfit Metz, though Metz might have a quarrel with them, because they’re from Toronto and Canadians are built different.
April 18: Kotoko Brass (Lizard Lounge, Cambridge)
The drums of Central Ghana, the bass and keys of the Caribbean, the horns of New Orleans. These are the sounds that the genre descriptors “world music” and “fusion” were made for. A true hybrid ensemble that comes together to forge paths between cultures. The performance features Mohammed Alidu, whose musical journey has taken him from the courts of African kings to studios in Los Angeles to our local red-light-drenched subterranean shrine of sound, the Lizard Lounge.
With the first weekend of competition in the books at the Rock N Roll Rumble, let’s tally some results. First things first, who’s advancing to the next round?
Twig emerged victorious on the opening night. The hard-rocking quartet is long on late ’70s- and early ’80s-style cues. Beefy solos, power stances, plenty of swag. Machismo for miles, but the lead vocals from Karina Lagstrom make this band more than a mere boy’s club. Was it the cover of No Doubt’s “I’m Just a Girl” that pushed them over the top? Honorable mention goes to Sunshine Riot, whose neo-grunge grind will set your hair on fire.
Gut Health comes out on top the second night. The four-piece made an unholy mess of the venue with toilet paper cannons, surreal placards and dummy Olympics. It all got cleaned up for the next act, which is a minor miracle. The post-hardcore power psychers now face the hefty challenge of one-upping themselves in the semifinals. But if anyone can do it, stage antics guru Gut Health can. Honorable mention goes to Trailer Swift for the most headbanging set of the night.
Wire Lines takes the cake on the final night of the first weekend. The punk band is the sauciest item to come out of New Bedford since the “romance scammer” Chukwunonso “Douglas” Umegbo hit the headlines. The frontman risked life and limb with some mic stand stunts that would get you banned from most music venues. Instead the punkers are getting asked back next week. Tip of the cap to everybody for keeping it rock ’n’ roll. The alt-country outfit Other Brother Darryl doesn’t need an honorable mention because they scored the wildcard to join the winners in the next round.
The final three gigs of the preliminary round are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at The Middle East. Slap on your favorite temporary tattoo and join the mayhem.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
Feature image by Bethany Versoy.
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