All the votes have been cast and the results for Tuesday’s general election should be in by the time this column is published. It’s a good time to reflect on the kind of talk we heard from candidates about their commitment to promoting local arts and culture.
Whether you were tracking elections in Cambridge, Somerville or Boston, here are at least three good chestnuts from the campaign soapboxes to squirrel away in your mental cupboard.
I’ll lead off with the sort of statement about the arts and culture that I hope, wish and pray is true when I hear it from a politician. Namely, that they view arts and culture as a necessity of life, rather than a luxury, which gets ritually sacrificed each time we enter another austerity cycle. I heard this kind of statement from many candidates in all the races, including Josh Kraft and Katjana Ballantyne, which proves it’s no magic spell to win an election, but it still counts as a welcome statement of values. Did your picks for office make that kind of value statement? Will they live up to it?
Second, let’s bookmark all the discussion about building spaces for arts and culture and working with developers to ensure new development doesn’t displace artists. We heard a lot of this talk in the Somerville races, in which the city’s management of the Armory and the recently affirmed Somernova development were at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Did your city councillor picks in the Cambridge race have anything to say about growing community space and protecting what is in place? If they were looking for a good example to liven up their stump speeches, the loss of the Democracy Center in 2024 remains a sobering reminder of the precarity of local art space.
Third, we can’t forget all the talk about “affordability.” Even if your chosen candidates didn’t have a clearly defined platform on arts and culture, they probably used the topic of affordability, especially in relation to housing, as a way to shoehorn themselves into discussions about how to keep artists living and working in Cambridge. We need more affordable housing for a variety of reasons, from quality-of-life issues to solving the climate crisis, in addition to not pricing out the arts and culture community. Many candidates were happy to cheerlead the cause of affordability. Once in office, will they continue to connect the dots between affordability and the fate of local arts and culture, and will they legislate accordingly?
Three nuggets from the recent election to retain, keep handy and pull out whenever you want to reflect on whether our politicians are friend or foe to local arts and culture in the coming term. I’m sure there are more than three nuggets worth considering, but three is the magic number, and I’m sticking to it.
Hit this
Saturday: @ (The Lilypad, Cambridge)
The nomenclature arms race rages on! In the 1950s, wacky names for bands and eyebrow-raising titles for songs were all euphemisms for sex and drugs. You could turn on the radio and hear a song called “Poon-Tang!” by The Treniers during the Eisenhower administration. In the ’60s, euphemisms for sex and drugs. In the ’70s, euphemisms for sex and drugs. In the ’80s … Actually, it was always euphemisms for sex and drugs until the dawn of the Internet, when sticking your finger in the eye of the mainstream music establishment took a techno-linguistic turn into crass violations of standard SEO practices. That’s where @, folk poppers out of Baltimore experimenting with electronics lately, is at.
Sunday: Awnthay, I Have No Mouth, Frogs, Trouble Girl (Cambridge Community Center, Cambridge)
A four-stack punk show and a benefit for medical aid for Palestinians, presented by Little Miss Clackamas Records. Is this what counts as punk these days? Organizing in support of people in need? I suppose the idea of “mutual aid” has a long history in punk. All those fundraisers by The Clash come to mind as marquee examples of a general trend. But there was a parallel history of punk that was primarily characterized by knavish yobbery, which dovetailed nicely with the nihilism of the baby boomer generation, and probably explains why Johnny Rotten turned Maga. If the kids have left that version of punk in the dust, so much the better.
Nov. 15: Kris Thompson’s Birthday Show (Lilypad, Cambridge)
A night of music curated to psych the rawk in honor of the birthday boy, a longtime gadabout on and off stages in our local music scene. The bill hints at the range of his aural affections. The Croaks cross-pollinate the wyrd folk of medieval lais with punk rock. Daughter of the Vine brings a dreamy drone grind. Happy the Clown got its start in the late ’80s, searching for a path through the post punk wilderness in the alt ’90s. Winds of Alluria practice shamanistic throat singing from Eurasia. Gary War, the only artist on the bill with a Wikipedia page, serves as featured video projection artist.
Live: Sean Nicholas Savage at Warehouse XI
Second time is the charm.
When I wrote up a Sean Nicholas Savage show in May, the event could best be described as a misfire. The Canadian songsmith and vocalist was opening for Christopher Owens (formerly of Girls) at The Rockwell, which would normally be the makings of a great night of music.
Though they come from different corners of the map, Owens and Savage share a musical sensibility, one that wears its heart on its sleeve to a degree that jaded ears can barely find it comprehensible. That’s a shame. But on that particular night in May, the pair came across less as troubadours of love than hungover freshmen. The road can make one weary. The artists struggled to find their proper rhythm on six strings. It was an uneven performance.
What a difference a few months and a change of approach can make. Sean Nicholas Savage returned to Somerville as headliner and put aside the guitar to focus on his primary instrument these days: vocals.
The guitar-led folk of his early album “Movin’ Up In Society” (2010) is a distant memory relative to the swank artcore lounge pop of his present incarnation. He is most comfortable with mic in hand, barefoot, using all four limbs (and strategically arched eyebrows) to sashay across the performance space like goose feather caught in an updraft.
Last Wednesday at Warehouse XI, that’s the type of show Savage put on. He was in his element, playing the role of showboating frontman while a pair of musicians labored at a keyboard and electronic drum kit in back. The audience, which may or may not be aware there was ever a “pre-disco era” Sean Nicholas Savage, soaked it in with a mix of reverence and gentle confusion.
Quick aside: Sean Nicholas Savage has a small entourage, and they mostly wear dusters.
Solo electro popper Bayleaf and indie rock trio Opera opened the bill.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
A stronger
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