The Battle of Fredericksburg Festivals
The Homegrown Festival scheduled for October has been canceled. It’s sad for me as it sounded like such a good time and a chance to hear many of the great musicians in this town (the festival was set up in part by a great player and writer for several national music magazines, possibly headlined by a Grammy winner and involved one of the greatest fingerstylists I have ever heard). Fredericksburg has an amazing music community for it’s size. The town knows it but, as familiarity breeds indifference, we tend to forget or ignore. There is a lot of great work going on here, but very little of the independent media structure that a larger town would support. So the word seldom gets out. You hear of shows and goings on by word of mouth. To make it worse, you often hear of it after the event. The Front Porch paper does it’s best, but it’s monthly format tends to limit how effective it can be as a gig guide. The local “professional” paper couldn’t care less. It wonders why it’s circulation is going down when it has the most pathetic world and national news I think I’ve ever run into and it’s local coverage tends to ignore the town unless a dog is lost or a tree is felled by lightening.
Now our local museum has stepped up to the big platter of ignore. A new director decided that they didn’t want to support the festival to the level that had been agreed and worked out. There were already hopes and plans to get the word out about the festival to other communities, pulling in some fresh ears for a constricted music community, some fresh eyes to a pretty town and art community and some fresh dollars for all. But it seems that the museum decided that the community isn’t their mandate. It has the old cultural stuff and the new cultural stuff isn’t worth there involvement. In an era when every museum had decided that outreach is their best bet for relevance, they want to stay behind their doors and reach for themselves.
It’s particularly sad for me since I take so much inspiration from the town and it’s environs, it’s history and it’s stories. In an era of depression (erp, um, recession), the middle class that could, a few years ago, manage to hit the quaint European towns and villages of, say, England, are too strapped for cash to consider that trip this year. And here we are. A town with a large historic district that is, really, as old as most of what survives in those quaint English towns. But Fredericksburg doesn’t involve a plane ticket. But we, the town’s leading old men and the institutions, have missed the boat. It’s a town that, like the stronger and quainter communities in England, has a thriving local art and music scene. And that boat is heading out, too. So the word stays here. The downtown promotion is aimed at the town (very usefull that), the cultural reputation sold to the community instead of out of the larger world. All the inspiration that I draw for this area could be just as easily be drawn from any visitor. They just need to be coaxed.
We need some stronger ties between the supported and the underground (them artists, musicians and craftsmen and women, us unruly bunch, us). Fredericksburg isn’t big enough to keep both running smooth. There needs to be integration. We need some support for the larger town to filter down to we, the underprivileged producers (we’ve a lot of old Regan repubs running this little city, so if figure I’ll take up their language a bit there). We need some stronger ties but they just fray on ego and some small town notion of a big reputation. Maybe we need a East by SouthEast festival. Maybe we need to take back the town (I’ve my pellet gun oiled and ready). The ‘Burg has plenty to show, we just need some powers that be that are actually interested in showing it. Less personal reputation and more local respect, perhaps…
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