Chicago’s first attempt at throwing an all-encompassing festival honoring house music — the homegrown brand of disco that transformed club culture around the world — had all the right ingredients for success over the weekend.
The organizers of the Move! 2006 Chicago International House Music Festival lined up 16 highly regarded deejays and performers (including house “godfather” Frankie Knuckles, Steve “Silk” Hurley, David Morales and Danny Tenaglia) at a captivating lakefront location (the Charter One Pavilion on Northerly Island) to cap off the weeklong Gay Games.
But though the event was in many ways an artistic triumph, with galvanizing sets by house pioneers Jamie Principle, Andre Hatchett and Knuckles, it was a commercial bust. Move! aimed to draw as many as 8,500 fans a day but fell short of drawing 2,000 people for the entire weekend. Organizers were left to ponder what went wrong.
“This is an ideal location for this event, so I’m not sure why people didn’t show,” said festival director Randy Crumpton.
Hurley, whose sun-drenched Sunday afternoon set was one of the weekend’s highlights, attributed the poor attendance to the factionalism that has long plagued the local house community. “I know some legendary deejays who were waiting outside the event because they weren’t on the guest list,” he said. “I know some people felt excluded, so they didn’t help promote the event.”
Hurley’s business partner, Shannon Syas, thought the event gave the wrong impression to some of the out-of-town deejays. “They’re used to playing to 20,000 people in Europe, and to see this kind of crowd in what’s supposed to be the mecca of house music, it’s like, `What happened?'”
That’s a question that Crumpton and fellow festival organizers Frederick Dunson and Thomas Mathes will try to answer before they bring the festival back next year, as they had originally planned in cooperation with the Chicago Park District and the Illinois Bureau of Tourism.
Artistically, the festival offered booming affirmation of house’s enduring power. South African deejay Glen Lewis made his first appearance in Chicago, and though disappointed by the turnout, was impressed with the first-rate sound system and the crowd’s enthuasiam as he blended African hi-life and midtempo soul into his globetrotting set. Knuckles had his followers bobbing for three hours Sunday during a set that opened with his classic “Whistle Song” and included plenty of old-school disco and a frisky remix of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” Hurley’s set blended inspired out-of-left-field choices such as Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” with new tracks from house pioneers Marhall Jefferson, Jesse Saunders and Principle.
Principle’s rare live performance by itself would’ve made the festival a worthy enterprise. The alien sexiness of “Your Love,” “Cold World” and “Baby Wants to Ride” remained intact, as Principle infused his two-decade-old classics with falsetto insinuation and high-stepping enthusiasm. “This is our legacy, this is our world, this is our house,” he enthused to his madly dancing fans.
The festival got off to a slow start Saturday. Opening sets were delayed by nearly 75 minutes while sound checks were completed and, despite largely cooperative weather, the crowd peaked at an estimated 500, well short of organizers’ projections.
Kicking things off on the main stage, DJeremy laid down a drum beat as constant as a metronome, lacing the background with disco and Latin flourishes, and the corduroy swish of scratching vinyl. On the Homegrown Chicago Stage, Lady D opened with a high-energy set that paired playful tempo shifts with robotic beats, soul vocals and free-jazz horn freakouts. “It’s true that you feed off the energy of the crowd,” Lady D said of her scarcely attended performance. “But you always have to be professional.You don’t want to say, `Well, there aren’t a lot of people here, so I’m going to bring my B game.'”
Chicago native Derrick Carter followed on the main stage, though he found it much harder to maintain his enthusiasm (“It was a little more like work today,” he sighed after his three-hour set). With less than a hundred attendees milling about, Carter constructed belching walls of sound, such as James Brown’s catalog reimagined by cyborgs, drumbeats hit with the impact of a Brian Urlacher tackle — appropriate with Soldier Field nearby –and saxophone blasts rocketed above slinky bass grooves.
Still, an obviously dejected Carter found it difficult to work up any enthusiasm for the performance. “I’m disappointed for the city,” said Carter of the sparse crowds. “But if nobody goes bankrupt, they should sort it out and try again. Maybe it’ll be a grower.”
Later in the day, as sporadic raindrops fell, a pair of vocalists temporarily broke up the propulsive DJ rhythms. Dajae, backed by Maurice Joshua on the turntables, delivered casual-yet-soulful versions of tunes like “Brighter Days.” Barbara Tucker, supported by a trio of backing singers, turned her performance into a big-tent Gospel revival, a buoyant “Most Precious Love” cutting through the gray.
Ralphi Rosario closed the first day on the Homegrown stage with a solid, if unspectacular set, his soul-flecked groove attracting a few dozen stragglers.The remainder of the crowd gathered at the main stage where Tenaglia, the unassuming, balding New York City DJ, was holding court. With beats hitting like ricocheting lasers, Tenaglia’s performance was part dance party and part intergalactic warfare, briefly transforming the cold blacktop into a pulsating disco.
It made for a weekend of few low points for those who actually attended. Most participants said they hoped the festival would get another chance. “These things take time,” said South Africa’s Lewis. “The rest of the world knows how great this music is. It’s ironic, but in many ways, the recognition of house is still in its infancy in Chicago.”
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