Ottawa’s music community is a tight-knit group of talented individuals. Although the community generally splits itself by genre, there is still a sense of togetherness among the jazz, rock, folk and blues communities as they push for recognition in Ottawa and beyond.
Be that as it may, musicians in Ottawa rarely get the attention they deserve. Those closely involved with the Ottawa music community and have seen this first-hand: talented bands and solo-artists who work for years to create a local following with little to show for it despite their hard work and dedication to their craft.
Bluesfest is the biggest venue in the city for Ottawa’s musicians. As festival organizers prepare to announce their line-up for this year’s festival, many people are wondering who the headliners will be this year. From Kiss to Kanye and Skrillex to The Black Keys, the organizers always manage to pull in big-name acts. But what about the little guys?
The deadline for local artist submissions was Jan. 30 and applications are now closed for the 2012 festival, which runs from July 4-15 at LeBreton Flats.
Artists from outside the Ottawa-Gatineau region are not allowed to submit applications, which is a definite advantage for the locals. However, local artists are often just used to simply fill the roster and festival organizers do little to promote them.
Selected artists are given the worst time slots, right at the start of the day. That means 6 p.m. on weeknights and noon on weekends during the festival. Often there is only a small crowd in the vast fields at the park, most of them parked on lawn chairs marking their territory for when the park fills up later on. Local bands are also relegated to side stages, or the Barney Danson Theatre in the National War Museum.
The museum theatre is nice with plush, stadium seating. It’s dark and cool, but there are only usually a handful of people in there at a given time. Of those, most are friends and family of the artists.
The remainder are generally people looking to get out of the all-consuming, July heat and into the refreshing cool in the air conditioned theatre. There were a few bands that managed to play bigger stages last year, but this is an exception to the rule.
The Murder Plans brought their brand brooding, bombastic rock and roll to the Hard Rock Cafe stage, while the Jesse Greene Band brought down the house with their heavy, soulful blues tunes at another secondary stage. Giant Hand, fronted by Kirk Ramsay, played the main stage. However he was scheduled right at the start of the day.
There are many potential reasons why this trend continues year after year, but it may simply come down to marketability and revenue.
When you consider it a bit more closely, local artists just don’t draw that many customers. Fewer customer means fewer beers purchased and less merchandise sold and when you’re running a multi-million dollar festival, profit has a lot to do with every aspect of the event.
Still, there’s something amiss here though. Bluesfest prides itself on being the biggest and best music series in Ottawa. It’s the event that allows the city to show its cool side and help shed its reputation as the city that fun forgot.
In all fairness, Bluesfest does all of this really well. Its reputation for bringing in the best and brightest stars of music is indisputable. But why not use some of that influence to up the profile of home-grown talent?
Bluesfest should be paying its success forward to local musicians. And, who knows, the fest might just showcase the next major Canadian artist before they make it big. And that’s something that’s always cool.