Perrozompopo, Niña Dioz, Very Be Careful, Upground, Santero, Gustavo Galindo, Los Hollywood...

Written by Hilda Gabriela Wednesday, 11 August 2010 11:55

Ricky Garay just couldn't throw your average three-year old birthday party. No siree. Jumpers and birthday hats just wouldn't cut it for the mastermind behind the weekly pachanga, Mucho Wednesday's. After all, he's been throwing house parties every Wednesday night for the past three years at Downtown L.A.'s La Cita bar so it was time that Garay up the ante, and so he did.

With the 3 year celebration of downtown LA's Mucho Wednesday's party, Garay and gang opted to take the party to festival status by producing their own music and arts festival, and finding another reason to celebrate their one year older.

Mid organizing, booking, emailing, double checking, and dealing with bands, sponsors and the handful of other hats that are involved in the Saturday, August 14th festival, Garay talks to us about his reason to the Visionary Sounds Music Festival, the artists booked for the performances and about that other reason to celebrating another year of breathing.


Visionary Sounds Music Festival
I'm the Creative Director and Founder of Sounds Music Festival which is a concept that developed based out of our Mucho Wednesday's experiences.  After working with so many new, exciting artists and being approached by various others, I kept coming to the same conclusion that these bands needed their own festival. So we did it.

The idea is for Visionary Sounds Music Festival (VS) to evolve into a yearly festival based in the heart of Los Angeles. This festival also aims to include young Latinos in the revitalization of the Downtown Los Angeles arts corridor and to create safe spaces where they feel welcomed and able to share their art and music. We hope that people will discover some of the most unique and emerging voices in the music scene today when they experience VS.

Benefiting Projecto Pastoral
As exciting as the event was in my head, we wanted to do something meaningful to celebrate the three years that Mucho Wednesday's has served as a place for the Latin alternative community to congregate. So we decided to also raise funds to help Proyecto Pastoral, a non-profit organization located in the community of Boyle Heights. Some of Proyecto Pastoral's board members visited Mucho Wednesday's on occasion and they approached us last year about doing a fundraiser with them, which we did with local band Upground donating their performance.

We were extremely impressed with the work ethic of the Proyecto team while we were working on the fundraiser. They were also impressed with how well we worked on that event and one thing led to another and we were then asked if we wanted to be a part of their Emerging Leaders Board. We checked out some of their programs like the "Guadalupe Homeless Project" and we were absolutely floored by the their selfless dedication to the community and the transparency of their organization. It made us believers, and now all we want to do is help. Proyecto Pastoral is known as the people's non-profit and they're just that: they're the real deal. So now another purpose to Visionary Sounds Music Festival is to raise funds for them.


Le Talent!
We're featuring a great line up of local talent as well as emerging international Latino talent that is at the forefront of the new wave of Latin Alternative music. There hasn't been anything within the last 16 years in this city featuring this brand of talent. We're talking about Perrozompopo, Niña Dioz, Very Be Careful, Upground, Santero, Gustavo Galindo, Orlando, La Ballena De Jonas, Los Macuanos, Juan Cholo, Aparato, Faro, Concepto Tambor, Deuce Eclipse, Chicano Son, Zaptra, Los Hollywood, Fernanda Ulibarri, Revulab, plus an all star DJ lineup including  DJ Noir and DJ Frank Leopold from Mucho Wednesday's.

These bands are visionaries in our eyes because even though they do not fit into the mainstream market, they continue to work, perform and make their own brand of music and they continue to work towards realizing their own vision. With this event we're providing exposure to this new generation of artists on a much larger scale than we're able to provide during our mid-week Latin pop dance party, Mucho Wednesdays.

With this amazing lineup of musicians and with Proyecto Pastoral on board, it made the festival even bigger and not just about a party. Proyecto Pastoral and all the wonderful work they do pushed me forward to bring to life this vision.  I couldn't work this hard for myself. It's such a fantastic way to raise awareness about the organization and also to create a steady, yearly fundraiser for them as well.

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Check out the exclusive interview with Perrozompopo here, where he chats about the festival and about his Nicaraguen-son.

www.visionarysounds.com
www.proyectopastoral.org/aboutus.php
www.myspace.com/muchoparty

More event info here.

 

 

 

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