Hearts Like Riot performs as one of the 17 musical groups featured at the festival.
Photo courtesy of Mary Laing / Special to The Leader
REBECCA HALE
Staff Writer
This past Saturday marked the fifth annual Life is Art Festival, put on by the Music Industry Club. This year’s festival attracted more traffic than ever, falling on a beautiful sunny day that had students and community members itching to get outside to do something.
The slew of bands playing and artists showcasing their work all day long, as well as food vendors from the Western New York area, provided just that — a place to hang out and enjoy the music, weather and art.
The festival featured 17 music groups who performed in Barker Commons, including many that will perform at the upcoming and anticipated FREDstock Music Festival 14. Life is Art featured five campus a cappella groups: Premium Blend, The Riveters, Dynamic Intonation, Much More Chill and Some Like It Hot.
FREDstock bands that played included Well Worn Boot, Yonic, Buxom and Mooses. Other bands that played were Randy Force 5, Annasun, La Vida Mia, Hearts Like Riots, Zealot, Shout It Out, Up For Nothing (a touring Brooklyn band) and The Naturalists, a popular band from Buffalo.
Local student artists also set up tables to sell their work throughout the day, including many photographs, prints, paintings, jewelry and other handmade items.
Barbara Walls, a junior music industry major who is in charge of the promotions within Music Industry Club, talked about the goals of Music Industry Club.
“Our purpose is to help build the music scene of Fredonia — all different genres of music — and help people who want to get into the industry build connections and networks,” she said.
Secretary of MIC Danny Palladino helped organize vendors who catered the event, including Cheesy Chick, the owner of which is from Fredonia and was happy to help out with the event.
A portion of the proceeds from the vendors were donated to Music is Life, as well as proceeds from the raffle. Raffle items and CDs of local bands were donated by local businesses.
Katherine Savarese, a junior music industry and economics double major who is the president of Music Industry Club, explained the process of getting bands to play at the event each year. They used the Facebook page “Fredonia Bands (and bands that want to play Fredonia)” and asked bands from there to play.
“We took that and went through it and tried to eliminate some harder acts, because we wanted to make it more family-friendly,” she said.
Palladino, a member of Much More Chill, asked the different a cappella groups to sing.Zach Tuttle, a sophomore chemistry major who stopped out to his first festival after hearing about it from a friend, described his experience:
“It’s just a bunch of people enjoying themselves at a concert and eating food. It creates positive vibes [for college students].”
The last two years the festival landed on a rainy day and the club had to hold the festival indoors, within the Fredonia Free United Methodist Church. This year, the nice weather was key to the festival’s success.
“It’s a beautiful day, it’s really family-friendly and townspeople have been stopping through,” said Walls during the event. “Everyone’s hula-hooping and playing Frisbee, it looks like a lot of fun, and we’re not being destructive college students, so it’s better for the community to see us having good music. It shows that we’re involved in the community.”
“We’re benefitting a really good cause,” Savarese continued. “Music is Art is a local charity; they’re benefitting Western New York, keeping music in WNY schools and communities.”
Savarese and Walls had a long day, starting out at 9 a.m. and not tearing down until 10 p.m. Nevertheless, they were happy to see the success of a good cause.
“I’m really proud of the event this year,” Savarese said. Walls continued, “I’m really happy with the way it turned out. We lucked out with awesome weather, and people wanna be outside, and if they didn’t know about the event, they’ll come outside and they’ll see it, and they’ll stop in and tell everyone what’s going on. We [also] had a really good lineup this year.”