Post by DeEtte on Sept 18, 2008 8:10:13 GMT -5
Robby Takac is a human tornado. He doesn’t so much walk into a room as blow through it.
Takac can carry on a number of conversations simultaneously, all of them with equal intensity. His brain seems at ease concurrently contemplating several major projects, any one of which might be more than enough for the average person to chew on for at least a few weeks.
As he discusses today’s Music Is Art Festival, this year making its debut on the grounds of the Albright- Knox Art Gallery, he gushes about the significance of the day and the new venue — which came about after mounting pressure from both the Allentown Village Society and the City of Buffalo forced Music Is Art from existing alongside the Allentown Art Festival to a new home last year at the Erie County Fairgrounds.
“This year is so important, man,” Takac says of the daylong event. “This is the one where we prove that Music Is Art is a concrete part of the community now.”
In between delightful diversions — including demo-ing equipment in his studio and playing and cranking Buffalo natives Cute is What We Aim For’s disc at skull-rattling volume — Takac shares his thoughts on the state of Music Is Art in 2008.
There was the sense, when the Music Is Art fest debuted during the Allentown Art Festival in 2003, that some real cultural forces in Buffalo were converging. Musicians, artists, photographers, dancers, all-around bohemians — it felt like how I’ve always pictured San Francisco around 1967. Do you think, with all the changes since the first few festivals, this is still the case?
“It really did feel like that! It was exciting, and a little bit irreverent, and really a celebration of the arts community around here. In the time since, that might’ve been diluted a little bit. The problems with the people who run the Allentown Art Festival, and with City Hall — they became too much of a distraction from our original purpose. We needed to stay focused on what we were all about in the first place.”
How does the move to the Hamburg Fairgrounds last year fit into all of this?
“Here’s the thing — I can’t stand it when someone tells me I can’t do something! (laughs) We knew that we could not cave to City Hall, no matter what. So last year, the idea was to keep it going at any cost. The people at the Fair were extremely helpful at a time when we needed it. But it was never part of the long-term plan, to stay at the Fair.”
So, with MIA forming an alliance with the Albright-Knox, do you feel like the festival has found its proper home?
“Absolutely, dude. Louis Grachos [gallery director] is the man, absolutely, and here’s why — he realizes that an art gallery needs to be a living, breathing part of the community. He knows that it can’t just be a museum, and not an organic part of the arts scene, the arts community, the local culture. We’re incredibly lucky to have him here, we really are.
“We were originally planning on having this year’s MIA at the HSBC Arena courtyard, and the HSBC people have been incredible through all of this. But we ran into some unforeseen logistical problems, and we amicably and simultaneously reached the conclusion that we weren’t going to be able to pull it off the way we imagined. The HSBC folks are still involved, and once Louis agreed to host us — he’d offered in the past, and when it became clear that we weren’t going to be able to pull it off at the Arena courtyard, I reached out to him — everything really just fell into place.”
Your original idea with MIA, and all of its community offshoots, was the notion of bringing together diverse genres of music, and celebrating both the commonalities and the differences between those genres, and activities that generally fall beneath the “fine arts” umbrella. When you started, this was a fairly radical idea, at least locally. Have you seen that changing? Has the public embraced the mission of MIA?
“I really think they have. This is the sixth year, and if you look at the lineup of bands and artists, it’s all over the place, in a really great way — from dancers to photographers to painters to hard rock to alternative to experimental music. That’s really a healthy, beautiful thing.”
www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/437911.html
Takac can carry on a number of conversations simultaneously, all of them with equal intensity. His brain seems at ease concurrently contemplating several major projects, any one of which might be more than enough for the average person to chew on for at least a few weeks.
As he discusses today’s Music Is Art Festival, this year making its debut on the grounds of the Albright- Knox Art Gallery, he gushes about the significance of the day and the new venue — which came about after mounting pressure from both the Allentown Village Society and the City of Buffalo forced Music Is Art from existing alongside the Allentown Art Festival to a new home last year at the Erie County Fairgrounds.
“This year is so important, man,” Takac says of the daylong event. “This is the one where we prove that Music Is Art is a concrete part of the community now.”
In between delightful diversions — including demo-ing equipment in his studio and playing and cranking Buffalo natives Cute is What We Aim For’s disc at skull-rattling volume — Takac shares his thoughts on the state of Music Is Art in 2008.
There was the sense, when the Music Is Art fest debuted during the Allentown Art Festival in 2003, that some real cultural forces in Buffalo were converging. Musicians, artists, photographers, dancers, all-around bohemians — it felt like how I’ve always pictured San Francisco around 1967. Do you think, with all the changes since the first few festivals, this is still the case?
“It really did feel like that! It was exciting, and a little bit irreverent, and really a celebration of the arts community around here. In the time since, that might’ve been diluted a little bit. The problems with the people who run the Allentown Art Festival, and with City Hall — they became too much of a distraction from our original purpose. We needed to stay focused on what we were all about in the first place.”
How does the move to the Hamburg Fairgrounds last year fit into all of this?
“Here’s the thing — I can’t stand it when someone tells me I can’t do something! (laughs) We knew that we could not cave to City Hall, no matter what. So last year, the idea was to keep it going at any cost. The people at the Fair were extremely helpful at a time when we needed it. But it was never part of the long-term plan, to stay at the Fair.”
So, with MIA forming an alliance with the Albright-Knox, do you feel like the festival has found its proper home?
“Absolutely, dude. Louis Grachos [gallery director] is the man, absolutely, and here’s why — he realizes that an art gallery needs to be a living, breathing part of the community. He knows that it can’t just be a museum, and not an organic part of the arts scene, the arts community, the local culture. We’re incredibly lucky to have him here, we really are.
“We were originally planning on having this year’s MIA at the HSBC Arena courtyard, and the HSBC people have been incredible through all of this. But we ran into some unforeseen logistical problems, and we amicably and simultaneously reached the conclusion that we weren’t going to be able to pull it off the way we imagined. The HSBC folks are still involved, and once Louis agreed to host us — he’d offered in the past, and when it became clear that we weren’t going to be able to pull it off at the Arena courtyard, I reached out to him — everything really just fell into place.”
Your original idea with MIA, and all of its community offshoots, was the notion of bringing together diverse genres of music, and celebrating both the commonalities and the differences between those genres, and activities that generally fall beneath the “fine arts” umbrella. When you started, this was a fairly radical idea, at least locally. Have you seen that changing? Has the public embraced the mission of MIA?
“I really think they have. This is the sixth year, and if you look at the lineup of bands and artists, it’s all over the place, in a really great way — from dancers to photographers to painters to hard rock to alternative to experimental music. That’s really a healthy, beautiful thing.”
www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/437911.html