Vee Hua 華婷婷
Upon first glance, what mostly attracted me to Bumbershoot were some of its headliners of each night, including Cypress Hill on Saturday evening and James Blake on Sunday evening. One thing that might stand to create a better festival experience might be for some local acts to be present in more primetime slots later in the day, but regardless – what actually stole the show has been central to every iteration of Bumbershoot: the festival’s ability to provide a wide-ranging sense of DISCOVERY. While I did not plan my schedule for both days around musical acts exclusively, I was never bored or left without a thing to do, as curation was expert in all aspects, whether it be comedy, film, fashion… or even skateboarding and wrestling, for an extreme change of pace.
Fashion District: Mediums Collective
Mediums Collective offered a full-on runway show in the Fashion District, which was located just outside of The Vera Project and also included a number of pop-up vendor booths. The Capitol Hill-based high-end streetwear brand has been around since 2015, and shows some of the best that Seattle’s POC community has to offer.
Their runway show started heavy with Latinx and Chicano influences, complete with bilingual rappers, contemporary dancers clad in Mexican flags, and Aztec dancers with incense burners – and from there, unveiled a runway lineup that featured an eclectic multicultural grouping of local models and entertainment personalities donning some of the collective’s latest fashions. Standout looks included outfits completely comprised of crossbody bags and bets, knitted works reminiscent of familiar tapestries, and asymmetrical collaborations with LA PAISA.
Contemporary Art Exhibits: Fisher Pavilion
Contemporary art was on full display within Fisher Pavilion, with curation that spanned numerous types of mediums. Standouts included Eriko Kobayashi‘s shockingly realistic recreations of snack foods cast in glass, a carefully carved wood sculpture by Colleen RJC Bratton embedded with found flora and marine objects, and an interactive video game by Umut Gunduz, where one could use a mouse and keyboard to explore countless textured rooms and worlds – which also had art pieces and video content within them.
Despite the relatively small pop-up gallery footprint, a number of other large-scale pieces also filled out space in substantial ways. One massive interactive piece by JJ Harty involved robot vacuum cleaners that contributed to abstract works of art through the routes of their automated movements.
Outside the space hung a large, symmetrical graphical banner by Leah Nguyen, which also included a drawing on the pavement in front of it. Both called in for a message of peace their their symbolism. Nguyen wrote, “May we all feel the deep loving interconnection of life. May there be no more bombs sold or dropped. Not dropped anywhere. Especially on schools and hospitals. May all beings have the safety, food and shelter and love they need to thrive.Ceasefire now. Stop the genocide.”
Recess Area: Skateboarding with 35th North & MassiveMonkees
Bumbershoot Festival’s Recess Area was a chill place for showgoers to take a break and explore a number of random activities. Located just behind MoPOP, the Recess Area had notable structures, such as a climbable playground that is a usual part of the Seattle Center campus, a pop-up wrestling ring hosted by Tacoma pro wrestling educators, Grit City Wrestling, and a skateboarding half-pipe used by numerous groups who ran their own sub-events.
My wanderings led me to a cash-prize competition among mostly-male skateboarders from Capitol Hill skate shop 35th North. A couple dozen experienced and intermediate skateboarders spanning multiple generations were given time limits of up to three minutes for each trick category – and within that timeframe, each skater offered up their own variations of appropriate tricks. Feelings were intense, skateboards were flying, and falls were plentiful and painful-looking, but the skaters were seasoned and always got back up easily, ready for their next attempts.
Following 35th North’s competition was a breakdancing performance by Massive Monkees, a local hip-hop crew that has been around since 1999 but has now gained an international reputation. Present were the crew’s co-founders Jerome Aparis and Brysen Angeles – who each very much showed their legendary abilities despite being older than the other crew members present that day – as well as younger up-and-comers who offered humor and skill in their power moves or floorwork.
The performance was very much tailored to a Bumbershoot audience, with crew members offering demonstrations of specific moves of breakdancing, including toprock, downrock, power moves, and freezes. Much of the performance featured group routines full of shenanigans and the type of trick movements or synchronized dance moves that would make one applaud loudly even if they knew nothing about breakdancing. In the likely best case scenario, Massive Monkees’ presence at Bumbershoot tickled the curiosity of many who had much to learn about the craft.
Comedy Dome: The Disabled List
With two days of stand-up comics who self-identify as having a variety of disabilities, The Disabled List brought their ongoing style of irreverent, somewhat crude, quite sexual, and occasionally politically incorrect stand-up to the Comedy Dome. Not to be confused with a tent, the domes at Bumbershoots were spacious, comfortable entities, though they maxed out at something like a few dozen people and could have used more space.
In line with their usual shows, The Disabled List was one of the only – or possibly the only – performing acts with live sign language interpretation, which was paid for by Bumbershoot. However, they did have complications with wheelchair access, despite the fact that their audience and performers are comprised of many wheelchair users. The Comedy Dome was located near a fenced off 21+ area, and while it was wheelchair-accessible on Saturday, some were stranded without the ability to enter the tent throughout the first half of Sunday, until the problem was slowly fixed.
That aside, the hosts of the Disabled List – Dan Hurwitz and Kayla Brown – curated a batch of talent that was hilarious as always. On Saturday, those individuals were Crystal Liston, Gretta Gimp, and Marcus Moreno; on Sunday, they were Laura Lyons, Michael Bellevue, and Cheri Hardman.
Bellevue, who is autistic, went on long rampages about his successful sexual rampages in Montreal, which coincidentally involved a number of autistic women. Hardman joked, as usual, about her sexual appetite and her escapades with her husband, who is a smaller man. For a moment, she thought to tone down her vagina-and-balls-heavy content due to the presence of two young boys who were squirming in their seats, but she ultimately went ahead and did the content she wanted to do anyway, much to the delight of the adults in the crowd… but maybe not to the boys’.
Cypress Hill
One of the pleasant surprises of the festival was Saturday evening headliner Cypress Hill, a Los Angeles-based Cuban-American hip-hop group that has been in effect 1988 in full, pot-smoking glory. Its two lead rappers – brothers Senen Reyes aka “Sen Dog” and Ulpiano Sergio Reyes aka “Mellow Man Ace” – were backed up by Lord “DJ Lord” Asword on turntables and Eric “Bobo” Correa on percussion. While the rappers were obviously the main act, DJ Lord and Bobo were very much given their time to shine, including one astounding jam session where the two freestyled side-by-side to show their turntabling and conga-pounding skills.
What the evening revealed is that certainly everyone knows Cypress Hill’s primary hit, “Insane in the Membrane,” it’s likely that the audience also knows many of their other songs, perhaps by osmosis or just being around the hip-hop block. Despite their many decades of doing the work, Cypress Hill has also kept it consistent with deliciously funky hip-hop jams, bilingual tracks that celebrate their heritage through language and cultural reference, and many, many references to smoking weed or being stoned.
Midway through their set, Sen Dog and Mellow Man Ace shouted out a series of tracks for stoners, including tracks like 1981’s “Stoned Is The Way Of The Walk.” This block of tracks gave the audience permission to light up their joints – not that they didn’t already have permission, considering weed is legal in Washington State – as the performers also did the same onstage.
Overall, Cypress Hill’s set made me feel young but also a bit old at the same time. When they playfully asked the audience if they smoked out of bongs, my friend responded, “It’s been a while!” And that was certainly the sensibility: I noticed how audience goers who are probably more or less my age may have once lived totally different lives than those they’re living now. This was illustrated by straight-laced-looking young dad who rapped word-for-word to every stoney Cypress Hill song yet had two tiny sons rolling around between his legs who were exceptionally bored.
Life is long, I thought to myself, as Cypress Hill had the audience crouch down in preparation for their last track, which they made sure to note was not their song. I immediately recognized the beginnings of House of Pain’s “Jump Around,” much to my chagrin. Yet closing song not-my-favorite aside, Cypress Hill offered a kindly homage to their friends, their history, cannabis, and the importance of spreading positivity through music.
James Blake
The main act that enticed me into attending Bumbershoot was James Blake, who is one of my favorite musicians, period. The first time that I ever saw him perform was at the relatively intimate Tractor Tavern in May 2011, to a sold-out crowd of around 550. I have since compared notes with friends who had also gone to that show; at the time, we all knew that we would probably never that space, that we would never seen James Blake in such a tiny venue ever again. After all, this young man was going places, and damn, was it obvious.
Fast-forward 13 years, and James Blake has certainly gone many places, whether by traveling the world, hopping through many artistic genres, or working with collaborators both surprising and expected. Having seen him perform in both electronic DJ spaces and in live spaces numerous times now, I can safely say that it seems like Blake knows that many of his fans have been with him across the duration of his artistic career, and he always makes sure to pull nuggets from throughout his catalog as if to please these longstanding fans.
Whether it was set-opener “Mile High” from 2019’s Assume Form, which featured Travis Scott and Metro Boomin, or a delightfully bass-heavy cover of Feist’s “Limit to Your Love” from 2011’s self-titled record, Sunday evening at Bumbershoot was no different. Blake delivered for his fans both new and old, and he did it in ways both gentle and crooning plus danceable and groovy. Supporting this was a glittering lineup of tools and gadgets onstage, with synths and drum pads holding the brands of Moog, Sequential, Roland, and so much more, but always sonically top-of-the-line. The satisfaction of the can-like metallic sounds of “Voyeur” from 2013’s Overgrown ranks among my most satisfying concert moments of the recent past, as drummer Ben Assiter wizarded metallic can-like sounds out of a soft drum pad in satisfyingly surprising ways.
With “Say What You Will” from 2021’s Friends that Break Your Heart, Blake invited the crowd to sing alongside him even if they were unsure of the lyrics. At that point, his somewhat-sleepy and yawny band members – Assiter and Rob McAndrews on synthesizer and guitar – perked up a little. Like long-lost adorable brothers, they smiled to one another during the track’s most hymnal moments. The mood was welcome, especially since all three band members spent the first half of the set patiently but repeatedly had to tell the sound technicians to turn their monitors up so that they could hear themselves onstage. Somehow, the set seemed flawless nonetheless.
Personal and always grateful, a James Blake set is always sweet. It is also technically sound, as the producer has the reliable ability to arrange even his oldest, most played-out jams in ways that make them sound new. This particular evening, right before he closed out with “Wilhelm Scream” – an early hit that Blake revealed was actually written by his father – Blake told the crowd that it was always a good sign when he could play an old song as if he were playing it for the first time. He felt that way that particular evening, and as an audience member, I nearly did too.
Marc Rebellit
Like an artist worthy of lore, Marc Rebillet evoked murmurings from friends all weekend, with many referring to him as an artist who saw success due to the internet and the pandemic. One close friend assumed that I likely wouldn’t appreciate his solo material due to how ridiculous it is. Yet what this friend didn’t realize is that even if a set is ostensibly kind of stupid – which a set by Rebillet can be argued as being – if an artist’s technical prowess is notable or their approach to stupidity is brilliant, I can be convinced. And with Rebillet as my closing set of Bumbershoot Festival, I can very much say that I was convinced.
Whether he was dressed in a flowery duster or shirtless in short shorts; whether he was making sexual sounds mixed with kung-fu movements or freestyling about the Space Needle upon which his stage was located just beneath… this guy knows what he’s doing. It’s clear. He’s the type of guy who can dance suggestively in front of suggestive visuals of the strangely sexual balled up insides of papayas or of women eating bananas – and somehow, he can make it all work.
One notable moment came when Rebillet looked into the crowd and had a child read the words on the sign he was holding. In response, the kid shouted, “Marc, I’m 11, but don’t hold back on the weird shit!!!” Afterwards, Rebillet invited two young fanboys onstage, and they were told to “say whatever you wanna say” so that Rebillet could do some “weird shit” with their voices. This weird shit manifested as the kids’ gibberish being looped over a trap-esque beat, then layered further with Rebillet’s own guttural blatherings and a crowdsourced bass sound.
All in all, in an era where attention spans are short and the act of spectacle requires that one fights constantly to stay in the limelight, Rebillet’s sets are a good time, yes, and a stupid time, yes. More importantly, however, they are a stupidly brilliant time that would be borderline obnoxious were they not so creatively inventive.
PHOTOS IN THIS REVIEW:
- Header image featuring James Blake, skateboarding, Marc Rebillet by Jim Bennett
- Crowd image, Massive Monkees by Michael Jacobson
- Cypress Hill, James Blake by Travis Trautt
- Leah Nguyen artwork by Vee hua
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Navi Esparza
