Here’s to late-summer music
Summer is almost at an end, but that doesn’t mean outdoor music festivals can’t still be viable. The weather this Saturday, Aug. 31, looks good for this year’s second installment of Millpond Live (or Millpond.live, officially), the free music festival in Easthampton’s Millside Park that takes place over four consecutive Saturday evenings from late August to mid-September.
Saturday’s show, from 6-10 p.m., is titled “From Kingston to Copenhagen,” which aside from its alliteration speaks to a mix of bands whose members hail from places as diverse as Jamaica, New York City, and Scandinavia, and whose music embraces hip-hop and Afrobeat, Eastern European folk music, reggae, ska and jazz.
The concert begins with Nikhil P. Yerawadekar and his Low Mentality Project, a New York City group with hip-hop and Afrobeat influences that according to press notes offers “personal and uplifting original songs suitable for dance floors, car stereos and headphones worldwide.” Then comes Mames Babegenush, a Danish group that’s described as a crossroads of Eastern European sounds and Nordic ambience, delivered by an instrumental lineup that includes flügelhorn, clarinet, saxophone, accordion, drums and bass.
The last set features the seven-piece, New York band The Big Takeover (pictured above), which is led by Kingston, Jamaica singer/songwriter NeeNee Rushie; the band has won praise for its rich mix of traditional and more progressive Jamaican pop sounds.
Remember, Millpond Live is free, and it’s designed to celebrate community, not just music. Kyle Homstead, the head of Laudable Productions, the Easthampton music production company that stages the festival, told the Gazette last year that he wanted to create an event “where all these different communities [of Easthampton], regardless of their socio-economic status, could come together.”
Many local businesses sponsor the event, and art, food and other activities will also be on site. More information, including on Millpond Live shows on Sept. 7 and 14, can be found at millpond.live.
— Steve Pfarrer
A real-life collage
“Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.” is director Steve Loveridge’s 2018 profile of the critically acclaimed artist known best today as M.I.A. Born in London but raised in Sri Lanka, the young girl then known as Matangi was the daughter of the man who founded the armed Tamil resistance movement. After escaping the civil war that followed, she grew into Maya, a creative teen in the London underground scene. Finally, she became M.I.A, a modern pop star whose collage-like style drew from a lifetime of influences spread across the globe.
Loveridge’s film, which plays at the Amherst Cinema tonight (Friday, Aug. 30) at 9:45 p.m, looks at the way M.I.A. is, in a way, like any of us: She took a lot of photos and videos, documenting her day-to-day life almost without thinking about it. Those recordings form the basis of Loveridge’s film, chronicling the star’s transformation in a manner much more personal than most films of the type.
An analogue might be found in Asif Kapadia’s 2015 film “Amy,” which used Amy Winehouse’s home video archive to chart her meteoric rise and flameout. A key difference: while Winehouse found fame early, M.I.A. was nearly 30 before the spotlight found her, and she’s been able to navigate her fame with a steadier hand on the rudder. It’s likely this film won’t be the last we hear from her. amherstcinema.org.
— Jack Brown