Sun Ra Arkestra, Kalia Vandever, JoAnn McNeil and DOUSING all made the festival’s final day one to remember
The Columbia Experimental Festival took place Nov. 2 through Nov. 5 and was organized by Dismal Niche Arts, a non-profit organization and record label dedicated to “offering local residents rare opportunities to experience world class presentations of innovative and non-conventional music, art and performances.”
Throughout the festival, local and underground artists performed at small businesses and venues in downtown Columbia, showcasing a diverse range of genres. Each day of the festival consisted of two to four performances.
This year was the eighth annual festival, but as of now, Dismal Niche Arts does not plan to hold the festival again next year. Organizers say this is due to not having had enough volunteers to organize the event, which made this year the last time Columbia residents could experience these performances. This year’s line up brought out Columbians who were eager to watch artists like J2M, Tri-County Liquidators and Rome Streetz.
Kalia Vandever at Columbia Public Library
The first performance on the final day of the Columbia Experimental Music Fest was from Kalia Vandever, a trombonist from Brooklyn, New York. As a native New Yorker, I was raised on the music of the city, and I was ready for a taste of home. But Vandever was like nothing I had ever heard before.
The only things on stage when I arrived were a chair, a trombone and a couple pedals. It made sense to me that if the festival was ending the night with Sun Ra Arkestra, who is known for being loud and rambunctious, that it would start the day with a soft solo artist. I was wrong again.
As soon as Vandever sat down there was an immediate symphony. The pedals allowed her to play the trombone accompanied by harmonies in real time. I couldn’t believe I was only listening to one person play.
The music felt somber, but not in a way that was specifically sad. It was more like a grave, heavy peace hanging in the air. I couldn’t decide whether the music made me want to look serenely out the window over a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning or take a long lie down in the grass.
I was touched by one piece in particular, “Recollections From Shore,” which had the trombone playing over a calm, monotone, synth-sounding background. It really did feel like a recollection, of something important and beautiful but also far back in the past.
“That one particularly was about my grandfather who passed in 2019 who has funny ways of visiting me, whether it be in my dreams or whether I go back to Hawaii where my family is from, culturally,” Vandever said after she finished playing the song. “There’s this concept in Hawaiian mythology titled ‘Aumakua’, and that’s your ancestral spiritual guide. It can live in a being, it can live in a body of water, it can live in anything that you see fit. But I feel that my ancestral spiritual guide is my grandfather, and sometimes he visits me when I’m playing as well, so ‘Recollections From Shore’ is about him.”
The context of the song cemented how I felt about Vandever — that even without words she could communicate a niche feeling with perfect clarity.
JoAnn McNeil & DOUSING at Hitt Records
The next two performances were across town at Hitt Records. JoAnn McNeil, a St. Louis-based electronic artist, and DOUSING, a project created by Ben Chlapek, vice president of Dismal Niche, using electric piano and synthesizers. Although the two shows were held in the same venue, they were almost complete opposites.
McNeil’s music was hard to decipher at first. It was loud, with so many sounds happening at once that even in the throes of it I couldn’t understand how I felt. The noise consisted of beeping and screeching, and now and again lyrics were spoken using a robotic voice modulator.
Throughout the entire performance, a heartbeat played in the background. Because the bass was so strong, I could feel the heartbeat pumping through me, almost as if it was my own pulse as I leaned on a stairwell railing.
At one point, McNeil stripped all the other noise away and only the pulse was left. Then, gradually, she built the other sounds back into the piece. Suddenly, I understood how I felt. This music was alive, and as I was listening to it, I was growing up. It was completely overwhelming and completely beautiful.
“It was like a big rush of a lot of different things,” Columbia resident Aidan Byrnes said. “Like a collage of sounds kind of with this pulse behind it. It was really neat.”
DOUSING, which played next after a brief intermission, gave me musical whiplash. Where McNeil played most of the show on her iPad, creating a wall of sound from a tiny block of metal, Chlapek set up a massive soundboard which covered the entire table supporting it. I braced myself, assuming this would be even louder and more tumultuous than the music before.
But DOUSING consisted of soft, sweet music with twinkling notes dispersed over a slow synth background. The songs had zen titles such as “sun reflects off the buildings” and “surf moves as it wishes.”
“It was great, it was very peaceful. It was very earnest. I liked it, it created a relaxing mood,” Noah Heringman said. Heringman has been attending the festival every year since it has been in existence.
The juxtaposition of the two performances helped me to understand what the entirety of the festival was about, even though I only attended the last day.
“I personally think one of the nice things about this fest, really the main feature in my opinion, is there’s always juxtaposition,” Wes Bonifay, the treasurer for the Board of Directors for the Columbia Experimental Music Fest, said “Across events, across days, there’s so much variety. ”
Sun Ra Arkestra at The Blue Note
Introduced by The Blue Note as “one of the greatest shows on Earth and the greatest show in the cosmos,” as well as “one of the most important cultural institutions in the history of Jazz music,” I knew I was in for something life changing. In fact, the reason I had heard about the Experimental Music Fest in the first place was because my dad had texted me, telling me I had to go see Sun Ra Arkestra. He had seen them when he was in college back in the 1970s, so this would be a full circle moment.
Going into the show, I was somewhat familiar with both jazz and afrofuturism, but not completely comfortable with either, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I did try to come prepared, having listened to a few songs and watched a few videos. But nothing compared to actually being in the room with the energy that Sun Ra Arkestra created.
Dressed in bedazzled wizard-like outfits, members of the band would gesture wildly at each other, at the sound and light technicians, at the audience, at the air. At the jazz shows I’ve been to in the past, the musicians communicate with each other on stage very subtly, almost as if they’re trying to keep it a secret from the audience. Members of Sun Ra Arkestra would communicate with each other openly and excitedly, just like the music they were playing.
All of the musicians were doing their own thing on stage, almost like multiple concurring solos. But the music always felt harmonious, never like someone was out of place.
Because of their energy with each other and with the music they were creating, I felt almost giddy to be in the same room as them. It did feel like the biggest show in the cosmos because they made the music feel bigger than the room we were in. In fact they made the music feel like more than just music, but an experience, a religion.
Edited by Annie Goldman | agoldman@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Natalie Kientzy and Grace Knight | gknight@themaneater.com