More than music draws crowds to Bumbershoot

By Paul de Barros
Seattle Times jazz critic

TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES Bumbershoot veterans Mark Sherman and Lori Cabodi dip to the blues beat of Mem Shannon & the Membership yesterday. Photo gallery

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Bumbershoot long ago turned into a popular-music festival, but it's original mission to present a sampler of all the arts is still somewhat intact.

Yesterday, a mellow day that was cool and gray and not terribly crowded (at least not until evening), it was possible to stroll through Seattle Center and get a taste of the old festival.

OK, so that meant actually going inside dark buildings, sitting in a soft seat and listening to poetry and watching dance and theater. Nice work if you can get it.

One immediate payoff to this strategy was the hysterically funny Canadian solo dancer Cori Caulfield, part of On the Boards' Northwest New Works program at the Bagley Wright Theatre. Long, tall and incredibly limber, dressed in a silly silver bathing suit with sequins, Caulfield covered everything from earnest, dumb-blonde beer-parlor strippers to demure and "graceful" ballet dancers, all to the music of the film "2001."

Caulfield was preceded by the excellent Monster Squad, five dancers whose "Under An Hour (Part 3)" offered images of synchronized collapse and conflict as well as intimacy and hope, all danced to driving drum 'n' bass that had them panting at the end and the (sadly slim) audience cheering wildly.

Poetry from war

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Continuing the theme of conflict, the literary program "Voices in War" featured the timely poetry of Iraqi exile Sinan Antoon. With Antoon having survived Iraq's eight-year war with Iran, as well as the first Gulf War with the United States, his lines were bitter and clean as dried bone, and unspeakably sad.

His images of children condemned to death before they are born — "your blood is the ink for the new maps" — were particularly haunting, given yesterday's front-page images of slain Russian children.

End of summer

What a refreshing tonic, after that, to meet by the fountain a gaggle of giggling girls and boys from Bainbridge Island's Woodward Middle School — four with braces, three without — who'd taken the ferry — then splurged on a limo — to the grounds.

"It was awesome; everyone thought we were stars," said Cali Cuaghie, 13, who named as faves of the day the band Puddle of Mud and "hanging out with friends."

"Before school starts, you have to have one big blowout," said her friend Ari Rallis, 13, "and Bumbershoot is it! Oh, you guys, look at that girl over there all in white."

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES Fresh from a diaper change, Maxwell Francois, 2-½, takes in acrobats dressed in the fashion of their day, displayed on a souvenir booth.

Rallis pointed at a mime in angel wings painted white, standing on the wall. Across from this cheerful busker was a very odd one in a Goth get-up and an orange turban, crawling, Butoh-dancer-like, amid voodoo-like fetishes such as a stuffed raven, a stuffed tarantula and a rotten grapefruit, which she squeezed to a pulp. Ah, shades of Johanna Went, Seattle's performance artist of yore.

Over at Center House Theatre, Annex Theatre sold out the house for "Verbatim," a series of sketches about local jobs, a standout being a bit about the long hours (and short change) of the dot-com boom and bust. A monologue about the stuff a guy found cleaning people's houses held some eerie surprises.

Packed for Koko

OK, so there was music at Bumbershoot, too. And who could resist blues singer Koko Taylor. Nobody, apparently, because the Mural Amphitheater lawn was packed before she started, and the crowd hung in there, even though she didn't join her band till 25 minutes after they started.

Dressed in a silver blouse and shawl, the tough Chicago blues mama was a little weak in the shouting department but still rocked like there was no tomorrow.

Surveying the graying crowd, 45-year-old Olympian Cole Roberts observed, "Baby boomers must be the last generation into the blues. I can't get my 18-year-old to this."

Some of the same boomers — though not as many — were over at the Backyard Stage, which felt like the Folklife Festival, as Foghorn String Band fiddler Stephen Lind tore it up. Ditto for local Afro-Cuban band Sonando, whose set at the Northwest Court gave a great taste of our excellent Latin scene.

You missed the beet

But getting back to the arts. Those interested in the visual side of things should not miss the impressively wide human lens of the photography exhibit "Past/Forward: Aperture at 50."

They should also be advised that, alas, THE BEET HAS MELTED. That would be the wad of frozen beet juice dripping onto "snow" in Jodi Rockwell's still-worth-seeing installation, "A Landscape of Absorbing and Dissolving."

Other highlights from the day:

The Girls are not girls

Not one of Seattle's The Girls is actually a girl, of course. In fact, they are five hipster boys who rock a tight new wave/punk groove jam-packed with feedback, throbbing guitar and high-pitched, choked-out vocal yelps. The irony of their name is mirrored by their performance at EMP's Sky Church; these bedraggled rockers, looking collectively like a mean hangover, packed a show at the ungodly hour of 12:30 p.m. with not only fellow scenesters but also nice nuclear families, 8-year-olds and grandmotherly types.

B-boys in the house

To the tune of DJ Plus-One's tight mix of nouveau funk and soul, old-school bass thumps and head-spinning (literally!) beats, a b-boy from internationally acclaimed Seattle crew Massive Monkeys outlined the four ingredients of breakdancing for five audience volunteers: Top Rock, Footwork, Freezes and Air Moves.

Taking each ingredient, one by one, the hyper-skilled dancer had the volunteers effortlessly executing the classic Top Rock choreography (made up of two-stepping and back-stepping) in five minutes flat.

Veteran b-boy Kenny "Ken Swift" Gabbert is one of the original members of the breaking pioneers Rock Steady Crew and has appeared in classic hip-hop films such as "Style Wars."

But yesterday in Seattle he took the crowd and about 40 audience volunteers on a trip through b-boy history, delineating the dance's origins within the burgeoning hip-hop culture of the Bronx in the 1970s.

After explaining that b-boying is about more than just tricks, that it is about a culture, about attitude and, primarily, about dancing, Swift took his volunteers through a series of old-school moves.

Fiercely cute

The line to get in EMP's Sky Church wrapped around the building, while the crowd inside was treated to the brassy vocals, bubble-gum melodies and hopscotch beat of Seattle's all-girl indie-pop band the Catch. The Catch is a cute band with cute songs — and that's cute in the fiercest, girl-power sense of the word. These women are undoubtedly stellar musicians who revel in creating unabashedly fun music that crosses the Breeders with the Go-Gos.

Swaying with Seal

Seal has a certain striking beauty that sometimes extends to his music. His brand of light soul has a certain "lovers' rock" quality to it, but without the presence or vocal resonance of someone like Sade.

Seal has certainly never claimed to be reinventing the soul (or light rock, for that matter) wheel, but a decent-sized afternoon crowd at Memorial Stadium swayed amicably to his harmless, mellow grooves as the graceful artist serenaded them with his voice and, at times, an acoustic guitar.

Still walkin' all over you

Frank Sinatra's little girl hasn't changed a bit. The petite, still-blonde, still-foxy Nancy Sinatra strutted around the stage at McCaw Hall with all the attitude that got her boots walking in the first place, imbuing her new material with the same mellifluous, bored elegance that made her a classic. "Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad," a tribute to her dad penned by U2's Bono and the Edge, dipped rather deeply into the pool of over-sentimentality but ultimately retained a quiet jazz grace that left the full house hushed.

The world on a stage

World music hit a high point late in the day on the Bumbrella Stage with the Middle Eastern melange of Turkish ney (flute) master Omar Faruk Tekbilek. The ensemble began in a solemn mood, tapping their hourglass drums in a slow and stylized beat, as Tekbilek wailed passionately decorated laments.

The huge crowd on the grass, sitting attentively at first, jumped up to dance and sway, succumbing to the hypnotic beat.

Over at Mural, guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney of the Black Keys — two fresh-faced Ohio guys with their long hair wagging in the wind — dug into bottleneck slide and old-time electric blues with a ferocity and honesty that made it clear why they have garnered so much praise.

Back at Center House Theater, in John Longenbaugh's cute comedy, "How to be Cool," Evan Whitfield was convincing as the totally uncool nerd with glasses and skinny tie invited by a prim teacher to talk to her high school class.

In sleekly strung language that linked its Kennedy-era period to present issues — from war and animal rights to drugs and social conformity — "How to be Cool" was, well heck, pretty darn cool.

Freelance writer Rachel Devitt contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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