Big Music festivals have a habit of falling over, so to start a new music festival is brave. Or foolhardy. Or both.
Enter the inaugural DINGO Music & Arts Festival coming to the Northern Rivers, hosted by Bangalow (with some events in Byron Bay) across four days from October 8 to 11.
Bangalow has been a popular location for chamber music lovers with Brisbane-based Southern Cross Soloists holding the Bangalow Music Festival for a couple of decades. That festival has moved back across the border into Queensland.
Bangalow was the site briefly too of the Bryon Writers Festival but a disastrous flooding of the Bangalow Showgrounds venue last year caused the cancellation of that festival and a move back to Byron.
DINGO Music & Arts Festival director Si Jay Gould says the problems that have beset other festivals will not worry him.
“The festival is not so big, so it won’t fall over and fail commercially and weather won’t impact it,” he says.
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“We weren’t interested in creating another festival that could happen anywhere. DINGO is built around Bangalow itself, where every venue and public space becomes part of the experience. This isn’t a jazz festival but the whole festival ‘is jazz’. We wanted to bring together artists from different worlds to improvise, take risks and collaborate into new possibilities.”
Anchored in jazz and programmed through a contemporary lens, DINGO brings together internationally acclaimed musicians, leftfield selectors, performance artists, chefs and thinkers for four days of performances, conversations, and shared experiences.
Unfolding across Bangalow’s halls, galleries, record stores and public spaces, the festival invites audiences to move through the town to discover where music, art and community intersect.
Si Jay Gould is keen that people don’t mistake the jazz element for a specific type of jazz or music.
“Say jazz and some people see a flapper and a saxophone,” he says. “We are recontextualising what jazz is.”
There are certainly jazz elements, and the headline act is Melbourne outfit Hiatus Kaiyote, which is described as a jazz/funk/R&B/soul band.
Then there is another jazz link to Miles Davis, whose first and only speaking role in a narrative film was in Dingo, a 1991 Australian film directed by Rolf de Heer.
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In the opening sequence a 747 jet unexpectedly makes an emergency landing on a remote airstrip in the Western Australian outback and out steps legendary jazz trumpeter Billy Cross (played by Davis)) along with his band. They play a vibrant, surreal jazz set right on the tarmac for the astonished locals and children. A 12-year-old boy named John “Dingo” Anderson is transfixed by the music, an event that shapes the young boy’s lifelong dream to become a jazz musician.
That inspired Si Jay Gould, who says he wants to see “powerful artists come and play here in intimate environments to blow people’s minds and change their lives”.
The Dingo reference also works because Dingoes are Australian animals “that cannot be domesticated”. Oh, and it helps that the word Dingo resonates with Bangalow.
As well as three-time Grammy nominees Hiatus Kaiyote the festival will feature London’s acclaimed Kokoroko, legendary Philadelphia selector Rich Medina, internationally celebrated DJ Coco Maria, alongside Australian artists Nai Palm, Miss Kaninna, Harry James Angus and Barney McAll.
The program traverses jazz, soul, hip hop, electronic music and contemporary club culture and features artists including Steve Spacek, Mr Rhodes, Andras, Don Glori, Benjamin Walsh Quartet, Greg Sheehan’s The Life Of Life, Finn Rees, David Versace, D.D. Mirage, Clever Austin, Horatio Luna, DJ Mike Gurrieri, Lake Kelly, EMOM: Northern Rivers, Nick Huggins, La Sape Records, Mangrove Symposium, Tralalablip and Zac Stars.
Beyond the music, DINGO will present artist talks, in-conversation events, performance art, an avant- garde life-drawing salon, DJ, beat-making and rhythm workshops, deep listening sessions, sound installations, curated local food and drink experiences, and a Guinness World Record attempt to create The Smallest Jazz Club in The World.
DINGO has both ticketed and free events, so everyone can get involved, across venues that include public and creative private spaces, encouraging patrons to explore the hidden gems alongside the main stages.
Venues include the Bangalow historic A&I Hall, Moller Pavilion, Old Scout Hall, Flo Records, Bangalow RSL, You Beauty, The Lumber Yard, and Station Street.
An opening celebration will be at the Northern Hotel Byron Bay and a closing party at the Beach Hotel Byron Bay, plus after-parties and some secret venues yet to be announced.
The festival has been developed by a Northern Rivers team led by Si Jay Gould.
“This year’s is a pilot,” he says. “Should it go as we are hoping it will get a lot of support.”
The Bangalow and Byron locations will help draw audiences from around the region and across the border.
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