South By Southwest unrivaled in scope and credibility

published, Gonzaga Bulletin 2009

Media Credit: courtesy of kalamu.com The Blue Scholars, a hip-hop group with Northwest roots, who dropped beats on the front steps of Crosby last fall, also lit up the stage in the South By Southwest festival. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: courtesy of freeringtones365.net Above: The Cold War Kids (above), participants in South By Southwest, will visit Gonzaga in April along with Death Cab for Cutie and Ra Ra Riot. [Click to enlarge]

Last Sunday marked the end of the eight-day music festival South By Southwest (SXSW), which has become colloquially known as being the coolest music festival this side of Woodstock. While the event itself actually features music, interactive art and film, it is best known for bringing the hippest indie bands together for a week of mind-blowing live music in Austin, Texas.

Music, what SXSW has been steadily becoming known for, started on Thursday and went through Sunday with multiple venues featuring a blowout lineup of hundreds of performers. The schedule included performances from well-known artists and bands like Third Eye Blind, Rick Ross and Ben Harper. The list also included many bands merely on the cusp of their burgeoning success including: Blue Scholars (noted Northwest favorite), Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, Starfucker, Cold War Kids (who will be traveling to Gonzaga in late April with Death Cab), Peter, Bjorn and John, P.O.S. Gomez, Andrew Bird, Explosions in the Sky, and Dead Prez. The exhausting list of artists included music from a multitude of genres including rock, alternative, singer-songwriter, electronic, DJ and hip-hop.

The festival even included perennial throw-down joke band The Oak Ridge Boys as well as the ridiculously side-ponytailed female MC Lady Sovereign.

SXSW has been putting on a festival since 1987, and has grown in popularity, especially within the last five to 10 years. The festival is held every year in Austin and has become a cultural icon for superstars and hopeful bands to come together, providing attendees intimate and unparalleled access to live music performance.

In both scope and credibility, SXSW is unrivaled. Many speculate on the reasons for the festival's success, and it is largely based on three separate elements. First, SXSW offers a uniquely largely cross-section of current music, without most of the fluff that seems to pass for popular music. Second, the festival creates not just entertainment but an experience, tapping into the wealth of the blogging community. Last, SXSW is just good, old-fashioned fun.

The ability of SXSW to draw a massive variety of bands now is undoubtedly related to its growing reputation as the source for legit music. However, it was simple hard work and word-of-mouth that led to its success.

The layout of the festival is not like your typical outdoor music festivals such as Sasquatch, Bumbershoot and Coachella. SXSW features multiple venues around Austin (which now holds the record for most original music nightclubs in a concentrated area than any other city in the world, according to its Web site) and each club has a set schedule of performers for each day. Some clubs are 21 and older; others are not.

The main way in which SXSW attracts fans now is by taking advantage of the highly important, yet largely under-the-radar power of the independent music blogosphere. By utilizing the enormous power of the online music community through both a powerful blog of their own as well as imbedded outside bloggers before and during the festival, SXSW directors exhibit a fascinating literacy in the way to amass power in a changing society.

SXSW organizers know their audience to be an intensely Internet-oriented group and have mastered the way to communicate with them and legitimize the festival in Internet circles which hold sway over powerful social opinion of independent music. If the Internet is the vehicle by which powerful entities grow, it seems only fitting that the enormously powerful SXSW exhibits a textbook skill in mastering the independent music world.

The last way SXSW flexes its social muscle is simply by providing ample opportunity to listen to great music in a fun environment. Austin provides a cultural backdrop ripe for a good time. With great weather, young residents and visitors, tons of music venues and bars and a distinctly international feel within a relatively small city, Austin has it all. With the University of Texas right in the city, the vibe is young and diverse. Additionally, people from all over the world come to play and listen at SXSW. Performers and attendees hail from Oklahoma City to Tokyo and everywhere in between. SXSW and Austin are so indelibly tied that it seems pertinent to ask which came first, the proverbial chicken or the egg?

SXSW provides music lovers, music newbies, and independent spirits a perfect opportunity to see their favorite bands and even hear some new stuff. Bands descend upon the city for one week a year to rock the music scene's socks off. Tickets are pricey but one thing is for sure - everyone should make the trek to see SXSW live at least once in their lives. For more information visit www.SXSW.com.