The winter gloves came out in full force the first night of October; any trace of a possible Indian summer has coldly been erased from our minds. Some are already looking towards the next time the Sun’s heat will grace us with its heavenly presence; a time Montrealers know well as la saison festivale.
But a storm may be brewing between the various players involved in making Montréal the foremost destination to experience a summer of Arts + Culture. Unbeknownst to many who attend the over 50 festivals, along with the countless other community-oriented happenings and goings-on scattered across the region, solving the 4-month Rubik’s Cube that is Montréal’s event calendar takes a lot of gumption, hard work and good old fashioned co-operation.
Équipe Spectra, the behemoth that wields part of the Holy Trinity of Events (Jazz Fest, Juste Pour Rire, and Francofolies) has decided play Goliath and shuffle its festivals around as it sees fit. Francofolies in June? Who gives a damn about the Fringe Festival, Suoni Per Il Popolo, and the hallowed Fête Nationale; Spectra eats them for breakfast. An earlier Jazz Fest? Who would dare step in its way – they’ll have Stevie Wonder throw a piano at your face.
With governments that hold on to our tax dollars with an iron fist and tourists who cannot be stimulated by more than one thing at one time, the competition will evidently create a sink-or-swim atmosphere for many of our storied festivities.
Yet an even more pressing concern would be the use of our public space. Every summer, the city of Montréal is expropriated for use as an urban playground; one that other cities envy, one that some citizens lament. At first, festivals were seen as community building initiatives; many still are respected as such. However, when they become giant corporate machines of the capitalist, blood-sucking, mother-eating regime that is our economy, my guess is fewer people will tolerate the modern-day jesters that close down their neighbourhoods almost every single day, each year, between June 1st and October 4th.
So festivals take heed:
Fight not amongst yourselves, for the public will seize the opportunity to reclaim their space.
9 comments
Équipe Spectra does NOT produce the just pour rire.just for laughs festival. Please, try to get your facts straight. Merci.
The change of dates of the fancofolies is a major league abuse of power by Équipe Spectra. The city should simply refuse to issue a permit for the june date for francofolies.
Équipe Spectra does not produce Juste Pour Rire – the hypertext words detailing such were accidentally deleted whilst trying to be fancy with the HTML. I’ll fix that in a jiffy. Juste Pour Rire is produced by our friend Gilbert Rozon. I do hope no offence was taken and veuillez m’excuser pour la gene occasionnée.
Spectra doesn’t do Juste pour rire btw, that would be Rozon (who is actually much much bigger than Spectra if you want to keep on demonizing based on commercial success…).
I’m actually glad the big festivals are sitting down together (ok, it’s a small and closed group but still) and pondering how to better use the public space and calendar. The overall goal of this date-shifting is to have less time wasted on building and taking down stages and whatnot by re-using what is already built once. If they go ahead, we’ll get back the public space that was taken by festivals before and after shows enabling the space to be more alive throughout the whole summer.
As it is festivals “expropriate” the city space for longer periods of time to build/unbuild than to actually host shows. In other words, we’re giving up space and not getting anything in return (unless you’re working on site that is). They want to minimize that as much as possible… Good! Granted, they’re doing it to cut costs down not to give public space back but the result is the same (and those costs are partially absorbed by our tax dollars as we know, so even there it’s a win-win).
If they didn’t do it on their own we should be writing up articles on Spacingmontreal demanding they to do it…
As far as Fringe, Off-Fest, Suoni Per Il Popolo, etc. not only is a big part of the public not the same as the big festivals, but I’m confident that they are original enough to withstand the competition anyways.
I do not go to festivals anymore. The expublication of the public space by private festivals is getting just intolerable.
Many years ago, I was taking the bus at the Voyageur terminus. Rather than settle for the poor choice at the usurary dépanneur there, I headed to the one on the corner of St-Denis & Maisonneuve.
Unfortunately, the Juste Pourri festival was going full blast, with it’s security guards to make sure you don’t sneak beer in to bypass the exclusive beer contracts.
I managed to go through while the guards weren’t looking, but they soon caught on me when I reached the dépanneur.
They adamantly wanted to look into my huge enough for two-week backpack; of course, I refused.
He then summoned for backup, and soon enough, I had 8 angry security guards adamantly wanting to rummage through my luggage, while I casually took my sweet fucking time to pick up my food for the road.
When I had made my selection, I headed for the cash, behind 10 people waiting for their turn to pay.
The head guard said “you pass in front of everyone!!!”
– No, I’ll wait for my turn when it comes.
Everyone in the line took their time to pay and chat with the cashiers who eagerly went along. After about 5 minutes, I paid for my stuff after chit-chatting with the cashier.
Needless to say, I was escorted to the entrance of the Juste Pourri festival by half a ton of pissed-off guards…
* * *
The following years, I noticed that the festival had somehow cordonned the sidewalks from the street where the festival action happens. I suppose that the management of the big dépanneur chain didn’t like the shenanigans the festival guards pulled into their dépanneur…
Yes, the largest festivals have got too big for their britches… The guards and such make life fairly miserable for people who simply work or live nearby. I was at the Guy-Favreau federal building and was going from there to have supper at some friends. Good thing that the wine selection at Complexe-Desjardins SAQ is so poor; I didn’t buy a bottle there to take. Fortunately, as the guards would have confiscated it, even if it had a cork and I wasn’t carrying a corkscrew around to open it and chugalug it, wino-style.
I was very hurt when the little stand of crabapple trees was felled.
Marc, I do attend some of the smaller festivals such as Présence autochtone and Nuits d’Afrique, but I don’t even go to the Jazz festival any more as the crowds are too much. As for Juste Pourri, I never could stand it or everything it stands for, with that grossly-subsidized “museum” on St-Laurent. Hope that great space in the beautiful old brewery building eventually becomes something more worthwhile.
@Marc,
You can totally bring your own beer to the big festivals. What you can’t have is glass bottles. The greeters at the festval gate provide plastic glasses and will even pour your beer for you. Buying beer on site is for tourists anyways, I’ve always brought my own.
You can leave the site anytime and buy more at the depanneur and go back in, it’s never a problem. The only place that acts the way you describe is the Fete Nationale in Maisonneuve park as fas as I know.
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL!!!!!
maybe I am wrong but I think BIG COMERCIAL FESTIVALS don’t make competition to SMALL ones…I think they have different clienteles…at least it is my case and people in my entourage…as Morcego commented…I also think that small ones are (or most be) original not to die….
don’t forget FTA!!
a+
;-0
I LOVE the festivals, ALL the festivals big and small.
This reminds me of the music argument: People hate popular bands but think a certain unknown band is great. When the unknown band becomes popular, do they then begin to hate it?
People forget that Jazz, JPR, Francofolies etc. all began as little festivals and grew because.. wait for it.. they were SUCCESSFUL and began to draw international attention. You can’t be the best in the world and still be run by 3 people and a laptop with the local record store as your primary sponsor.
We can’t have the best talent in the world playing for free, downtown, in front of 200,000+ people and not expect some level of organisation/inconvenience/sponsorship. While I always bring my own drinks I also don’t mind buying a few as they help pay for the FREE shows that would normally cost 20, 50, 100$.
It could be worse. At Toronto festivals, you’re jammed into some ridiculous ‘beer garden’ because god forbid anyone would ever be allowed to have a drink on the street or in a park (what would the Children think? In Ontario, we were all treated as Children and all in need of protection)
@ morcego.
I hear ya! It’s the containers they’re concerned with (no cans or bottles) not the contents. That said, I went to Fete Nationale at Parc Maisonneuve this year and they were providing cups at the entrance. You had to pour it yourself though! Everyone camped along the street and partied until they had only 2 drinks left. At fireworks on the Jacques Cartier, the SQ wouldn’t let us bring our bottle of wine on the bridge but told us to “drink it quickly, show starts in 15 minutes”. They waited while we transferred it to our (plastic) water bottles instead!
I’m surprised that none of our local breweries have produced Festival
beer in plastic bottles!
“However, when they become giant corporate machines of the capitalist, blood-sucking, mother-eating regime that is our economy…”
—-
I am not sure that these are fair adjectives to describe our bigger art-focused festivals. Both our small and larger festivals are important for our city’s culture and economy.