{"id":55580,"date":"2016-08-02T10:45:36","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T14:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=55580"},"modified":"2016-08-02T12:15:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T16:15:12","slug":"escape-city-camp-wavelength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2016\/08\/02\/escape-city-camp-wavelength\/","title":{"rendered":"Escape the city at Camp Wavelength"},"content":{"rendered":"

At last year\u2019s Camp Wavelength<\/a> festival, the enchantment of Friday night still buzzing, Jonathan Bunce (\u201cJonny,\u201d he insists upon) and his Wavelength organizing partners stood on the beach on Toronto Island. A white dingy, captained by a man in a Super Dave Osborne-esque, all-white jumpsuit came slowly towards the shore. With one foot up on the hull of the boat, \u00e0 la Washington Crossing the Delaware<\/em>, \u2018Dingyman\u2019 (as they now call him) beached his small boat in front of the festival\u2019s organizers.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was like, \u2018hey, what\u2019s up guys? Is Kyle here?!\u2019\u201d says Bunce. Before he or Aaron Dawson could answer, Dingyman piped in: \u201cHe was like, \u2018Hey, hang on \u2014 you guys want a beer?\u2019 and he started passing out cans of beer to anyone who was there,\u201d he says. \u201cHe figured out Kyle wasn\u2019t there, but he hung out for ten minutes and had a beer with us.\u201d And then, continuing his bacchanalian pursuit of whatever party Kyle was at, he disappeared into the night, heading (puzzlingly) directly away from the beach, rather than along it. \u201cThe next morning, the three or four of us who were there had to corroborate to make sure we weren\u2019t hallucinating.\u201d<\/p>\n

These moments, bizarre as they are summer-defining, can be hard to come by in the 416; they require a state of unwind that, more often than not, is inverse to one\u2019s proximity to the city. That they are rare makes them that much more valuable. \u201cFor me being a city boy,\u201d says Bunce, \u201cI haven\u2019t had a lot of those kinds of experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camp Wavelength is a music festival that wants to be unlike any other festival, committed to bring those hazy, summer moments within reach\u00a0of even the most\u00a0committed urbanites. As the only camping-and-music festival in Toronto, the experience it aims to create differs sharply from the big, commercial festival experiences that, over the last decade and a half, has exploded in popularity in Toronto and across North America. That\u2019s by design: \u201cCamp Wavelength is an alternative to the typical summer festival,\u201d says Bunce, \u201cwhere the local band is playing at one in the afternoon and a beer is $11.\u201d\u00a0This year\u2019s festival will be the second time it has been held, and organizers are hoping they can repeat and build upon last year\u2019s successes. With 25 bands and 16 visual art and mixed-media performances, and a goal of 1,000 attendees, the festival is notably smaller than other big name events. (Wayhome, for example, had an attendance of around 40,000.) It\u2019s small size, though, should not be a measure of its success \u2014 small and tight-knit is just the way Wavelength likes to do things. “It lets us be nimble,” says Bunce.<\/p>\n

Held between August 19th and 21st, the festival is designed to showcase and promote the diverse range of art and music that Toronto has to offer. \u201cWe\u2019re not just booking a lot of sound-alike indie bands,\u201d says Bunce, who excitedly describes the range of genres\u00a0\u2014 the festival offers a mix of indie, hip-hop, free jazz, rock, world music, etc. \u2014 showcased\u00a0by the festival. \u201cOther people [referring to festival organizers] feel like they can\u2019t take the risk of mixing audiences [\u2026] A mandate for diversity means you need to live up to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That mandate for diversity means promoting not only lesser-known bands, but making sure to promote different kinds <\/em>of bands, something that is often forgotten when programming festival lineups. For festival organizers, this presents a chance to showcase a wider range of musical cultures on the same stage \u2014 the Toronto band LAL<\/a>, for example, offers a unique blend of different world and electronic music traditions. By doing so, the festival is able to push a diversity agenda. \u201cIt\u2019s still an issue, but I feel like it\u2019s slowly improving,\u201d says co-organizer Aaron Dawson, of Toronto\u2019s music scene in general. \u201cPeople are pushing, [and we\u2019re] shaking people out of their comfort zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camp Wavelength also places significant emphasis on bringing visual art together with music. For Dawson, who is in charge of organizing the visual art component, the emphasis is on creating atmosphere. \u201cThe island is such a magical place, and we\u2019re looking for ways to enhance the natural, magical beauty,\u201d he says. Sixteen art installations \u2014 a mix of visual and performance art, the bulk of which are by Toronto artists \u2014 will help create the feeling of having your \u201chead in the clouds,\u201d says Dawson.<\/p>\n

\"KEATING-Camping\"<\/p>\n

For the past 16 years, Wavelength<\/a> has been a cornerstone of Toronto\u2019s indie music scene, serving as equal parts concert series and musical incubator. Their regularly-held concert series remain a staple in the indie music scene, and their successes are evidenced on the posters of much larger festivals across North America: Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Grimes, and Tokyo Police Club (to name a few) all owe part of their success to Wavelength, where many of them played their first shows. Though it has been in many ways a patron of Toronto\u2019s music scene, it is a product of it as well. \u201cIt was started by people from bands,\u201d says Bunce (who then rattles of a handful of bands whose names, to anyone without his somewhat encyclopedic knowledge of early-2000s Toronto indie music, may as well have been in a foreign language).<\/p>\n

Part of what makes the festival tick is its setting. Partnering with Artscape Gibraltar (the festival\u2019s \u201cspiritual home\u201d) on Toronto Island allows Wavelength to host an event that is unique in many ways. On top of the camping offering, \u201cno other festival has a beach,\u201d says Bunce, where many attendees, performers, and organizers congregate as the nights wind down. Other benefits are more intangible: the island setting enables a sort of urban escape. \u201cEscapism is sorely needed to hit re-set, and to make a weekend a weekend<\/em>,\u201d says Bunce. This is no small undertaking, since getting people there and back to the island is a constant challenge. Last year, Bestival (an electronic music festival) was marked by long lines for return ferries, and there were reports online that people were jumping and climbing on to the side of the ferry, just to get home. (Mercifully, this year\u2019s incarnation was moved ashore.)<\/p>\n

On the southern shores of Toronto Island, Camp Wavelength isn\u2019t far away from the city \u2014 not in any technical sense, anyways. Indeed, that it isn\u2019t far away geographically speaking is one of the festival\u2019s main draws. But there is a kind of distance between the city and the festival: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like it in Toronto,\u201d says Bunce. \u201cIn such a frantic city, it\u2019s such a chilled out, relaxing, warm, friendly environment.\u201d Distance, though, exists in more than just proximity. For Camp Wavelength, it is distance by way of respite \u2014 respite from the city, respite from the standard festival experience, respite from the mundane \u2014 that brings the festival both close to home, and not.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Both images courtesy of Stephanie Keating<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At last year\u2019s Camp Wavelength festival, the enchantment of Friday night still buzzing, Jonathan Bunce (\u201cJonny,\u201d he insists upon) and his Wavelength organizing partners stood on the beach on Toronto Island. A white dingy, captained by a man in a Super Dave Osborne-esque, all-white jumpsuit came slowly towards the shore. With one foot up onContinue reading “Escape the city at Camp Wavelength”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8304,"featured_media":55582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-events"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEscape the city at Camp Wavelength - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2016\/08\/02\/escape-city-camp-wavelength\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Escape the city at Camp Wavelength - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At last year\u2019s Camp Wavelength festival, the enchantment of Friday night still buzzing, Jonathan Bunce (\u201cJonny,\u201d he insists upon) and his Wavelength organizing partners stood on the beach on Toronto Island. 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