Fifty years later, the Summer of Love came to central Virginia Saturday and Sunday. WMRA’s Sefe Emokpae reports on the first ever ‘Lovefest’ at Charlottesville’s IX [ICKS] Art Park and the celebration it represents.
[music]
Music, food, and art coming together in Charlottesville for the weekend for the first ever local Lovefest.
The celebration is in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love in 1967.
BRIAN WIMER: I kind of figured we're kind of in some interesting times now and something reflective of what was happening about 50 years ago. There was civil rights, Vietnam and some folks in San Francisco decided that they were going go about it a little bit differently.
Brian Wimer is executive director at IX Art Park.
("hello, hello, very good")
With recent social tension across Virginia and across the country... he decided to focus on love.
WIMER: Music, people coming together. Young people choosing for themselves who they wanted to be and what kind of a world they wanted to live in and that bubble didn't last forever but it did create a legacy and I think that's a little bit of what we try to do at IX is create a space where people can decide who they want to be. [music] We have people coming down here from Pride, we have people coming down here for all sorts of different things and saying okay well, what is the world that we want to live in and how do we want to think and how do we want to behave and how do we want to share.
LANEY SULLIVAN: It's wonderful, it feels like family right now. I arrived and I saw a bunch of my friends.
Musician Laney Sullivan is one of two in the group Lobo Marino.
SULLIVAN: We play folk music that's inspired by chant music that is also inspired by pop music. My instrument is an instrument from India called the harmonium so it's real ‘droney.' [music] My partner plays this bass drum and that brings this very up-tempo, danceable feel to it.
Sullivan says whatever the genre, music has power.
SULLIVAN: Music draws people together, especially live music. It's one of the greatest ways for people to come together and to be with each other without being preoccupied by other media.
From reggae, to pop, to folk, to rock, Wimer explains Lovefest featured it all.
WIMER: I wanted to make a varied lineup of smaller and bigger acts but also make it a diverse bunch of acts like today we've got Mighty Joshua and what they bring to the party is so much different from say another band like Chamomile and Whiskey or Erin and the Wildfire.
He says no matter your normal taste, Lovefest was an opportunity to step out of one’s comfort zone and experience something new.
WIMER: Our motto here is dream big... and what is that dream? What is it inside you that you wanted to be that you wanted to do, you wanted to see, you wanted to be part of? And to have that open door and say well be part of it here. And what is it here, I don't know, you tell me.