An Event Bostonians Can Anticipate

As the weather gets warmer and the people of Boston itch to get outside, one event they can anticipate is the second annual Boston Art & Music Soul (BAMS) Festival at Franklin Park.

The non-profit festival will take place this Saturday, June 22 from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m., and will feature music, graffiti art, games, and local vendors. 

“It's not your typical festival. This is really about providing a viable platform for local artists of color, amplifying the race and profile of our city, and acknowledging what music and art can do for the city, and then reactivating Franklin park in a way that has a more modern twist on it,” said founder and executive director of BAMS Fest, Catherine Morris.

Morris, born in Jamaica Plain and raised in Roxbury, is also the manager of public programming at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and a proud mother. 

Morris’ early inspiration stems from her family. “I come from a family of creative people. I realized I didn’t have that talent, but what I could do, what I've been doing all my life, is advocating for other people,” she said. As a child, Morris said she watched the show “Sinbad’s Summer Jam” with her parents, and took note of how her parents would reminisce and just enjoy the music.

The idea to create BAMS Fest was solidified when Morris was a graduate student at Simmons University. 

“I had a professor who said ‘Hey you want to write a business plan, well what is the idea?’ and I said, ‘I want to do a festival.’ She was like, ‘Okay, we're going to make it happen.’ I wrote that business plan, and here we are today,” Morris said. 

Morris still has that original plan, and she conducted about eight year’s worth of preparation for the first annual BAMS Fest that took place last June. Last year's event had over 2,000 attendees, and this year’s, Morris estimates, will increase to 5,000 to 6,000. 

The headliner of this years festival is Eric Roberson, an R&B/Soul singer, songwriter, and producer, a two-time Grammy Award nominee, and a New Jersey native. Robersons most recent project, released in 2017, is an EP Trilogy titled “Earth, Wind, and Fire.”

Another artist on the line-up is Hip-Hop/Rap artist Cliff Notez, who was named New Artist of the Year at the 2018 Boston Music Awards; he also founded HipStory, a production company and media brand. 

Other changes festival-goers can expect to see are a dance zone called “beat feet,” and a “bring your own game” section. Beat feet will welcome choreographers to teach culturally specific dances, Morris said. The “bring your own game” section will be in a tent where people are encouraged to network, have fun, and learn from each other over games like Uno and Monopoly.

A returning feature of the festival is graffiti art. Heading it will be Rob Gibbs, chosen “because he's one of the most well respected but underrated graffiti writers in the city,” Morris said. “He's curating an awesome, super dope lineup of graffiti writers and painters who are going to create social justice-themed canvases right in front of the audience, for five hours.”

Among the thousands of festival attendees last year was Eroc Arroyo-Montano, a Boston native who plans to attend again this year.

The vast sense of community at the festival is something Arroyo-Montano seemed to deeply appreciate; he explained that he ran into a lot of people he recognized, and the event was family friendly—which was very important to him.

“To see so many people smiling, dancing, connecting with each other, this brought me joy. This was what community and arts is all about. Food trucks were wonderful, music was even better, and there was beautiful live visual art as well,” Arroyo-Montano said.

Some of his favorite artists from last year were Valerie Stephens, Jha D, STL GLD, and Oompa. Arroyo-Montano said he’s excited to see different musical acts from last year and he appreciates the fact that the artists are local. “I look so forward to what's to come,” he said. 

Morris claimed her favorite part about BAMS Fest is deciding which artists to feature. “We went to other people's shows. We did flyering. I do a lot of radio interviews. I sat on community network television shows and just started promoting that we want local Boston artists to apply. They heard our call and they applied,” Morris said. Her team gets thousands of applications that she actually enjoys to comb through because she gets to learn about various artists in the Greater Boston area. 

While sorting through the applications, reviewers like Morris search for underrepresented racial groups, local artists who live within Interstate 495, and artists who “just want to be on the stage,” Morris said. 

Genres of music they searched for last year included R&B soul, Hip-Hop, and spoken word. The most important part of the application though, Morris said, was the question of why the artists wanted to perform at BAMS Fest. “That let us know if they did their homework and learned about why we're doing the festival.” 

17 acts were chosen for this years festival, including: Aleecya, Optic Bloom, The Tee-Tones, Dalaun, and Luke Bar$. The complete line-up can be found on the official BAMS Fest website. 

Although choosing a selection out of such an impressive set of artists isn’t easy, Morris said the most difficult part of a festival is raising the capital: “The hardest thing with that is convincing people of your vision and no one knows you.” When searching for capital and networking with potential sponsors, Morris emphasizes the value of the festival and the positive contributions it supplies the city with. 

Financially, Morris said the sponsors make up about 80% of the festival costs. Sponsors include The Berklee College of Music, Mass Cultural Council, and The City of Boston. A few media partners include The Bay State Banner and Digboston. Morris described sponsors and partners as a crucial, essential part in the making of a festival, especially a non-profit one. 

A 10 year initiative is outlined with the city to expand BAMS and increase the number of attendees to 20,000 by 2028, increasing the size of the festival to over triple of what it’s expected to be this year. 

Underneath the surface of the eight-hour festival is upwards of eight to ten thousand hours of work. 

“It's not just Catherine's vision. Yes, I planted the seed. But how it grows is through the community; how it grows is how artists want to be supported, how it grows is through how the mayor supports arts and culture, especially for marginalized groups of people,” Morris said. 

Morris expressed she’s hoping for 80-degree weather and a substantial crowd, to come together and create a space of belonging where “you just get to show up and define how you want to experience this art and music.”