I did not attend last year, my first year in Bloomington. Mostly I was deterred by the price. Being a new grad student and not knowing how much money I had available, it seemed a little extravagant to drop $25 or whatever on a ticket. This year I found my way around that little problem. I heard they let in free one night if you volunteer for a few hours. Boom. Problem solved.
So I ended up volunteering to help set up on Friday morning, the first day of the festival. (Technically, I think it started the night before, but there was only one venue that night, so most stuff wasn't set up.) It was basically a lot of putting tents together, blocking off streets, setting up tables, hooking up some lights, etc., etc. Some heavy lifting and moving things around, generally. It seemed like a pretty well-run show, because most of the people in charge had been doing this for a while and knew the ropes. Those of us who hadn't volunteered before mostly just followed orders, which was perfectly fine with me. And I got a bright orange T-shirt out of the deal.
So after volunteering to set up Friday morning/early afternoon, I got my free ticket for Friday night. I chose that night mostly because I wanted to see the person who you might consider the headliner of the night: Abigail Washburn. She performs a combination of folksy-rootsy-Americana music and Chinese music, which I find to be an interesting combination. I definitely enjoyed seeing her play to close the night, but the highlight for me came earlier in the night.
I had originally planned on seeing an Irish/Celtic act in the second group of performances. But as I was sitting in the church where they were supposed to play and looking at the schedule, I suddenly realized that I had a hankering for some Swedish swing/hip-hop instead. Yeah, you read that right. It sounded like quite an intriguing mesh of styles. So on the spur of the moment, I left the church and headed for the big tent where this band Movits! was playing.
They did not disappoint. In case you missed it, check out this video. You, too, will not be disappointed. I loved the energy they brought, and the mix of hip hop, dance, and swing was definitely an interesting mix. I gather they are starting to blow up all over the world. Even Stephen Colbert had them on his show a while back. I highly recommend checking them out if you can.
So what does this have to do with sustainability? It has to do with social capital, and to some extent with cultural capital. Way back in chapter one of the Roseland book, we talked about social capital as the way that relationships are formed, norms are passed on, and networks of citizens are put to work. In a nutshell, it's a community-building event. I like to think that by volunteering and attending Lotus, I helped bring Bloomington together a bit. As discussed in chapter one of Roseland, social capital can enhance the effectiveness of other types of capital, but it's hard to build and probably even harder to maintain. Fortunately Bloomington is a pretty arts-friendly community, so something like this is effective as a social capital-building event. The relationships that are built through events such as Lotus can lead to other things, such as other community events, business opportunities, and friendships that help knit a community's fabric together, which helps make a community a more livable place. Perhaps most importantly, after working together on something like Lotus, citizens may be more likely to work together on bigger issues, like resolving poverty issues or improving transit systems.
From a cultural standpoint, Lotus is kind of unique in that it presents world music and not just American styles of music. Not only does the international focus introduce more people to one aspect of another culture, but it also reinforces Bloomington's niche as a city with a strong internationally diverse identity. We've all been to Bloomington's ethnic restaurants and had friends who are international students. Lotus is just one more aspect of how Bloomington builds it's diverse cultural identity.
I would argue that big events like Lotus are more important for the social fabric in a small city like Bloomington than they are in a bigger city (Indy, for instance). That's because in a small city you're more likely to interact with people you worked on Lotus with on a regular basis, so there's more opportunities to exploit the relationships built at Lotus in other venues. From that standpoint, I'm glad that I both attended and was able to help stage this year's Lotus event.
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