Macy’s Music Festival
It’s Macy’s Music Festival weekend in Cincinnati, and if you feel the urge to dance in the middle of the street, go ahead and dance. Sometimes you just can’t fight the feeling. You may feel a bit crowded as well. Cincinnati Hotels are booked solid, restaurants are busy too; but when you walk along Downtown streets and feel the eclectic hum of arts, culture, style and music in venues from the Stadium to the Square, you’ll find the crowded streets only enhance your sense of excitement.
That hum you hear is also the sound of 25 million dollars. Festival dancing and dining and weekend hotel stays mean cash in the coffers of businesses countywide. Cincinnati based Macy’s, sponsor of the event, estimates 25 million dollars as the financial impact from the city’s annual music weekend.
A Jazz Tradition
This year’s Macy’s Music Festival boasts a roster of popular Soul and Hip-Hop performers like Erykah Badu, Cameo, En Vogue and K’jon; but the festival has its roots in the Ohio Valley Jazz Festival, a pure jazz event that began in 1962. The first Festival initiated the tradition of an annual music trek to Cincinnati, Ohio.
The original Ohio Valley Jazz Festival was one of many national events developed by Newport Jazz Festival producer, George Wein, “father of the Summer jazz festival concept.” Locally Wein coordinated Festival details with longtime friend, Dino Santangelo. In later years Dino’s brother, Joe, helped keep the tradition going.
Despite protests from some Cincinnati citizens, Wein’s first jazz Festival debuted in 1962 at Cincinnati’s Carthage Fair Grounds. From the event’s inception, Wein’s Ohio Valley Jazz Festival line up of stars drew a crowd from across the Midwest. Early Festivals boasted jazz greats, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Louis Arstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Cannonball Adderly, Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk and Oscar Peterson.
Wein’s biography illustrates the Festival’s capacity to draw non jazz celebrities as well. He talks about 1962 Festival guest, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), and granting permission for Clay to promote his upcoming Archie Moore boxing match to the first Jazz Festival audience. The young boxer took to the stage to read a poem he’d scribbled on a roll of toilet paper: “When you come to the fight, don’t block the aisle and don’t block the door. You will all go home after round four…”
A Cultural Tradition
When the Macy’s Music Festival is in town, the whole Cincinnati community gets involved with spoken word events, jazz tributes, arts and craft markets and unique cultural symposiums in multiple venues throughout the city. Many organizations and businesses hit the streets with fliers promoting weekend offerings; but stop by Downtown venues such as Fountain Square and The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center; they also schedule cultural offerings you’re sure to enjoy.
A Venue Tradition
During the First Ohio Valley Jazz Festival a roundup of jazz greats played to a crowd of 6000 at the Carthage Fair Grounds, home of the Hamilton County Fair. In 1964, when the Ohio Valley Jazz Festival moved to Crosley Field, the old Cincinnati Reds Baseball stadium, Wein’s Festival rental fees began the tradition of providing a financial boost to the city’s sports organizations. In the seventies, the Festival followed the Reds to newly built Riverfront Stadium where it remained until it moved to the new Paul Brown Stadium in 2000.
A Fashion Tradition
Cincinnati’s Jazz Festival spawned a Festival Fashion tradition of can-you-top-this style that meant annual income for regional clothing merchants. Each year they marketed colorful suits and dresses sold as “Festival Fashion.” Both men and women spent big dollars on unique and quirky outfits, often with color coordinated accessories.
Despite mid-Summer Cincinnati heat, with temperatures typically hovering in the 90s, out of town guests often checked into their hotels wearing traveling gear, but later took to Downtown streets outfitted head to toe in fashions from leather suits to full length furs.
Those Jazz Festival fashion extremes have faded; but you will still see many dressed to impress. Music Festival weekend wear now runs the gamut from sequin to silk; but you are just as likely to see Festival attendees in cotton tees and khaki shorts.
A Tradition of Genres and Names
The Macy’s Music Festival began as jazz then weathered a decades long transition through diverse musical tastes and genres. Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, Disco, Salsa and Hip-Hop acts have all graced the elevated Festival stage and giant closed circuit television screens. The Festival name has changed a few times as well.
Cincinnati Jazz Festival was George Wein’s original working title; but before the details were finalized, he decided Ohio Valley Jazz Festival would provide greater regional appeal. In 1975 a sponsorship deal with Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company generated a name change to the Kool Jazz Festival. When Coors took over as Festival Sponsor, the event became the Coors Light Music Festival, a name that finally acknowledged the diminished role of jazz in the series.
In 2002, after a 40 year Festival history, promoters pulled the plug on the event. A 2001 police shooting of an unarmed man and resultant racial unrest, a Downtown Cincinnati boycott and low 2001 Festival attendance, performer pullouts and financial considerations made a Festival cancellation unavoidable.
Macy’s came to the rescue in 2005. The Cincinnati based company provided the needed sponsorship and the event was reborn as Macy’s Music Festival. Despite four decades of name and music changes, some people never stopped calling it “The Jazz Festival.”
For the full 2010 Festival lineup of performers, see Macysmusicfestival.com
Tickets
Macy’s Music Festival Tickets prices range from 48 to 88 dollars
See Macysmusicifestival.com for online ticket information or call 1-800-452-3132.
For Cincinnati Hotel information, see the Festival Site
Source:
Personal Festival Experience
http://www.macysmusicfestival.com/
Reading Eagle
http://www.festivalnetwork.com/about/wein.php
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=11243
Myself Among Other: A Life in Music – by George Wein on Google Books
Cincinnati Boycott: Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center
