Solasta Festival Makes New Home at Deerfields, North Carolina in 2019
Placing community above all else, Solasta Festival is one of a growing number of events, gatherings, burns, and massives that exist to cultivate interconnectedness with one another, and with our own sense of health and wellbeing. For 2019, Solasta moved to the auspicious grounds of Deerfields, North Carolina, where it underwent the next phase of its ongoing metamorphosis.
The upper lake during sunrise (Credit: SuprisinglySimple)
Solasta Festival never really begins the day it’s advertised to begin. It’s the day prior during early arrival; the last moments of sound-checking speakers, fastening stage decorations, preparing water stations and late-night light sources, and prepping the camping grounds for the impending revelry. It’s the calm before the storm, when the air is still and the hum of organizers cruising about like worker ants becomes a part of the landscape.
In 2017 and 2018, this vibrant image of organization and preparation took place at Spirit Crossing, Tennessee, nestled high in the peaks of the Appalachians. Home to a pristine stretch of the Clinch River, and the site for like-minded burns and music events in years prior, it was a place that resonated with potent undercurrents. For 2019, Solasta moved east to the equally auspicious grounds of Deerfields, North Carolina.
Sequestered in the eastern reaches of Nantahala National Forest, Deerfields is a rustic retreat carved into “The Green Place”, a slice of property purchased by Monroe M. Redden in 1927. Over the course of the next eight decades, the property was gradually transformed into a sprawling network of forest alcoves surrounding two freshwater lakes. By midday, the sun illuminated every vector of the forest floor. By nightfall, the air cooled to a pleasant chill, drawing a dewy blanket across the length of the property. Despite being barely an hour’s drive out of Asheville, there isn’t a lick of cell service or wifi available on the property save for the bit of bandwidth utilized by the production team.
The stage by day (Credit: SurprisinglySimple)
Once again event producers Envisioned Arts and Harmonia displayed the confidence and swift problem-management skills befitting veteran production teams. As we elaborated on last year during an interview with Solasta’s organizers, their operational efficiency has been sharpened by years of experience outside of Solasta. Placing physical and mental well-being above all else, this team never missed its mark, with fans and friends keeping each other in check throughout the duration of the weekend festivities.
Making community the focal point of the festival, Solasta is one of a growing number of events, gatherings, burns, and massives that exist to cultivate interconnectedness with one another and with our own sense of health and wellbeing. The Asheville-based harm reduction and education company Harmonia, that doubles as event production entity, focused as always on providing safe spaces throughout the festival grounds. They’ve been the face of Solasta’s community operations from day one and are beginning to make an impact across the US festival circuit.
So far, Solasta has benefitted from its slim profile. The festival is intimate and there are few lines between artist, assistant, volunteer, and attendee. This interwoven social fabric is the strength of Solasta, wherein producers, engineers, audiophiles, and casual fans mingle in total cohesion, forging creative connections and friendships in a melting pot of talent and intrigue. One way Solasta achieves this dynamic by concentrating the music to a central location. As in years prior, there was again just a single main stage from midday until the following sunrise.
Hasan Zaidi, the co-founder of Envisioned Arts, paints a picture of Solasta’s strategy for success. “From the very first day of the first Solasta, the single stage dynamic has given all of our musicians and visual performers the most attentive platform we can achieve.” Solasta’s lineup has traditionally been a handpicked collection of incoming and veteran producers and DJs. Having a single focal point and an expertly-tuned sound system helps to level the playing field among the performers. Everyone gets their fair shot to make a potent impression on a captive audience.
The installation at the foot of the main stage (Credit: SurprisinglySimple)
Soundsystem Cultures, LLC (SSC) ran sound for the third year in a row, bringing along as always a potent set of Funktion One speakers featuring F218 and Infrabass 218 subwoofers and Resolution 2 tops. Sebastian Torsion, a member of Onesource Audio and a frequent attaché of Tipper’s audio crew, teamed up with SSC for the weekend. The audio team combined textbook knowledge with hands-on experience to curate an aural experience that was physically powerful yet totally comfortable. On Saturday afternoon, Sebastian joined Bill Weir, an expert audio engineer and co-owner of the international IDM label Outside Recordings, and taught attendees about the physics and technicalities of live audio production during an engineering workshop.
“Crafting an audio experience that produces immersion and comfortability at the same time is entirely a balancing act” Weir said. He explained the science behind proper concert audio, cutting zero corners as he dove into the fine details and objectivity behind specific engineering decisions. The crowd was sizable, with about 100 people in attendance despite the rising mid-morning heat. “Pushing decibels is the opposite of the operative goal. The goal is to achieve a totally balanced spread across the dance floor. We don’t want your ears to hurt, we want your ears to be immersed.”
That immersion is one of the key platforms that all successful music events rest on. Solasta has always preferred to achieve that immersion not just through a custom fit audio experience, but through a combination of sound and decoration. The eminent beauty of Deerfields was more than enough to propel attendees into a relaxed state of body and mind, but the stage design was also key to maintaining a constant feeling of immersion.
The stage was an open-air gazebo standing between both bodies of water on the property, with an alluring view of the lower lake. Dozens of white, silky sheets created a portal through which the crowd viewed the performers. The wonderful garden installation that has been a stage front staple at every Solasta had grown since the previous year. Parallel rows of trees stood in a fixed line behind the performers, seeming to meld into the foliage above and around the gazebo. The dance floor was ringed by draped textiles and bamboo, containing the party to an approachable, open space, and creating a conduit for communal experience.
Every staff member and volunteer said “Drink plenty of water” as many times as they blinked over the course of the weekend. It was an impactful reminder to us all why we were so excited to be here in the first place. That understanding of care and mindfulness between the organizers and the ticket holders creates an environment of trust, making it easier to develop social bonds within the festival.
The Southeastern experiential theatre and art troop GNOSTiK brought talents to Solasta once again. These women create transformative spaces for expression at events across the US, and they exceeded expectations with their Lounge installation at Deerfields. This year, the GNOSTiK Lounge rested in a smaller gazebo atop the upper lake, looking out across the expanse of the festival. The Lounge was a space of constant flux; dancers and acrobats gliding across a visual-mapped stage, surprise DJ sets, couches and benches warm from the entranced viewers wandering in and out of the space. It was full of intrigue and a respite from the dance-centric environment of the main stage, allowing revelers a chance to simultaneously rest and engage with performance art in new ways.
Performers in the GNOSTiK Lounge. (Credit: GNOSTiK)
GNOSTiK performers at the Lounge. (Credit: GNOSTiK)
The music at Solasta once again leveled the crowd from start to finish. The lineup was a blend of top tier acts, rising stars, new and collaborative projects, and Solasta fan-favorites from across the electronic music spectrum, including Detox Unit, K.L.O, Ultrasloth, spacegeishA, MALAKAI, and Integrate. The order and pairing of the performers was especially well done. The prime time slots for Friday evening took the crowd on a journey through all things guttural and psybient within bass music. Base 2 brought the gears of the night into full motion, presenting a cultivated blend of original tracks that synced up with each other like a string of skeleton keys. Goopsteppa began the onslaught of surgical, fractalized synthesis that would persist through Charlesthefirst and Attya, charging the dance floor with permeable psychedelic energy.
Saturday afternoon began the festivities down on the shores of the lower lake, with a sultry blend of music to elevate the mood of the sun-soaked revelers. Rezinate co-owner Saltus initiated a serious dance-floor boogie, rinsing out salacious heaters for a specially curated funk set. Easyjack’s beloved side project, Frisk, channeled the echoes of the Chicago’s underground nightlife, with pulsing house and techno giving the festival a rare dose of steady-beat action. During the height of the afternoon sizzle, Nashville-based DJ Doyle reprised his role as the master of all ceremonies, sending the crowd into a glorified nostalgia frenzy with mid-2000’s club rap classics.
MALAKAI’s sunrise set (Credit: SurprisinglySimple)
Saturday evening saw the energy of Solasta launch straight out of the atmosphere, with a very tangible sense of excitement poking through the onset of a chilled dusk. Coalescing the energy output for Saturday’s prime run of acts, Integrate took the stage for their debut performance. A tag-team between the southeastern heavy hitters VCTRE and Black Carl, Integrate slung a bevy of original tunes and beefy selectors to mark their foray into the public eye. spacegeishA smashed her 11pm slot with a meticulously crafted exodus into the darkest reaches of sound, reverberating every inch of the dance floor. Detox Unit took the crown for crowd engagement, with every soul on the property engaged in an isometric group dance against a broken-beat flurry. K.L.O sliced and diced any remaining intact heads with their famously ferocious vinyl cuts and precision synthesis. Navigatorz claimed the spotlight as the second debut act of the weekend; Vinja and Sortof Vague brought their production and performance mindsets together for this new project, diving into the abyssal depths of synthesis. Bringing the last night to a spectacular close, MALAKAI spared no effort in executing a beautifully tailored sunrise performance. Original tracks and selections from his own archives morphed into an ultraviolet serenade of the senses, bringing the last bits of energy within the crowd to a resounding cadence of body and mind.
Sunday morning was a tired and joyous gathering for one last hurrah. The fabled pancake breakfast returned in it’s brightest form yet. Probe 1, Easyjack, and Detox Unit graced the stage for one last three-way break-beat performance, with organizers literally flipping pancakes into the mouths of their friends from behind the decks. It was an audacious and hysterical ending to a weekend filled with pure intentions and outcomes.
We left the grounds with that same sense of renewal and drive we felt last summer that made returning to Solasta Festival such a natural move. Powerful, communal undercurrents left this gathering through the thoughts and actions of everyone who came together for it, once again manifesting Solasta’s goal for inclusion and awareness. Given Solasta’s size and relative humility, it will undoubtedly continue to grow in the years ahead. We’re eagerly awaiting it’s return in the summer of 2020.
Solasta Festival Levels Up in Second Year
The event was conceived with the intention to do something different. With just a single stage, a niche lineup full of rare international and coveted local acts, a dedicated lounge and performance theater, and a pervasive emphasis on health and self-care, Solasta didn’t stray from this conception.
When the sun rose over the lush, green fields of Spirit Crossing in Northeastern Tennessee on the first day of Solasta Festival, you couldn’t see it, shrouded as it was by Appalachian mountain mist and cool cloud cover. Volunteers and staff who worked through the night were putting finishing touches on modest infrastructures and installations in the quiet dawn. Campers who arrived the night before took prized real estate along one of the grounds’ lone tree lines, or on the bank of the Clinch River that flows lazily through the grounds. As morning turned to noon the sun began to peek on the festival. For the rest of the weekend - from logistics to music to the familial atmosphere - the presence of the sun was the only inconsistency at Solasta Festival.
Just over 1,000 people settled on the grounds that weekend. In its second year, the gathering quadrupled in size and exceeded the expectations of everyone besides perhaps its young and wily staff. The event was conceived with the intention to do something different. With just a single stage, a niche lineup full of rare international and coveted local acts, a dedicated lounge and performance theater, and a pervasive emphasis on health and self-care, Solasta didn’t stray from this conception.
Strolling and patrolling on Friday afternoon was Officer Larry of the Hancock County Sheriffs Department, the bulk of Solasta’s security force. A law enforcement presence at a music festival without the characteristic firearm or body armor was a rare sight, my colleague noted. He didn’t need that equipment with this kind of crowd, he suggested. His toothy grin stood out from his sun-weathered red skin as he asked, “how do you like Hancock County?”
“It’s different,” I responded. And indeed it was. Spirit Crossing sits on the outskirts of the county seat, Sneedville, home to approximately 1,200 people. The hills - steep, rolling, and frequent - break apart and condense cloud formations and create that unpredictable weather. Although the forecast called for constant rain, the festival saw just one brief, powerful storm and a series of scattered showers.
The GNOSTiK Lounge at Solasta Festival (Credit: Shots By Carl & GNOSTiK)
In the spirit of differentiation, Solasta partnered with GNOSTiK to establish the GNOSTiK Lounge and Performance Art Theatre at the center of the broad, flat festival grounds. This welcoming space hosted 22 performers doing about 15 acts on Friday and Saturday, from fire manipulation to less conventional fare like contemporary dance, poetry, kink, and burlesque. Our favorite act had to be Fire Circus for their combined acro yoga and fire-spinning act, “It’s a platform for performance artists to express fully realized visions in a cultivated environment,” according to GNOSTiK co-owners and co-creators Ali Khemi and Silv Era, who traveled west to Solasta from their base in Savannah, Georgia.
The Lounge captivated by creating an atmosphere apart from the rest of the festival, while simultaneously being an integral part of it. “Gnostik is not reliant on already existing spaces provided by the music culture,” Ali and Sliv explained, “but rather creates the vessel that invites performers, musicians and artists to create within the vision.” Other attractions and concerns faded fast as one became enraptured in the theatrical and sexual nightclub mystique of the Lounge. The decor was sophisticated but with a sharp edge, and heady teas and elixirs were served out of a Lounge bar.
The GNOSTiK Lounge & Performance Theatre (Credit: Shots By Carl & GNOSTiK)
Molly Reed (Credit: Shots By Carl & GNOSTiK)
One-half of the act Fire Circus (Credit: Shots By Carl & GNOSTiK)
GNOSTiK co-creators Ali Khemi & Silv Era (Credit: Shots By Carl & GNOSTiK)
GNOSTiK “merges the lines between performers, musicians, and spectators,” according to Ali and Silv. DJs spun music from behind the theater’s curtain (this lent itself to secret sets from Detox Unit, Grouch in Dub during the theatre's off hours), performers hung out and served at the elixir bar, and cross-legged spectators in the grass inched as close to the fire manipulators as safety would permit. It was all too easy to get couch-locked in the Lounge, sinking into a plush cushioned seat with an arousing beverage as performer after dazzling performer floated and stomped across the stage. Your correspondent was nearly couch locked thusly were it not for the call of journalistic responsibility. Instead, I found myself ambling briskly between the Lounge and the stage to absorb the best of both worlds.
This walk between Lounge and stage involved frequent stop-ins with the Mermaid Oasis Hydration Station, a twist on the traditionally faceless festival water-fill up. Here ladies costumed as mermaids ran cold, fresh, plain or flavored with watermelon or cucumber or more. Pickles, the leader, humbly demonstrated her filtration system; the water is drawn on grounds from a well, sterilized for bacteria, and filtered for sediment. In the sporadic but consistently hot Tennessee sun, Solastafarians kept hydrated throughout the weekend.
Solasta's single stage was designed by Sacred Element Event Design (Credit: Lisa Diamond)
Down towards the river was the main stage - a fully encapsulated dance environment created by Sacred Element Event Design. Sacred Element’s founder Maurice Legendre is actively shifting away from manic, masculine, and overwhelming norms in stage and lighting design, and his creation at Solasta reflected this. “It offers but it does not demand,” he told me. Indeed the lighting was first and foremost atmospheric. Lights backing the stage and ringing the dance floor were subtle in their movement and usually featured no more than two colors at once.
The low stage was decorated with elements from the natural environment, with wood and rock creating a tranquil pond at the foot of the platform surrounded by mammoth hunks of quartz. Approaching the stage on Friday afternoon, Cameron Ingraham aka Mickman briefly dipped his hand into the pond, looking for a second like someone dipping into a vessel of holy water before entering a house of worship. The stage was flanked by two purple Funktion One speaker towers tuned to perfection by the Soundsystem Cultures, LLC crew which came north to Solasta from Chattanooga, TN. I’d later see Cameron on top of one towers pulling a tarp over the stack during a scattered shower, one of many small instances where the lines between performers, staff and attendees at Solasta were greyed.
A ring of bamboo trussing and six or seven teepee-like structures encircled the dance floor. One could literally recline luxuriously with the crew in these structures filled with blankets and pillows without leaving the stage. Two terraced jungle gym like towers added greater dimensionality to the dance floor (“more of a West Coast thing” according to one of the sound techs). These spatial designs helped cultivate the kind of communal atmosphere at a stage that is prized by every festival, but truly achieved by few.
Solasta’s talent bookings offered rare artists in a rare setting, like Solar Fields from Sweden, Grouch from New Zealand, or Goopsteppa and AtYyA from British Columbia, Canada. It was the undercard, though, that provided some of the most endearing one-of-a-kind sets. There was a Saturday afternoon set from Doyle, making his first festival appearance ever after spinning for nearly a decade, most recently out of Nashville, TN. A swaggering Southeast crew swarmed the floor with unmatched enthusiasm as Doyle dropped a clean DJ set full of classic and contemporary heaters. spacegeishA brought a big time DJ set as well. She impressed folks who were unfamiliar with her seamless mixing style and unmatched track selection (informed by her position as director of the vanguard digital label Street Ritual). This packed primetime set (10:30pm) combined with the informative talk she delivered on "Living the Label Life" solidified spacegeishA aka Becca as a major presence at Solasta Festival.
Ali Khemi performing a synchronized geisha fan dance during spacegeishA's set (Credit: Shots By Carl & GNOSTiK)
As international dubstep deep head Leon Switch started spinning on Saturday night, a pair of bright red and green lasers suddenly began beaming out from the landowner’s house. The house sat on the property's high ground about 400 yards up a hill opposite the stage. The lights soared across the sky high above Spirit Crossing, tying a bow on the entire experience and creating one of those rapturous moments where you can perceive all elements in an environment as one beautiful, synchronous whole. My colleague, who was strolling up grounds nearer the house, said he saw a man in his sixties with long, thinning blonde hair perched on the porch above a control board. There, swinging the lasers back and forth with ecstasy in his eyes, was Wes, the landowner, apparently having more fun than anyone else at Spirit Crossing.
Additional stand out sets came from EasyJack, Mickman, Vinja, of course Jade Cicada, and Push/Pull aka Liam Collins, one of Solasta Festival’s three main organizers. As the sun began to set on Friday, Mickman, uncharacteristically enthusiastic on stage, led his performance with provocative downtempo before launching into 40 minutes of his spellbinding sine-wave bass and hard drum breaks. Push/Pull followed with earthy midtempo, channeling some of the energies he’d picked up while staging the grounds in the past week. After shaking up the vibes with some tasteful Techno as Frisk, Jack Whelan thrilled the crowd with raw yet intricate psychedelic breaks as EasyJack on Saturday evening. Every musician on site truly brought their best juice. At a certain point it became a matter of pure stamina for the crowd.
Even amidst this stellar lineup, the Clinch River was Solasta’s star attraction. Running slowly east to west along the border of Spirit Crossing it provided all sorts of relief and recreation. It was perfect for cooling down and connecting with new people or old friends outside the bustle of constant bass music. Although Solasta was billed as a one-stage event, a last-minute river party saw the festival add a modest “river stage” designed with humor by Illuminera. This little spot had a renegade vibe, as DJs and producers not part of the original billing including Deerskin and Soul Candy sent vibrations out across river for the utterly happy people cooling off in it.
Not advertised before the event, the "river stage" designed by Illuminera had a renegade feel
Solasta Festival of course couldn’t conjure magic without the diligence and attention to detail of the producing entities Envisioned Arts and Harmonia. Each company brought their own production team which, joining with Collins, formed a dream team of young and excited event producers. On Sunday, Solasta Festival’s officially unofficial decompression day, as brunch was being served down at the stage I found myself in an administrative trailer sipping a strong mimosa stirred up by Dom Lu, the site lead at Solasta and a veteran of Envisioned Arts. We spoke about his early years in event production (“Anytime someone asks you to do something, just do it”) and the often unnoticed efforts that contribute to a safe, functioning festival.
“For me, I’m all about the attendees,” Dom said. “If you throw me in Artist Hospitality or something…that’s not my style. To me, everyone who’s on the dance floor, everyone who’s in the back with their friends who paid to be here, those are the artists to me. That’s who I care about.” As I felt my own forehead slowly begin to cook from a weekend in the sun, I noted that Dom had a permanent peel down along his nose. The skin under his eyes appeared raw with a pinkish hue; battle scars from many successful events, and likely a few failures. “Doing all the work, I don’t mind doing it. I’ve had those experiences where I’ve been to festivals and had the time of my life. I want to be able to recreate those experiences for other people.” Judging by the fixed smiles and strong auras of good will across the grounds all weekend, Dom and the rest of the event producers undoubtedly hit their mark at Solasta.
Much of what made Solasta special are those elements native to smaller festival environments. Replicating these elements on a larger scale while preserving the magic they deliver is challenging. Solasta’s growth was impressive in its second year. “A lot of festivals are still camp outs at their second or third or fourth year”, Dom noted with a bit of wonder in his voice. As this festival’s reputation grows, its organizers may have to balance a welcome increase in popularity and size with their ability to curate the intimacy that may earn the event its reputation in the first place.
The great takeaway from this kind of epic Appalachian sojourn gets back to one of those old lessons or cliches of transformational music festivals; take the knowledge and experiences gained on the grounds back out into the world with you. Whatever you learned about or reflected upon at this event; music production, friendship, stage design, romance, event production, sustainability, hummus-oriented brand partnerships - bring those reflections forward with you. Woven into the rest of the world, the atmosphere and attitude of the festival becomes less of an anomaly or some brief escape from life, but a greater part of culture and life itself.
A Conversation with the Organizers of Solasta Festival
On August 17 & 18, the homegrown gathering Solasta Festival returns to Spirit Crossing in Sneedville, Tennessee for the second year. The lineup is dreamy and the extracurricular activities include audio development workshops and a unique Sunday Brunch. The Rust Music has been corresponding with the festival’s three key organizers about their intentions and areas of focus for Solasta, as well as the festival's short history.
On August 17 & 18, the homegrown gathering Solasta Festival returns to Spirit Crossing in Sneedville, Tennessee for the second year. The lineup is dreamy and the extracurricular activities include audio development workshops and a unique Sunday Brunch. The talent bookings are ambitious, from the New Zealand psytrance legend Grouch to the Swedish ambient composer Solar Fields, who hasn’t performed in the States for nearly a decade. Top-billing is given to rising musicians like Jade Cicada and Detox Unit whose new sounds and young energy are invigorating the community’s collective nervous system.
Solasta is far from the only exceptional grassroots festival to pop up and spotlight alternative electronic music recently. However, strong intentions toward individual and communal growth, a risk-taking and rarified musical lineup, and an obsessive focus on safety and organization distinguish this event from most others. The Rust Music has been corresponding with the festival’s three key organizers about their intentions and areas of focus for Solasta, as well as the festival's short history.
Another steamy summer was approaching in the Southeastern United States in 2017 and lovers of alternative electronic music and culture were naturally excited. For the electronic community and culture at large, summer is when the magic - and the music festivals - happen. That summer, however, the intentional gathering and Southeastern anchor festival Kinnection Campout was taking the year off. The regional music scene was looking at a “very bleak summer” according to Liam Collins, a music producer known as Push/Pull local to Asheville, North Carolina.
Solasta appeared in this void. The event lasted two days and two nights in September in Sneedville, a town of less than 2,000 people tucked into the foothills of the Smokey Mountains in the northeastern corner of the state. The small but refined lineup featured rare international talent. Workshops offered included a sampling seminar with RJD2. The Clinch River ran slowly through the grounds, the sun rose with music, and campers left without a trace. The festival passed into the autumn quietly, although a foundation was set for the future.
Spirit Crossing, the grounds for Solasta Festival, as seen from the air
Electronic music thrives in a handful of cities scattered among the hills and hollers of the Southeast. Asheville stands out among them for its vibrance. On his first U.S. tour, the highly sought after UK producer Kursa is playing major cities like Denver, Atlanta, Boston, New York, and…Asheville. The city is also the home to Harmonia, one of the producing entities behind Solasta. Founded by Asheville resident and perennial festival worker Maegen Coral, Harmonia is one of a handful of companies worldwide dedicated to providing harm reduction and creating sanctuary spaces at music festivals.
Maegen and Liam linked through the greater Asheville electronic circuit over the years, particularly through Kinnection where Liam was a performer and Maegen a part of the festival crew. The gathering was formerly hosted just north of the city on the Deerfields Retreat, one of the only places in the Southeast apparently where one could play bass music through the night.
Also working Kinnection in years past was Hasan Zaidi, another perennial festival worker holding down the box office and going on about “high-density awesomeness”. Hasan had recently started the production company Envisioned Arts in the Bay Area. Today, Envisioned Arts is a leading provider of live niche electronic music, and the other key producing entity behind Solasta. Hasan and Maegen worked festivals together from California to Costa Rica and back to the Carolinas where another transformational event called Gratifly Music & Arts Festival roared with abundance for two years before fading away due to financial insolvency.
In this landscape where the cultural soil is fertile but the fruit of financial stability struggles to flower, Hasan, Maegen and Liam linked up to throw the first Solasta Festival. “The three of us definitely connect on the core principles of how people should be treated and how the experience should be facilitated,” Maegen told me while working her Harmonia sanctuary space at Elements Lakewood in Pennsylvania over Memorial Day weekend.
“It’s crucial for the organization behind an event to have a higher intention than money or just having a party,” Liam writes via email. “You can feel when there is real love and thought behind it versus when there is a disconnect between the organizers and the patrons…For me, Solasta is about keeping the musical lifeblood flowing in the Southeast, and stems from a very sincere desire to grow the scene and musical community.”
Maegen has seen much while working the festival circuit across the continent, and it’s not all good. Despite its fantastical atmosphere, the electronic music community isn't free from destructive behavior. “In this culture, what I’ve noticed, the cool thing is to not give a shit and to not care. Like ‘let’s eat all the drugs, let’s throw shit on the ground, who cares.’ It’s kind of self-serving. That’s the culture, so people are learning that as they come into it.” This is why Maegen started Harmonia, to empower through education, lead by example, and subtly push the cultural needle in the opposite direction. These same intentions undergird Solasta Festival. “What we’re trying to do is create the other culture, where it’s cool to take care of yourself and it’s cool to check in on people. It’s like a culture of compassion.”
As the head of a production company, a booking agent, and the initiator of the Bassnectar AmBASSadoor program, Hasan is uniquely positioned to comment on the micro-communities that are both a cause and effect of the rising popularity of alternative electronic music. For it’s part, Envisioned Arts has been helping to set the pace musically in the States for years now by booking rare talent, particularly in the psydub universe, before others began to.
“Our events are different because we’re all similar in these weird ways, and we’ve come together because of the music,” Hasan says. “But when we’re actually together we realize we share these certain qualities and characteristics.” Birds of a feather flock together. Music nerds have a great time hanging out with each other, especially if their favorite tunes are pumping through a top-of-the-line system under the bright light of the moon. “There’s a rampant sense of humor that tends to run through everyone, kind of a skeptical view of what is fed to us from a commercial perspective, and a desire for something more authentic and different.”
Goopsteppa performing at Solasta 2017 (Credit: Reston Campbell Photography)
Solasta is intended to be that something. It’s hosted by the community, for the community. The organizers believe this DIY approach is imperative. “We have all been to those larger corporate festivals,” writes Liam. “They throw up a big stage in a hot field and sell you bottled water and shove beer ads in your face.” Indeed, no one who’s ever bought an Aquafina for five or six dollars will soon forget the sting of that experience. “You’re herded through long security checkpoints and it just feels like the purpose of the event is to make as much money as possible while caring little about the experience. Unless we all create and support the kind of events that we want to see, they just won’t happen anymore.”
Creating an authentic, homegrown underground event within the framework of the festival market is like threading a needle. A group seeks to put forward their purest ideals, but it must bend with the force of a conscious-less machine market that doesn’t give a damn about ideals. “In a broader sense,” Hasan muses, “all grassroots movements that do something right will one day expand into something more. Being able to consciously monitor that growth and actually stand by the core ideals from outset, instead of just paying them lip service, is the actual battle.”
Community and grassroots are not just buzzwords for this crew. The organizers build a sense of community into everything they do, particularly by blurring the lines between performer, staff, and audience. “Our team for Solasta is very literally embedded in every aspect of the scene,” writes Liam. “We are booking the shows, managing touring acts, checking you in at the door, rocking the clipboard in the back, making sure that you are supported during tough experiences, on the four-wheeler keeping you safe, dancing right next to you in the crowd, and up on stage.”
There’s no VIP area at this festival. “We often joke that Solasta is a producer’s festival,” says Hasan. “Last year especially that's really what it was....All the artists we book are going to be on the dance floor ripping it up. Woah! Nice, we just sold five tickets,” he says over the phone, interrupting his own train of thought. Hasan loves to talk, but he doesn’t bullshit. There’s one stage and no overlapping sets at Solasta. It’s fortunate for attendees because every set on the lineup is worth catching. There’s no “check the box” bookings here. We’re sure the producers dig this, too. They miss sought after sets sometimes, too, you know. Solasta also lowers the stage towards the ground, bringing the performer closer to eye-level with the audience.
Born from the nerdy natures of each of the three organizers, one of Solasta’s most unique offerings is the full slate of audio development workshops. There will be sessions on vinyl scratching, integrating hardware synthesizers, piecing apart the frequency spectrum and more. Last year the focus was placed exclusively on the deep technicalities of production. This year’s workshops will be a bit more accessible, including seminars from “industry movers and shakers” about other aspects of the underground music community. Solasta intends to give people the knowledge to do it themselves, and do it properly. “A lot of the workshops we do allow the participants to become the people who will be on stage,” Hasan says.
Although Solasta is a second-year festival, expect a safe and highly organized experience. These folks know what they’re doing (at least when it comes to hosting events). “We are technically a startup but we do not have the organizational clusterf*#@ that most startup festivals inevitably have,” writes Liam. Sometimes one trades the six-dollar Aquafina in for a traumatizing porto-potty lineup or a botched musical schedule. Not here. “Our entire staff in every department is filled by one tight-knit community that has been doing this together professionally since before 2012.”
Spirit Crossing is nestled into the western foothills of the Smokey Mountains where the ground is soft, the fog settles early and often, and the sun splits through the hills at dawn. Running through Spirit Crossing is the Clinch River, one of the cleanest rivers in the Southeastern US and home to rare and diverse marine life. One can camp next to the river and wake to its bubbling rhythms each morning. Wes, the landowner, began hosting burns on the grounds years ago, but they were more like river clean-ups with music. “We try to impart on people, don’t just keep the land clean because we’re telling you to,” Hasan says. “Keep it clean because you genuinely want to.” Solasta intends to maintain the pristine conditions at Spirit Crossing by strictly adhering to a ‘leave no trace’ policy.
To sustain the festival and it’s growth, the organizers are partnering with other like-minded companies. “Solasta is a group effort,” says Hasan. “No event happens with just one community." Solasta has linked with Midnight Voyage, who for years ran the electronic circuit in Knoxville, Tennessee. They’ve brought on outfits from New Orleans, Chicago, Boston and New York City (The Rust Music is partnered with and actively promoting Solasta Festival) to spread word through the underground. “What I’ve found is that a lot of people are so competitive,” Hasan continues. “We can do cool shit without being competitive. We can collaborate and do something far bigger than any of us. I’ve always believed that.”
The Clinch River in the morning mist (Credit: Reston Campbell Photography)
Perhaps the most important area of focus for Solasta is safety, which according to Maegen reaches “almost to the point of paranoia.” Harmonia will establish its public sanctuary space on site (attendees of the Tipper & Friends 4321 event may recognize this serene, domed environment). They’ll also have isolation tents for those with augmented experiences who require individualized attention from a caring volunteer. “You have the best time at festivals when everyone’s smiling and looking out for each other,” says Maegen. “That inspires people and helps them connect in a potent way. So to make a statement and make it a critical part of the infrastructure changes the game completely.”
“All of us keep coming back to these festival experiences for a reason,” says Liam, who has himself been coming back to festivals for about a decade and a half. “Small, thoughtful gatherings are some of the most potent places for release, communion and connection that I know of. Amazing things happen when people of like mind gather to celebrate. Solasta is the newest attempt at growing one of these from within our community.”
Solasta tickets are available for a startlingly low price and special magic is already swirling around this event. If you’re traveling from far afield, Solasta has shuttles running from the Atlanta airport. If you’re driving, be wary of the switchbacks once you get into the mountains. Although the organizers have poured their own resources and intentions into the project, it’s the attendees themselves that make it all thrive. “We might be creating a central gathering point,” says Hasan, “but the idea is to empower each individual to their fullest, and allow them to spread the feeling they get at the event to others.” Noble intentions aside, “just get ready for some good old tomfoolery,” the organizers suggest.
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