HAA Partnership

Bayou City Art Festival shakes things up: A new approach to music makes for abetter party

Mariachi Imperial
Mariachi Imperial de America/Facebook
Nick Gaitan & Umbrella Man
Nick Gaitan & Umbrella Man/Facebook
Miss Leslie & Her Juke-Jointers
Photo by Craponne2012/Picasa
Texas Johnny Brown
Texas Johnny Brown/Facebook
Step Rideau & the Zydeco Outlaws perform Sunday.
Step Rideau & the Zydeco Outlaws/Facebook

For more than four decades, the Bayou City Art Festival has curated a visual arts bash that amasses talent from across the country in an effort to bring creative personalities to the city. Through its many permutations, name changes and growth, the colorful fair has earned its rightful place as an event of repute for Houston.

But more than just a visual showcase, the strolling, art curious crowd also enjoys a myriad of live performances, music and interactive activities.

Some of those offerings are in partnership with local advocacy and government funding agency, the Houston Arts Alliance (HAA), which has been planning to shake things up a bit for the downtown festival Saturday and Sunday.

"While in the past HAA has showcased its grantees at the festival, the Folklife & Traditional Arts Program's Local Roots, Global Culture stage is a great opportunity to bring a very diverse lineup of musicians and musical traditions that find a home in Houston before a general public that might not otherwise have access to them," Pat Jasper, Folklife & Traditional Arts Program director, tells CultureMap.

"Local Roots, Global Culture celebrates artists who have spent their lives keeping musical traditions alive or have carried them here from far and wide."

Whether it's a symptom of the urban sprawl combined with Houston's thriving cultural and ethnic diversity, much of what bestows the city's prowess it often hidden from public view.

Not all the threads that weave the fabric of the local lore come to the foreground, and part of Jasper's personal mission is to uncover, study and share the contemporary traditions of groups that have made Houston their home — either recently or many moons ago — and have retained their artistic customs.

"Local Roots, Global Culture celebrates artists who have spent their lives keeping musical traditions alive or have carried them here from far and wide and added them to our city's amazing cultural mix," Jasper says.

She sought out "the individuals who know the songs, the stories, the traditional skills that make this community special" by attending church services, quinceañersa and icehouses. She also knocked on doors, talking to people in distant sectors of the city, in hopes of meeting the respected artists and performers of a particular community.

The result?

Bayou City Art Festival Downtown goers will find a bricolage of polka, gospel, blues, mariachi, Nigerian music, conjunto, honky tonk, zydeco and Huastecan tunes from Central Mexico. All together these groups offer a snapshot of the area's living cultural history and ongoing demographic transformation, Jasper says.

Among the 12 featured groups in the Local Roots, Global Culture Performance Stage are Texavia, lead by accordionist Mary Halata, a Czech troupe that is comfortable churning out traditional and Texas polka; Mariachi Imperial, whose rancheras, boleros and baladas stem from three decades and three generations of musicians deeply rooted in Mexican family party scene; Southern Indian singer Rajarajeshwary Bhat, who performs in the Carnatic classical style (Indian subcontinent); and Step Rideau & the Zydeco Outlaws, which is in demand in Creole Catholic church dance fetes.

The full schedule appears below.

Saturday
Noon - Texavia, Czech polka
1 p.m. - Disciples of Christ, gospel
2 p.m. - Trio Control, Son Huasteco
3 p.m. - Texas Johnny Brown, Houston blues
4 p.m. - Mariachi Imperial
5 pm. - Melloh & the King's Rhythm's, Nigerian highlife

Sunday
Noon - Rajarajeshwary Bhat, South Indian Carnatic music
1 p.m. - Lady Beatrice Ward, gospel
2 p.m. - Conjunto X
3 p.m. - Miss Leslie & Her Juke-Jointers, Texas honky tonk
4 p.m. - Nick Gaitan & Umbrella Man, Gulf Coast music
5 p.m. - Step Rideau & the Zydeco Outlaws, zydeco

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Tickets to the Bayou City Art Festival Downtown are $12 and can be purchased online or at the gate, cash only. The festival is open Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

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Movie Review

Billie Eilish takes fans behind the scenes in immersive 3D tour film

Photo by Henry Hwu/courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Billie Eilish in Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D.

In 2021, at the tender age of 19, singer Billie Eilish was already the subject of a documentary, The World’s a Little Blurry. At that point, she had only released one album, so the film threatened to feel too early for such treatment. The ensuing five years have only made her a bigger star, though, so in many ways that movie now feels prescient for the person on display in the new concert documentary with the unwieldy title of Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D.

Directed by Eilish and blockbuster filmmaker James Cameron, the film takes viewers inside Eilish’s 2024-2025 tour in support of her latest album, 2023’s Hit Me Hard and Soft. Filmed mostly at her series of shows in Manchester, England, the movie is a showcase for Eilish’s music, but it also serves as a smaller exploration of the type of person she is, as well as the impact she has had on her legion of fans.

The draw of the film is the use of Cameron’s beloved 3D technology, which he has employed in each of the three Avatar films. Unlike in those films, where the 3D has the odd effect of making the visuals too realistic for their own good, the technique brings an intimacy to the large-scale show that underscores the unique bond the singer has with her supporters.

Eilish and Cameron go back and forth between performances at the concert to behind-the-scenes sequences, detailing the enormous effort it takes to put on a show like that and how Eilish spends her time getting ready for it. As in The World’s a Little Blurry, this film continues to portray the singer as down-to-Earth, someone who yearns to maintain the connection to her fans that she’s had since she released her first single, “Ocean Eyes,” 10 years ago.

And as the many emotional songs in Eilish’s concert playlist prove, the feeling from the crowd is mutual. While Eilish has multiple bangers like “Bad Guy,” “Therefore I Am,” and the Charli XCX collaboration “Guess,” it’s the sad songs like “Everything I Wanted,” “Happier Than Ever,” and the Oscar-winning Barbie anthem, “What Was I Made For?” that hit the hardest. The depth of feeling emanating from her many sobbing fans singing along to crushing songs cannot be understated.

For audiences of the film, though, it’s the breadth of camera angles and shot choices that make it truly dynamic. There are cameras everywhere, including in the crowd, inside a cube at the center of the stage that rises and descends, following Eilish as she traipses every inch of the long, rectangular stage, and even a small one Eilish uses to bring an extra personal touch to the in-arena screen. Combined, they capture the complete energy of the concert, something that is not always the case in a film of this type.

Eilish has almost as many movies — two — as she does albums — three — which borders on overkill for a singer of her age. But both her music and the movies show her to be a person who knows the responsibility of being a celebrity, someone who understands that her fans are the reason she’s famous at all. Her career may go up or down from here, but it’s clear she’s already made a huge impact on those who love her most.

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Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D opens in theaters on May 8.

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