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

___

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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HOWDY, DOCTORS

Grey's Anatomy spins off new medical drama led by Houston-born showrunner

Photo via Meg Marinis/Instagram

Showrunner Meg Marinis poses with actor Kevin McKidd, who recently exited Grey's Anatomy after more than a decade playing Dr. Owen Hunt.

ABC is bringing the Grey's Anatomy universe to Texas with a new one-hour rural medical drama co-created by longtime showrunner Meg Marinis. Marinis was born in Houston and is an alum of both the Kinkaid School and the University of Texas at Austin.

According to an exclusive report from Deadline, which production company Shondaland shared on social media, the untitled series has received a straight-to-series order from ABC and will follow a team at a rural West Texas medical center described as “the last chance for care before miles of nowhere.”

The series marks the first Grey’s Anatomy franchise show set outside the West Coast, and it's the first that's not centered around an existing main character from the original series.

The new drama will be co-created by Shonda Rhimes and Marinis, who has spent nearly two decades working on Grey’s Anatomy. She joined the series during its third season as a production assistant before rising through the ranks to become a researcher, writer, executive producer, and now showrunner.

"This opportunity will bring new characters and stories to life that will embody the same heart, emotion, and connection audiences have loved from Grey’s for more than two decades, all set in my home state of Texas,” Marinis said in a statement announcing the series. "I am so grateful to Shonda Rhimes for creating this dynamic world and feel so fortunate that I get to be a part of it.”

Marinis’ path to running one of television’s biggest franchises started in Austin. In an interview with Shondaland last year, she recounted moving to Los Angeles during her final semester at UT through the university’s UTLA entertainment program, which allows students to complete coursework while interning in the industry. While finishing school, she interned at Universal before landing a production assistant role on Grey’s Anatomy in 2006.

Marinis has also woven Texas experiences into the flagship series itself in recent years. According to Deadline, she personally knew families affected by the Camp Mystic tragedy and rewrote part of a recent Grey’s Anatomy episode after becoming emotional while working on the script.

The West Texas setting is particularly timely, as rural healthcare access remains a growing issue across the state. According to the Texas Hospital Association, more than 20 rural Texas hospitals have closed since 2010, while roughly a quarter of the state’s remaining rural hospitals are considered at risk of closure.

By centering the new series on what ABC describes as “the last chance for care before miles of nowhere,” the franchise could bring national attention to healthcare access challenges facing communities across West Texas and other rural parts of the state.

The new series joins a long lineage of Texas-set television dramas, though not all were actually filmed in the state. Grey’s Anatomy itself is famously set in Seattle while primarily filmed in the Los Angeles area. Friday Night Lights became closely associated with Austin through extensive local filming, while series like Dallas often recreated Texas from California sound stages, with exteriors of Southfork Ranch serving as the Ewings' fictitious home. Walker, Texas Ranger, meanwhile, became one of the best-known examples of a network drama heavily filmed across Texas itself.

Even after more than 20 years on the air, Grey’s Anatomy remains one of television’s most durable franchises. According to ABC, the drama is now the longest-running primetime medical drama in television history and continues to rank among the network’s strongest scripted performers.

Ellen Pompeo, who stars as Dr. Meredith Grey in the original series, is attached as an executive producer, and the new drama is expected to premiere in 2027.

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