With the announcement of its 2014 lineup, the organizers for ConvergeNC are ready to jam out with the rest of the UNC community.
Co-directors Gabe Chess and Libby Rodenbough said the second annual festival will see many changes from its first festival.
Two extra nights have been added to the festival, making ConvergeNC 2014 a three-day music festival instead of just one.
The kickoff night will take place on April 3 at the Morehead Planetarium where two student bands, Clockwork Kids and Élève, will perform. The festival will be from April 3 to April 5.
The following night, Mipso will make their second ConvergeNC appearance at Cat’s Cradle with an additional performance by Chris Eldridge, from the Punch Brothers. On the final day, festival attendees will gather by the Bell Tower Amphitheater on campus to enjoy eight different performances throughout the day, all of which represent Southern music their own unique way.
Saturday night also offers an additional event for attendees. Bernie Herman, chairman of the American studies department at UNC, is hosting a panel discussion with Alice Gerrard, legendary blue-grass singer, and Mike Taylor, a folklorist and musician who performs in folk music duo Hiss Golden Messenger.
Following the launch of the first ever ConvergeNC festival last spring, both Chess and Rodenbough immediately put their heads together to improve the quality of the festival.
“We want to present a diverse atmosphere that is worth seeing,” Chess said. “Each listener is going to find something they haven’t listened to or heard before.”
The co-directors hope to make listeners come away from the festival with a new artist to listen to — which fits into the festival’s goal of enhancing musical discovery in the Chapel Hill community.
Rodenbough said that the artists for this year’s lineup are full of ambiguity. She also said that to most outsiders Southern ideas get reduced to simplified perceptions.
ConvergeNC aims to show the wide span of cultural roots, not just a fraction of the complex picture. This diversity demonstrates all of the parts of the world that Southern music influences.
“The goal is not to represent the most popular acts, but to represent musical communities that often get neglected,” Rodenbough said.
Both Chess and Rodenbough said they expect attendees to be pleasantly surprised by the lineup. Chess is personally most excited to see Floating Action, a ‘strangely underappreciated’ lo-fi rock musicians from Asheville, and Rome Fortune, an up-and-coming rapper from Atlanta.
Rodenbough said she is looking forward to Myrna and Claudia Lopez Bascunan, a Chilean mother/daughter folk duo, and Ryan Gustafson, a songwriter from Carrboro.
ConvergeNC 2014 attendees can certainly expect a wide array of sounds and artists from different genres.
“I think there will be moments where people will be really captivated by the music ,” Chess said. “Throughout the course of the day, hopefully every person will have one moment where there is something about the music that strikes them.”
arts@dailytarheel.com
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
