KALAMAZOO, MI — “I wanted to bring something big to Kalamazoo,” said Jennifer Hudson-Prenkert.
Hudson-Prenkert, founder of Kalamazoo’s newest music festival and symposium, Sounds of the Zoo — which kicks off Monday, Sept. 26, and runs through Sunday, Oct. 2, at venues across the city — is doing just that.
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The free, first-year festival promises to showcase diverse styles of local, regional, national and international live music at a variety of locations throughout the city of Kalamazoo, Hudson-Prenkert said.
Sounds of the Zoo kicks off with a Monday night show at 7 p.m. at Bell’s, featuring The Incantations, DC and DJ Boogie, along with The Mainstays. The spotlight then shines on singer-songwriters from across the region, including Kait Rose, Nicholas James Thomasma and others as Kalamazoo’s own Carrie McFerrin interviews each of the artists from the Hilton Garden Inn stage on Tuesday night as part of their and her performances.
The singer-songwriter showcase is one of many events over the course of the week that Hudson-Prenkert hopes will serve as a catalyst in moving Kalamazoo’s music scene forward, as she looks to harness some of the energy created at the festival.
Over the course of the next year, she said, McFerrin and Sounds of the Zoo will co-host monthly singer-songwriter showcases that feature local and regional artists, in hopes to keep that momentum.
“I think one of the things I’m offering up is an actual curation of who we can be as a music city,” Hudson-Prenkert said. “I think we’ve lost that a little bit. We have a lot of great things going on in Kalamazoo. We’ve got Fontana, we’ve got the symphony and the Gilmore Piano Festival. There’s a lot of things that are wonderful, but those are all particular niches.”
What Hudson-Prenkert saw was a need to focus more on the local, independent music scene, something she sees as waiting to blossom with continued collaboration.
An example of that collaboration will be on display Thursday night at The XPerience, when one of Kalamazoo’s newest venues partners with the 95-year-old Kalamazoo State Theatre to host a dance party featuring Serita’s Black Rose Duo and Latin X DJ Mel V.
That occurs right after Local Spins writer and musician Enrique Olmos conducts a short workshop focused on the importance of press releases and bios, geared toward up-and-coming artists. The workshop, like others being hosted by Michigan Music Alliance and sound engineer Ian Gorman, follows the template of Austin, Texas, music festival South by Southwest, by offering workshops and presentations “geared to empower and unite artists, industry professionals and music lovers from around the world,” Hudson-Prenkert said.
The festival expects to reach its crescendo over the course of three days at Bronson Park Friday, Sept. 30- Sunday, Oct. 2, as music will fill downtown from 5:30-11:30 p.m. Friday, noon-midnight Saturday and noon-7:30 p.m. on Sunday. Acts such as Grace Theisen, The Bootstrap Boys, Dani Darling, Earth Radio, Jordan Hamilton, Zion Lion and FlyLite Gemini will be among those taking the Bronson Park stage over the weekend.
The park will be lit up at night with a disco ball installation and lights dangling from trees, along with a few surprises, Hudson-Prenkert said.
“I think it’s going to make the city look really great,” she said. “We’re all discovering this together. We’ve got the music planned, organized and scheduled, and there’s specific things happening like the daily classes, but there is an element to all of this that, being a first-year festival, it’s literally a work in progress, which I feel is unique to this festival and sort of a gift I am offering up to the community through offering really solid and diverse programming and doing it for free.
“When you start doing tickets and headliners it changes the dynamic. I’m trying to create change in a different way in the community. I want people to be able to just go see great music, and understand, you don’t have to know who all the bands are or know all the songs, just be open to the experience and hearing different things.”
In addition to live music, Hudson-Prenkert said she has created different villages within the park, to include an art village, music village, sustainability village and mental health awareness village that will be open Friday-Sunday. The latter two villages will cast a light on subject matters that are as much at the heart of the festival as will be the music and music education, Hudson-Prenkert said.
The interactive villages will be information- and vendor-driven, but also allow attendees the opportunity to take advantage of free yoga classes, acupuncture or massage sessions, while learning about music therapy, holistic healing and traditional counseling services available in the community.
“For this year, it’s just about getting the conversation out there about mental health,” she said. “We have a lot of services available for crises, which I think is great and important, but I feel like just having the conversations and making people aware of things, that maybe they aren’t, might seem small, but it’s an important element.”
Among the mental health awareness services that will have a presence at the festival will be Backline, a national organization that was created with the goal of supporting mental health for musicians and other industry members that spend a great amount of time on the road and face a different set of mental health challenges than many therapists deal with on a regular basis.
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In addition to the happenings in the park over the weekend, there will be four busking stations set up around town from noon-6 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 1, with six different acts performing 45-minute sets at each over the course of the day. Stages will feature everything from established acts to up-and-coming rock and hip hop acts. The busking stations will be set up underneath the marquee at the Kalamazoo State Theatre, as well as outside Brick + Brine, Rocket Fizz and the Burnham and Flower Plaza.
“The simple story is I’m striving to create change through music and I feel that doing this over seven days, it’s kind of ‘go big or go home’ and I want to push this forward so we feel that energy of what it was like in the past when we had more things going on,” Hudson-Prenkert said. “It’s an exciting time in Kalamazoo.
“There’s co much coming down the pipeline for local music. We really need to build our local infrastructure so that we can be leaders for the future.”
As the festival is 100% free to attend, with a goal of making it accessible to all, Sounds of the Zoo is accepting donations for participating artists on its website. Sounds of the Zoo is being funded through private dollars and supported by the city of Kalamazoo, she said.
Hudson-Prenkert, who in addition to curating the fest with co-producer Chelsea Whitaker, will take the stage at the Old Dog Wednesday night as the Nathan Moore Project presents a Dacia Bridges tribute, honoring the late Kalamazoo and international musician.
For more information, along with a complete schedule of music and workshops, visit soundsofthezoo.com.
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