On Friday and Saturday, the city will be awash with videos of musical performances projected onto the walls of Fall River’s City Hall. There will be art installations and performative walk experiences, all designed to be safe during this pandemic.
Michael Benevides, of Casa dos Açores de Nova Inglaterra and founder of the festival, is located in Fall River, and he says the idea for the festival came to him while he was visiting the Azores, where he was born.
“I visit often, and I would see winds of change in the Azores,” Benevides said. “A contemporary cultural scene developed in the Azores, and I became intrigued about who were the agents who were creating this buzz in the Azores. And through a friend I was connected to our now curators Jessie James and Sofia Botelho who run a festival called Walk and Talk every July in the Azores. They were doing a very interesting thing for the festival – bringing in outsiders to the Azores, but showcasing local culture.”
Michael’s partner in this, Jesse James, is Azorean, but he says his grandparents had relocated to Canada, where he was born, hence his English name. James says he was intrigued with Michael Benevides’ idea for a festival, and was happy to get to Fall River.
“For any Azorean, Fall River is a place where even though we haven’t been there, we know of, because there’s such a huge community that left the islands to live and to work in Fall River,” James said. “We felt that we already knew about that city, that location. We love Fall River. Viva Fall River, in the sense that it’s a very amazing and interesting space.”
The big change for the festival this year is the necessity to reimagine how to stage live music concerts. Music is such an important part of the festival, especially fado, the traditional Portuguese music genre. So the performances were recorded earlier, and will be projected onto the outside walls of Fall River City Hall tonight and tomorrow night.
“We decided that we were going to do as much of this as we can outdoors, hence the projections,” Benevides explained. “Our idea was to record four concerts in Lisbon, and one at the Presidential Palace in the Azores, and then screen them here, Friday and Saturday, weather permitting, on the walls of Government Center, which is our City Hall.”
The music is an example of the cultural changes at work in fado, James added.
“[There are] five artists that are amazing in reinventing what this genre is,” James said of fado. “And they’re very representative of these new dynamics that are happening around fado, so it will be amazing to introduce them to the community in Fall River.”
The Fabric Arts Festival also introduces visitors to Fall River itself, with the Performative Walks, a series of guided walks inviting participants to explore Fall River, including the Historic Downtown area and the Quequechan River Rail Trail. Information on this and other events is available on the festival’s website.