Creole Carnival, globalFEST’s first national tour, produced by CAMI Music, proved to be a successful venture in our mission to grow audiences for world music in North America. With over 10,000 people reached in 30 cities in the US and Canada, globalFEST partnered with some of the best arts presenters to showcase the spirit of Carnival, an annual celebration across many Caribbean nations. Emeline Michel, the reigning queen of Haitian song, Brushy One-String, a solo acoustic sensation from Jamaica, and Casuarina, masters of contemporary Brazilian samba, came together for a beautifully varied and fun show, and engaged audiences throughout their two months on the road.
Kicking off in Toronto, Creole Carnival closed out a powerful first week with an energetic show at Littlefield in Brooklyn, which garnered the attention of Afropop Worldwide and set the tone for the rest of the tour. The engagement activities began right away, with Brushy One-String meeting with students at Penn State University. Amy Dupain Vashaw, Director of Audience & Program Development at the Penn State Center for the Performing Arts shared:
We had a terrific session with Brushy, who met with students from a senior-level human resources class with whom we are working this semester. The class project involved the development of a tool to be deployed in a workplace, which emphasizes various cultures utilizing the arts. The discussion with Brushy was very enlightening, he was super open and funny, which helped to make the students, most of whom had very little arts experience prior to this class, feel comfortable… We had a blast!
In the following weeks, the artists continued with great cultivation events in Oxford, Ohio and Clemson, South Carolina before a swing through Florida and up toward Chicago. Leading up to two shows in Illinois, the tour enjoyed a great feature in the Chicago Sun Times, which outlines some background on globalFEST and how Creole Carnival came to be. The artists then performed their way through the midwest, marked by a great interview with João Cavalcanti, one of the five musicians of Casuarina, for a local news site in Milwaukee. Finally, Brushy, Emeline, and Casuarina made a few stops in the Southwest before ending the tour in California. In the last couple weeks of Creole Carnival, there were particularly rocking shows in Seattle and Salt Lake City before the finale in Berkeley, which hosted the highest-attended show of the tour! Before the show at Zellerbach Hall on Cal Berkeley’s campus, Emeline Michel did an in-depth interview for a local paper, and appeared on a KPOO-FM with David Lacy that morning.
Throughout Creole Carnival, the artists kept fans at home abreast with the hashtag #CreoleCarnival and they put on an energizing show night after night, as evidenced by the high CD and merch sales in many cities on the tour. Additionally, walkup ticket sales stayed consistently high across the board. Due to the compelling musicians and stories that made Creole Carnival what it was, the tour drew a considerable amount of attention from the press, including Brushy One-String’s Tiny Desk Concert as part of NPR’s series, which acted as a calling card throughout Creole Carnival, and now boasts more than 200,000 views on YouTube. Other highlights are listed below:
- 2/27: Brushy’s Tiny Desk Concert
- 3/3: Afropop Worldwide review of Littlefield performance
- 3/15: Chicago Sun Times feature on Creole Carnival
- Plus: 22 concert previews; FREQ feature (2/25) and Flypaper interview (3/9) with Brushy One-String; Urban Milwaukee feature interview with João Cavalcanti, frontman of Casuarina (3/15); and Berkeleyside interview with Emeline Michel (4/15)
For a full list of cities Creole Carnival hit, see below, but before, we’d like to extend a huge thank you to Toby Tumarkin, Jean Lee, George Cruz, Christian Vela, Brushy One-String, Emeline Michel, Casuarina, Wesli, and everyone else involved who helped make Creole Carnival happen! Check out photos from the tour on our Facebook page here, and stay tuned for more globalFEST news in the coming weeks.
Tour stops:
- 2.23.16 | Winter Garden | Toronto, ON
- 2.24.16 | Flynn Center for the Performing Arts | Burlington, VT
- 2.25.16 | Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State | University Park, PA
- 2.26.16 | Littlefield Performance + Art Space | Brooklyn, NY
- 2.27.16 | Fine Arts Center | Amherst, MA
- 2.28.16 | Nazareth College Arts Center | Rochester, NY
- 3.01.16 | Miami University | Oxford, OH
- 3.03.16 | Brooks Center for the Performing Arts | Clemson, SC
- 3.04.16 | Carolina Theatre of Durham | Durham, NC
- 3.07.16 | Newberry Opera House | Newberry, SC
- 3.11.16 | Florida State University | Tallahassee, FL
- 3.12.16 | South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center | Cutler Bay, FL
- 3.16.16 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | Champaign, IL
- 3.18.16 | City Winery Chicago | Chicago, IL
- 3.19.16 | Wilson Center for the Arts | Brookfield, WI
- 3.20.16 | Fox Cities Performing Arts Center | Appleton, WI
- 3.24.16 | The Lensic Performing Arts Center | Santa Fe, NM
- 3.25.16 | Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts | Scottsdale, AZ
- 3.26.16 | San Diego Symphony Hall | San Diego, CA
- 3.29.16 | Newman Center for the Performing Arts | Denver, CO
- 3.30.16 | Lincoln Center Performance Hall | Fort Collins, CO
- 3.31.16 | UtahPresents — Kingsbury Hall | Salt Lake City, UT
- 4.02.16 | The Luckman Theatre | Los Angeles, CA
- 4.03.16 | Soka University of America | Aliso Viego, CA
- 4.07.16 | Mondavi Performing Arts Center | Davis, CA
- 4.08.16 | Cal Poly Theatre | San Luis Obispo, CA
- 4.12.16 | Mount Baker Theatre | Bellingham, WA
- 4.14.16 | University of Washington | Seattle, WA
- 4.16.16 | Zellerbach Hall | Berkeley, CA