Last week, I covered the annual GroundUP Music Festival in Miami Beach coming up February 2-4. It’s the greatest adventure for musical exploration in the U.S. Since its inception in 2017, in addition to the main festival performances, there have been artist workshops during the day, pre-festival brunches with artist performances and late night parties after the festival closes.
This year’s brunches and late nights are as spectacular as ever with extra-special performances including individual artists and late-night performances. Here’s the rundown of each – I plan to attend as many sets as my body will allow.
BRUNCHES
Bill Laurance & Michael League
Bill Laurance, one of the uber-talented Snarky Puppy keyboard players and Michael League, Snarky Puppy founder and leader released a duo album, ‘Where You Wish You Were’ just about a year ago. On it, Michael plays a variety of instruments, highlighted by the oud as on the video ‘Meeting of the Mind.” Bill, in my opinion, can inject more feeling in one note than many can put into a whole album. One of my personal favorites is the up-tempo, “Round House.” According to the album notes, the album is “musical escapism, world jazz 2.0 and an invitation to a place where we wish to be” and now we get to be there to witness.
Snarky Puppy — Texans Only Set!
I’ll be very interested to see how this set Texans Only set goes with JT on drums naturally, two guitars with Chris and Mark, Bobby on keys and Jay as the lone horn player. Will Mark play baritone or will they go with no bass? Will JT double up with some percussion? What will they play — Empire Central like RLs (taken here from the 2023 Atlanta show) and Take It or also older tunes? I’ve seen Chris and JT outside of Snarky Puppy with FORQ, and Mark and Bobby with their own bands so this Texas set is gonna bring the heat!
LATE NIGHT
Friday
Nate Wood
Of course, Nate Wood is going to be doing his fOUR set during the festival but this is not labeled as such so it’ll be interesting to see how this is configured. Nate is also the drummer in the Los Angeles based fusion band Kneebody who actually opened for Snarky Puppy on some gigs a few years back. I’ve seen Kneebody once in Atlanta and once at the Hollywood Bowl and they are great. We’ll see what’s in store to kick off the late night sesh.
GO-GO Party Hosted by Robert ‘Sput’ Searight
Each year at GUMF late-night, there’s a GO-GO party, a massive improv sesh in the style out of D.C. made especially popular by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers. It features call and response with the crowd so get ready to do some hollerin’. This year will be SPUTacular with Robert Searight in the command seat. Since I don’t think this has ever been performed before let alone recorded, I’ve put up a Ghost-Note set for fun.
Chiquita Magic & Friends
Chiquita Magic is new to me — all I can piece together is that she’s performed with Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi (see videos) and here’s a lift taken directly off her YouTube channel info “chiquitamagic is an underground latine artist / producer / dj from Colombia based in Canada. Her music can be described as futurepop drawing from dance music, funk, jazz, & choral music. She uses microtonal synths, her voice, and drum machines to produce her strange and captivating sound. Her 6th album, “Mexico Sexi Time” is out on L.A underground jazz hub Minaret Records and Mexico City’s femme run latine label ORIS. Her collaborators include Genevieve Artadi, Louis Cole, KNOWER, & Ambrose Akinmusire, to name a few.”
Saturday
TWYN
TWYN is a dynamic duo comprised of Jason Matthews (Electric Kif) on keys and Aaron Glueckauf (Lemon City Trio) on drums. I just recently saw them live for the first time at North Beach Music Festival and they’re amazing. Jason told me after the set that the drums and keys are connected electronically, and they can start and play on each other’s instruments electronically. Check out the video and you’ll see ‘phantom’ notes from loops and triggers that appear to come out of nowhere. And their latest album LYGHT YEARS is super cool.
Basstardos (Hossn, Pipoquinha, Feraud)
Well, GUMF late night is about to reach a new low — that’s right, a completely unheard of connecting of three world class bass players as Basstardos! Perhaps this is the first of its kind (we’ll find out) because I could find no videos of a prior occurence.
What I did piece together is a clip I took of Hossn with Electric Kif at last year’s GUMF preparty and another vid showing his great interaction with a local audience.
The second bassist is Michael Pipoquinha who according to his bio “was born in 1996 in the city of Limoeiro do Norte, in the state of Ceará, Brazil. He began playing guitar at the age of 10 but soon fell in love with bass. He learned to play by watching video lessons under the guidance of his father, Elisvan Silva, bassist.” I really like the vibe of this fusion-y video.
And third “Basstardo” Hadrien Feraud is from France, and according to Wikipedia learned playing the bass lines of Earth, Wind and Fire and Motown. If that doesn’t spike your curiosity, nothing will. This video is more in the jazz category but top notch.
Basstardos is on my can’t miss list for sure.
Gisela João + Justin Stanton
Gisela is doing a festival solo set which will no doubt be amazing. For this late-night set, she’s paired with her partner Justin Stanton, keyboard and trumpet player in Snarky Puppy. She’s got a fantastic voice and Justin of course is a fantastic accompanist on keys. I expect this to be a very emotive and moving set.
Sunday
Fuensanta
Fuensanta Mendez is doing a reprise late-night set on top of the festival set. Here’s her most viewed video on YouTube that I’ve found. It’s an interesting tune with a fuller band, somewhat avant-garde with her beautiful voice intertwined with some dissonant sections and some jazz mixes. I’ll be interested to see how she varies the day to night sounds.
Bassekou Kouyate
Like Fuensanta, Bassekou is a featured festival artist with Weedie Braimah and the Hands of Time that has a second late-night set. Bassekou plays the West African ngoni (lute) which is quite different than the most common “Western” instruments you might hear at U.S. festivals. If the set is anything like this video, it’ll be a great energizer on the last late-night.
Nikki Glaspie’s Closing Night Jam
Nikki Glaspie’s Closing Night Jam will be absolutely stunning, without a doubt. Nikki is a well-known, highly-regarded funk and jam band drummer, having formerly played with Dumpstaphunk out of New Orleans and ongoing in her own band The Nth Power, both of which I’ve seen many times. The Nth Power was featured at GUMF ’22. She’s a force to be reckoned with and during the summer-fall Snarky Puppy tour, she took the seat behind the kit, included four sets that I caught along the way.
The jam session typically will feature anybody and everybody who wants to get up on stage. It will be wild, unpredictable and fantastically memorable. Since the configuration of the “jam band” isn’t yet known, I’ve included my video of her set with Snarky Puppy back in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Sit back and enjoy and I hope to catch up with some of you down in Miami Beach!