GARDEN CITY GROOVES
Featuring: Tanika Charles, Missy D, Prometheus Brown, XL the Band, and more
Where: White Eagle Polish Hall (90 Dock St.)
When: Thursday, Feb. 15 through Saturday, Feb. 17
Tickets: ticketweb.ca
The crossover between Garden City Grooves and the Victoria Ska and Reggae Festival starts and ends with the non-profit society that produces both annual events.
Musically, they occupy separate spaces.
The Victoria Ska and Reggae Festival — which will celebrate its 25th anniversary this summer — explores Jamaican music, from ska and rocksteady to reggae, while Garden City Grooves showcases soul, jazz, hip-hop, and funk. “We thought Garden City Grooves was a good way to highlight these genres further,” said Garden City Grooves producer Dane Roberts, who is also the artistic director of the Victoria BC Ska Society.
“It ebbs and flows and changes. There’s a lot of directions we can go with it.”
The festival’s 10th anniversary celebration gets underway tonight, and runs through the weekend at White Eagle Polish Hall in James Bay, with a line-up that primarily straddles soul and hip-hop. By catering to a different audience than the one that supports its summertime sibling, Garden City Grooves has forged its own identity — to to the point where it now sells out often.
Much of that is due to its spot on the calendar; it’s one of the city’s first post-Christmas festivals. Roberts and his team decided in 2019 to move the festival from its spot in May, where it was held each year, to the winter season, in order to put more distance between it and the ska and reggae festival.
That gave him the ability to explore a new range of genres with each festival, without one event cannibalizing the other. “We hope that we can build Garden City Grooves in a manner where artists are starting to route their tours around it. That is a goal for us. These kinds of festivals are important for presenting new music to people that otherwise wouldn’t come here, that you might see in Vancouver at the Commodore Ballroom. The acts are super talented, but they aren’t the most obvious ones.”
This year’s event features Toronto’s Tanika Charles, a two-time Juno Award nominee; California’s Prometheus Brown; and Vancouver acts Missy D and XL the Band, among others. Roberts is also anticipating a big response to the festival’s tribute to the late Amy Winehouse, which opens the festival tonight. The all-star endeavour by the 14-piece Capital Collective, which features members of local acts Current Swell, Jon and Roy, and more, is a big hit and falls in line with what Garden City Grooves is trying to accomplish artistically.
“This is a good opportunity for us, using Amy’s repertoire to get people to see this band,” Roberts said. “And this band is something. Even though it’s a tribute, [bandleader Phil Hamelin] has put together the music using an all-Island roster of some of the best jazz musicians. That is something we haven’t done before. Which makes it special.”
