In an e-mail last month to media outlets, O+ Festival PR coordinator Michael Frank wrote, “The fact that it’s still not well understood locally, after 13 years, tells me there’s a ton of message-spreading to be done in the months and years ahead.” Along with that missive came the offer of press-comp wristbands for access to the entire weekend’s worth of events. That’s what it took to motivate this correspondent to do a full immersion in the Festival for the first time. And the overall verdict is: Wow. What fun. Why didn’t I do this before?
It’s not that I didn’t always think from the get-go that O+ is a great idea all around — one that is already being replicated in other cities far from Kingston, New York. While it raises the question why such an initiative should be necessary in the richest country in the world, when all the other Western democracies have single-payer healthcare systems, it was a feat of brilliance to create a new model wherein artists and others who work in the “gig economy” and have inadequate health insurance (or none at all) can barter their skills for medical treatment, diagnostics and preventive therapies.
I guess what was holding me back was the impression cultivated by the youthful energy behind O+’s early years that this was a Festival geared exclusively toward the musical tastes of Millennial and Gen Z listeners. A geezer like me would look at the list of scheduled bands and think, “I’ve never heard of any of these people. I don’t have any Goth outfits. I don’t go dancing with 20-somethings at nightclubs. I won’t fit in.”
Well, surprise! My happy takeaway is that there’s something for everybody here, of any musical vintage. A centerpiece of this year’s offerings, in fact, was a tribute at the Old Dutch Church in honor of what would have been Pauline Oliveros’ 90th birthday. Plenty of the weekend’s performers and audience members were moldy oldies like me; and while someone whose musical diet consists exclusively of Classic Rock might not have found much audio comfort food at O+, the menu was indeed eclectic.
Even my folkie roots got bathed in the wash of sounds coming from the duo of Andrew Forbes and Max Carmichael, billed as “psychedelic bagpipe and bouzouki,” who played a lively set in the street in front of Rough Draft on Saturday afternoon. A huge mural left over from the 2014 O+ Festival, Nils Westergard’s Matt, loomed over the streetscape as the musicians morphed the familiar “Scotland the Brave” from a straightforward march into a jig tempo and then into something unrecognizable, but still pleasing to the ear.
Art exhibitions all over town began opening their doors by midday on Friday, and the Festival’s musical performances kicked off in the late afternoon with a parade that launched from the Kingston Library. Leading the line of march was punk cabaret queen Amanda Palmer, clutching her ukulele in one hand and waving with the other from the seat of a fire-engine-red 1960 Austin-Healey Sprite convertible. The high-energy marching band Brasskill followed close behind her, and another well-loved local brass-and-percussion ensemble, the Rosendale Improvement Association Brass Band, brought up the rear. In the middle came a cadre from the Center for Creative Education’s Percussion Orchestra of Kingston (POOK), naturally. Squads of marchers, many in wildly mismatched costumes, represented the Queer Conspiracy, Radio Kingston and the Ulster County Italian American Foundation. There were stiltwalkers and jugglers and a guy in a gorilla suit. Joy was in the air.
At the parade’s endpoint, the courtyard behind the O+ office at 52 Main Street, designated the Somewhere Stage for the weekend, Brasskill and a crew of costumed dancers warmed up the crowd for Palmer’s pop-up show and the bands who came after. Noting that much of her usual repertoire is too anguished for a celebratory occasion, Amanda Palmer sang a Radiohead number that audience members younger than Yours Truly doubtless recognized, followed by an original that’s a staple of her shows, “In My Mind.” Afterwards she gave a shout-out to O+’s intrepid volunteers, noting, “This is not a corporate event — this is a volunteer event!”
I stuck around the Somewhere Stage long enough to hear What? a band of SUNY New Paltz alumni who play funk and R&B, and much of the set by the superb Mac & Cheeze Balkan Power Trio. Food and craft vendors, a face-painting booth and an O+ merch trailer lined the perimeter, and in the middle of the space, the Rhinebeck-based performance artist Ben Pinder had created an installation called Dance Lighthouse, topped by a disco ball. Stationed inside, he programmed a light show to “match the vibe of the music.”
That captures the overall vibe of O+ as well: lots of different artforms in a mind-boggling variety of styles all being generated at once, sharing the same spaces, reinforcing and interweaving with one another. Those spaces are spread all over town, from the Stockade to the Rondout (much of Sunday’s programming dovetailed with the Italian American Festival down on the Strand). You could devote your entire weekend to consuming O+ offerings and still barely experience a quarter of them. Because there’s so much going on, with attendees catching a little of this or that act and then meandering on to something else, the crowds never became overwhelming (although I must admit that I didn’t attempt to attend the biggest draws, such as Joey Eppard, James Felice or Mercury Rev).
The Festival’s most visible manifestations are the music acts and the murals, of course, and the art exhibitions that typically stay up for the entire month. I visited the Pinkwater Gallery on North Front Street, where the O+ feature was the installation Occhiolino, consisting of miniature dioramas by various artists from PUGG/The DRAW enclosed by Sophi Kravitz’s paper flower sculptures. Melanie Delgado’s oil-on-canvas Bingo at the Boardwalk — the image used on the wrappers for the chocolate “BO+ardwalk Bars” being sold to raise funds for O+ — was on display in the center of the room, to be auctioned off on October 10. Next door, the windows of the home furnishings shop NEWT featured evocative paintings, poems and photographs by students in the Advanced Writers & Painters class at Kingston High School, all inspired by this year’s O+ theme, “SO+mewhere.”
Less obvious to the casual stroller is the serious medical side of O+. To be sure, the bicycling component is a big deal, with organized rides ranging from a tour of the newest murals to a 55-mile loop all over Ulster County, and attendees can easily take in an ample selection of wellness workshops. Many of these tend toward the New-Agey end of the prevention spectrum: yoga classes, gong baths, meditation. I caught part of an indigenous Guatemalan cacao ceremony in the Old Dutch Churchyard that promoted “alignment of mind, body, center” through reverent preparation and ingestion of ethically sourced hot chocolate.
All good stuff, but if you think you might have cancer and don’t have health insurance, those workshops aren’t going to supply the fix you’re seeking. The swap of art services for health services mentioned above — the “beating heart of O+” — is precisely the least visible component of the Festival. In theory, my press wristband entitled me to explore the Artists’ Clinic accessible by the side door of the Old Dutch Church. Perhaps I should’ve gone inside and interviewed some of the volunteer doctors, nurses, psychotherapists and bodyworkers who offer their services there for free, or some of the artists and Festival volunteers who are invited to partake thereof. But it would have felt intrusive to enter that inner sanctum, to pry into people’s intimate physical and mental health problems.
Therein, I suppose, lies the Festival’s PR problem: We normies get to hear the music, gawk at the murals, hop on a bike. We don’t fully appreciate the lifesaving connections that O+ makes. Perhaps next year, more of that story will be told. Meanwhile, start making plans to spend an autumn weekend in 2023 experiencing the intersection of art and wellness that this groundbreaking cultural institution represents. It’s enjoyable for all.
Join the family! 
