Photo credit: Andrew Feller
As befitting a place known as the City of Festivals, Milwaukee rarely seems to go more than a month without some event setting up shop in one neighborhood or another, with more and more staking out their place on the calendar every year. And yet, while each one contributes something unique to our local cultural landscape, few are more all-around enjoyable than the relatively young Arte Para Todos, largely because of its elegantly circular concept: enlisting area Milwaukee artists to raise funds for arts programs at Milwaukee-area schools. It’s a cause everybody in their right mind should be able to get behind, and because of that ATP, now celebrating its second year, has so far boasted insanely diverse lineups and unparalleled good vibes, and that positivity was certainly in the air Friday night at Tonic Tavern.
Also in the air was the music of Prince, supplied with style throughout by Core DJ Craig McNeal of WMSE institution the Saturday Afternoon Boogie Bang, which naturally only upped the love in the room. Getting things going live was the mostly instrumental duo Con Solo, who use guitar and drum machines to craft dubwise, beat-heavy soundscapes, which here set plenty of heads to bobbing. Next up was local MC Pharaoh Mac with an elaborate set, during which he seemed to be performing to a much larger room. That’s not to say the songs, such as “Same Time,” the dance moves or the stage dressing (caution tape and an artfully detuned television), weren’t on point, but it would’ve been nice if he used the intimate nature of the club to get a bit more personal.
Like most Arte Para Todos shows, the bill’s lineup was diverse, but of a more sore-thumb variety than usual, with throwback punk-rockers Indonesian Junk plopped in the middle of an otherwise uniformly hip hop-oriented bill. Not that anyone seemed to mind of course, nor did the crowd flinch when technical difficulties, which the band handled with humor and class, interrupted their otherwise rocking set, drawn mostly from their new self-titled debut full-length. Wrapping up the evening (at Tonic at least; day two of the four-day fest included five other Bay View venues), was venerable hip-hop outfit Rusty Pelicans, with almost all past members in attendance, bringing things home with their laid-back energy and old-school flow. It’s not often that you can enjoy the best of current Milwaukee music while simultaneously encouraging the next generation of it.
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