MUSICAL VACATION
PLANNING A TRIP AROUND A TUNE CAN MAKE MEMORIES
Targeting a specific destination with a cool concert ticket included is one thing. Hopping a flight to travel somewhere to get immersed in a scene — from the history to the sounds — separates the mega, from the mere, fan.
While there's nothing wrong with either scenario, only one is music tourism.
We had experts weigh in and found significant differences between the musical tourist and checking off your “must see” list. Five major themes emerged. These were location, history, genre, convenience and — the most fluid of all qualities — value-added.
Key to our selection of events or tours focused on how unique these five factors were.
The musical tourist isn't after a collective group experience as much as an individual one that lives on long after the tour date. Years after the fact, discussions arise out of something gleaned on your trip that refers right back to a specific lecture, performance, related cultural experience, or meal. A serving of rice and beans can spur a conversation about that lecture/performance of all the Cuban songs devoted to this dietary staple and similar such songs of the American South and Latin America.
It's the sort of thing you encounter on an in-depth musical tour.
LOCATION
What makes a person plan their vacation somewhere other than at home? The lure of the location. This is the same for the globetrotting musical tourist.
It goes without saying that centres such as New York or New Orleans come ready made for immersing yourself. In fact, it was on my first trip to New Orleans where I picked up a copy of Dr. Karl Koenig's Just A Closer Walk (Basin Street Press) and discovered just how much time you could devote to exploring a city's musical legacy, wandering its streets to stop and read up on such unlikely jazz hot spots as the Screwman's Hall on Bienville. So began a decades-long habit.
Cool as Bjork may be, I never saw Iceland in the same light. Frankly, nobody did.
When Icelandair and the City of Reykjavik conceived the first Iceland Airwaves festival in 1999, the plan was to bring some business to the Nordic nation during the slow season. The spinoff of this successful event was an explosion of Iceland's music scene worldwide, and also greater interest in the place it came from. Because to really understand the singular sounds of this nation near the Arctic Circle, you need to see the place.
“It was a concept of Icelandair's marketing department to both showcase the local music scene and also to get industry people coming to see them and get other groups putting it on their circuit,” says Icelandair's Michael Raucheisen. “What began as a one-day event in September is now a weeklong one in November, which has become tied-in with wanting to come and see the Northern Lights and other unique Winter activities. It's been really amazing how there is now a tourist season well into what was the down period, and Airwaves certainly played a key part.”
The 2017 Iceland Airwaves takes place Nov. 1 through Nov. 5.
Closer to home, the Edge of the World Music Festival takes place in Haida Gwaii from Aug. 11 to Aug. 13. Set in the majestic woods of the Tiell Fall Fairgrounds on Graham Island, the festival offers up the usual mix of local and national touring acts and plays a role in travel investment to the region. Laughingly called “the Hippie Fest” for many years, in recent times, it has become a musical component of the greater experience of one of the world's most beautiful natural settings.
“We did an informal economic assessment impact at one point and we estimated that the event brings in about $400,000-plus to the North and Haida Gwaii, which is pretty significant for an event capped at 2,200 people,” said festival director Janet Rigg. “We don't have formal ties with other operators, but so many people who come include more in their itinerary because that is the draw of the region.”
While events clearly vary significantly in terms of scale, the attraction for the locale is a key driver for going at all.
HISTORY
No story on music-driven travel would be complete without looking at the classical musical capitals of Europe. But how?
In Mozart's Footsteps specializes in illuminating the rich history and sounds of cities such as Salzburg, Vienna, Prague and others. Dr. David Nelson, a music theory professor for 30 years and author of Vienna For The Music Lover — a detailed book with editions in English, German and Chinese — leads the tours. He has very clear ideas on the concept of music tourism, and it's not a term he is enamoured of.
“What I do is create far more detailed experiences for music lovers so that they can really get a better sense of what it was really like in the time of Mozart, Beethoven or Haydn and where they lived and worked,” said Nelson. “Through the research I've done, I have put together trips for people who want to learn more, or who may already know an awful lot and to make it all come alive. The performances are a key part of it, sure, but they are in context with the history and not 'touristy' shows.”