Uplift Music July 26
Festival
Greenfield, NH
F
By Marie Simoneaux and Juliana Wilson
or the past three years, Greenfield, New Hampshire’s not-for-profit event, Uplift Music Festival, has been sharing its funds through the
sharing of its passions – music, arts, and community. While the music, art and community are all
reasons enough to attend this year, the true beauty
of this event lays in its benefactors.
Ever year, Uplift picks one small business or
non-profit to receive 100 percent of the festival
earnings. This year, the benefactor will be The
Grapevine Family and Community Resource
Center. “We set out to heighten the awareness of these organizations with the money being a bonus,” said festival founder,
organizer, and musician Mike Chadinha.
Based out of Antrim, NH, The
Grapevine (grapevinenh.org) is a
program that promotes family and
community well-being through
support, education and the sharing of resources. From their
Community Firewood Bank to
the Weekly Daddy group,
Grapevine has touched in
Hillsborough County and
the Monadnock region.
This includes many of
the founders and volunteers of Uplift.
Throughout the festi-
val, Uplift will work to showcase Grapevine’s success and promote future support.
While the goal remains the same, there will be
some new features coming to Uplift this year. In the
past, Uplift and its volunteers provided all the food.
However, this year, in addition to the food provided
by the festival itself, Little Zoe’s and Berg BBQ will
be serving pizza and BBQ. This year also brings rise
to new classes and workshops. Some of these include belly dancing, hula hooping, and dance yoga,
taught by Nome Graham. As always, kids are well
accommodated. Along with the return of the ever so
popular bouncy houses, Grapevine will set up various art projects and activities to entertain the little
ones.
This year will also feature a few new musical
acts, including Black Eskimo from Temple, NH
and Modern Fools, a sort of “local super group.” Ingrid Chaves and Marco Valentin are Black Eskimo.
Chavez, who is the lead vocalist and a well-known
spoken word poet, lyricist, and songwriter as well,
says what makes Black Eskimo a unique live show
is that they “. . . are a down-tempo electronic duo but
a lot of the instrumentation and sounds were recorded by some of the best musicians in the area so there
is still a warmth to the music. We don’t do any covers, the music is sexy and the vocals move between
singing and spoken word,” she said. “And, if I’m not
mistaken, I think that we are the only band playing
this year with a female lead singer, you don’t want
to miss that!”
Black
Eskimo
Photo by Coleman Rogers
6 • CIDER MAG • cidermag.com
July• 2014