Columbia Experimental Music Festival is set for its final run. Here's what to expect

The ultimate success of any experiment is tough to measure.

Chase a near-prophetic ability to match your hypothesis and outcomes, and you'll almost always be disappointed. Permanence can't be the standard either. If something you try or build doesn't last forever, that's no condemnation of its value, its worthiness.

If true success lives somewhere between vision, compassion, integrity, and some shifting of the shared horizon, then the Columbia Experimental Music Festival has been a smash hit.

The fest, which joins jazz and hip-hop, rock and electronic music — and almost everything else — will take its final bow next week. The 2023 edition forms a fitting celebration of what makes the festival special, and restates its values one more time, high notes only.

Musical revolutions

The festival is an outgrowth of the Dismal Niche arts and music collective, a Columbia nonprofit that has been many things to many people: a record label, a DIY repository of visual art, a concert presenter, a haven for those who want their cultural experiences deeper, weirder, more humane.

Since convening its annual festival, principal organizer Matthew Crook and Co. have hosted a serious array of talent. Past CEMF artists include Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Laraaji, Jon Mueller, Moor Mother, Marisa Anderson, Yasmin Williams and Patrick Shiroishi.

This year's affair informally revolves around one giant musical planet, the Sun Ra Arkestra (7 p.m. Sunday at The Blue Note). The sprawling jazz orchestra furthers the legacy of interstellar icon Sun Ra, using his life's work as a guidebook into all manner of musical exploration.

Early in his own jazz education, Crook gravitated toward the likes of John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Sun Ra. The latter figure's music swung doors open, introducing him "to real expansive ideas" about art, music and philosophy as a way of life, not just something to check at the end of a concert experience.

The work of Sun Ra and his acolytes sweeps up so much of jazz history, Crook said, from big-band language to the psychedelic fringes of the sound. Strains of Sun Ra's music — and perhaps more important, his values — can be detected in so many of the festival's artists.

"This being the last festival, the Sun Ra Arkestra is a really good representation of a lot of things that we’re interested in and they show you can do a lot of things. You don’t have to be pinned to just one way of being or one way of expressing yourself," Crook said. "I think they’re just exemplary of the kind of programming we’ve done since Day One, what we’ve wanted to achieve with this."

Space is the place

Without its own dedicated space, the festival brings music out into Columbia. Hotspots this year include Rose Music Hall, Cafe Berlin, Columbia Public Library, Hitt Records, the Compass listening room and more.

A double bill featuring spiritual jazz from James Brandon Lewis and the deeply Romantic compositions of trombonist Kalia Vandever makes compelling promises about sound in space. The pair will take sanctuary in the lush acoustics of First Baptist Church (6:30 p.m. Saturday).

Vandever will no doubt set a tone with her "reverential" and "introspective" approach, Crook said. And the setting suits Lewis, who owns serious gospel bonafides.

"Seeing him in a church is special," Crook said.

This year's festival map doesn't include any left-field venues, Crook said, but artists and technical crew discover ways to turn the dial toward immersion anywhere.

"Our wheelhouse is transforming places (where) you wouldn’t normally see a concert like this into really immaculate sound experiences," he said.

An experiment built of little experiments

The fest has, bit by bit, expanded its hip-hop interests. After booking the likes of Armand Hammer and R.A.P. Ferreira in previous years, the 2023 edition foregrounds the likes of Rome Streetz (9 p.m. Saturday at Rose), a rapper who feels at home — and sometimes out-of-place — in New York and London.

At first blush, Crook couldn't parse how the term "experimental" fit the artist, who is clearly gifted at crafting a "gritty, grimy, underground" sound with "vivid" scenes.

"His quiet storm rap style is reminiscent of New York greats like Nas, Mobb Deep, and Smif ’N Wessun," Bandcamp’s Jordan Commandeur wrote in 2020.

But the fest itself is an experiment built of smaller experiments; the closer Crook listened, the more striking this match made sense.

Other hip-hop acts at this year's fest include New Yorker Chyna Streetz and Kansas City native Zeph France.

Why the Columbia Experimental Music Festival is ending and what's next

This is not an easy year for independent music festivals — in Columbia, the Treeline Music Fest shuttered; festivals elsewhere have closed shop or pressed indefinite pause.

"I think it’s a really difficult time to be trying to organize a music festival — especially one like ours — without large corporate sponsorship," Crook said.

Explaining the choice to call this experiment complete, Crook returned to various forms of the words sustainable and responsible. He is the sole financial guarantor of the festival, and feels responsible for leaning so much on a small group of donors and sponsors. Crook spoke of his gratitude to supporters and, to hear him tell it, it's that mutual respect spurring him to end at the right time, in the right way.

The festival's closure both is and isn't a Columbia story, Crook said. The American landscape is pocked with once-beloved festivals, to be sure. But Crook also looked back fondly at a moment, maybe 15 years ago, when it seemed independent endeavors were more possible here in Columbia.

Crook voiced at least two interconnected elements: the average mid-Missourian faces greater economic challenges — and "that’s who we’re depending on to come out."

Also, the cultural change wrought since the University of Missouri joined the Southeastern Conference for athletics in 2012 shifted resources and infrastructure toward a wealthier, more transient class of consumer, Crook noted.

The combination affects the chances at sustainability for independent organizations, and saps energy from creators like Crook.

This is not, however, the end for Dismal Niche. The collective, which has sponsored one-off shows throughout the calendar and hosted a recurring summer series, will present something like six shows a year, Crook said.

The festival's end, like most, is bittersweet. Crook expressed clear satisfaction "that we’ve done it at all. Not only once, but eight times. That we’ve been able to bring a truly world-class program to Columbia at the price that we’ve been able to do it at. There’s not another festival in the world where you can see a lineup like this at the price that we’ve been able to offer."

And, over its run, Crook and Dismal Niche encouraged interested festgoers to show up even if they can't afford admission — "we’re going to let you in," he said.

"I’m proud of that — I’m proud that we haven’t gone broke bringing world-class music to Columbia and that we’ve never turned anyone away," he added.

Three must-see events if the last festival is your first

Festival beginners who want to see what Crook and Co. have built face some really cool options.

These three events would be great jumping-off points into the fest's dynamic, and whatever comes next for Dismal Niche:

Saturday afternoon: At 3 and 4:30 p.m., the festival will screen Alain Gomis' 2022 documentary "Rewind and Play," which revolves around jazz icon Thelonious Monk's 1969 European tour. Footage initially aired for a French TV audience presented a skewed glance at Monk, one somehow both too tame and insulting, Crook said.

Gomis revisited the full Monk interviews, repurposing them to create a more realistic, captivating portrait of the artist in his time, Crook said. The film mirrors the festival in its ability to recast a truer story.

"Our festival, I like to think of as a reframing of the narrative of what a music festival can be. What relationships with artists can look like," Crook said.

The screening takes place at Compass Music Center.

Saturday night: The Lewis-Vandever bill should rank among the highlights of the festival's entire run.

Sunday afternoon: Vandever will appear, as previous artists have, at the Columbia Public Library for a performance at 2 p.m. The intimacy of the setting brings an artist's humanity into clearer relief, and allows audiences to fully sense the breath and breadth within a performance.

The Columbia Experimental Music Festival runs Nov. 2-5 in various venues. Find a full schedule of events at https://dismalniche.squarespace.com/cemf.

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Final Columbia Experimental Music Festival celebrates creative freedom