Judy Mitoma, director of the UCLA Center for Intercultural
Performance and this year’s World Festival of Sacred Music,
is quick to point out that Los Angeles’ next major music
festival isn’t about entertainment.
“That’s a challenging idea, especially to younger
people,” Mitoma said. “You’re not coming to this
event to be entertained. To be in the presence of this music is one
step toward understanding the vastness of humanity and the
greatness of human expression.”
In a city that is known mostly for its proclivity toward plastic
attractions and cheap thrills, Mitoma’s aims for the
traditional music festival at first seemed overly idealistic. But
judging from the scope of the festival after nine months of
extensive planning, the event is tailor-made for a city as diverse
and wide-ranging as Los Angeles. And with the help of UCLA in L.A.,
an organization geared toward UCLA’s community involvement,
it may be the start of a campus-motivated citywide tradition.
The World Festival of Sacred Music, which starts Sept. 14, will
extend from Long Beach to Northridge down to Santa Monica Beach
over the course of 55 events in 16 days, offering a sample of Los
Angeles’ cultural spectrum.
And despite its staggering magnitude, it’s still one of
the few festivals around today that can truly be called a
grassroots effort ““ the mere fact this festival is planned
and ready to happen is a testament to the hundreds of volunteers
involved.
“This is the kind of project that most people cannot
believe is possible,” Mitoma said.
The Dalai Lama first conceived and publicized the idea,
promoting the event as a way to celebrate the new millennium.
Mitoma, who had prior experience organizing events like the 1984
Olympic Arts Festival, picked up on it, directing Los
Angeles’ first World Festival of Sacred Music in 1999. But
some changes have been made for the second attempt.
“The Dalai Lama became the central focus of the 1999
festival,” said general manager Eileen Cooley. “He
spoke at the Hollywood Bowl, his presence was just very felt. This
time around, we don’t have anyone like the Dalai Lama.
Instead we’re trying to focus on the community itself “¦
we have a lot of the same artists, some same venues, but the focus
is something new.”
The festival’s city-oriented perspective is reflected in
everything from the diversity of venues to the festival
organizers’ selection process.
According to Mitoma, each performance group was required to go
through an application process. They were then evaluated by an
eight-member music committee that ranged from 90.7 KPFK’s
Beto Arcos to Kelly Salloum of the UCLA Department of
Ethnomusicology. Groups weren’t chosen solely based on skill
or mass appeal.
“Some of the artists (who applied) may be virtuosos, but
if they don’t have any record of caring about our city and
were next to a group that was from the community, most likely the
community group would be selected,” Mitoma said.
It’s a model that may not appeal to traditional festival
funding organizations, but the organizers never intended it to be
conventional. Mitoma approached Chancellor Albert Carnesale early
in the planning process, insisting that this time around the
festival be supported by UCLA. With the help of Frank Gilliam, the
associate vice chancellor for community partnerships and overseer
of UCLA in L.A., Mitoma was able to draw the UCLA community into
participating in the city-wide event.
Now, through the labor of Mitoma and her coworkers at the UCLA
Center for Intercultural Performance, organizers are hoping to make
the festival a Los Angeles tradition, recurring every three
years.
“I believe this project is the ideal project for
UCLA,” Mitoma said. “With the sheer connections we have
to all of these places, the volunteers, faith- and community-based
organizations, and funding organizations, I always believed that
this could be our gift back to the city. And I think I’m one
step closer to that hope by the operations of the festival being
here in our offices, on this campus.”
Community outreach isn’t the only purpose of the festival.
According to Cooley and Mitoma, there’s also the hope to
bring about appreciation of different cultures
“It’s one thing for the Sheila Temple to have their
monks chant, but what if on the same program, the monks are
chanting, and we have a group called the Angel City Chorale?
Hopefully it will crack open your mind a little more,” Cooley
said.
Festivities start at Royce Hall with an opening gala, which
boasts a lineup that reinforces the idea of diversity within the
L.A. community. Cooley suggests that the festival as a whole may
encourage other communities to follow.
“I can see it happening in any community that is not
homogeneous,” Cooley said. “Think about San Francisco,
where you have an immense Mexican and Asian constituency, you have
the Italians of North Beach. Why not? This is going to sound
completely wild, but why not Fresno? They can do it,
absolutely.”