ABOUT TRAMLINES:
Now in its seventh year, the festival is billed as the
Country’s largest Inner City music Festival. It spreads across some 20 venues
in the centre and suburbs. Until quite recently the festival was totally free
but there is now a fairly modest charge for an armband which gains admission to
the main venues. The festival has no pretensions to cover anything other than
music and there is an emphasis on home-grown and wherever possible local talent.
It reflects Sheffield’s significant music scene. Having said that the main
stage does attract ‘headliners’ albeit those in a lower league than some of the bigger
festivals. I call these TUPF artists (‘Topping up the pension fund’)
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| Peace Gardens |
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| Cathedral |
The different venues each have a distinct feel: heavy
metal/rock in the subterranean City Hall ballroom; folk in the folk forest at
Endlciffe Park (not by any stretch of the imagination ‘inner city!’); softer
rock and solo acoustic sets at Cathedral, headliners at main stage (Ponderosa
Park) etc. For the first year the main stage was relocated from Devonshire (which
became a secondary stage) to Ponderosa as up to 100,000 people overall were
expected to attend.
Alongside the main venues are a host of fringe events mainly in pubs and clubs,
some in gardens and others darkened upstairs rooms. Soul Tram also ran at Victoria
Hall with some contemporary Christian performers taking part. Then there were
the free stages on the Moor, in Peace Gardens and at Endlciffe and music
spilling out with impromptu buskers gathering crowds.
As at Latitude, Festival goers came in all shapes and
sizes, ages and backgrounds. The crowds probably reflected the type of music on
offer – for example the folk forest was very much a day out for families, Devonshire seemed the venue of choice for hardened festival goers and city hall had its share of
head bangers! (I generalise of course!)
I don’t think I have written this previously but in my
mind I compared Latitude with Spring Harvest – a gathering of people in a
remote site where they were to some extent cushioned from the outside world and
able to focus on the subjects under consideration. Tramlines was a bit more
like Easter People (ECG) or maybe MAYC weekends of old: the festival goers mingled
with the everyday crowd of people doing what people normally do in the city at weekends – shopping, working,
travelling, going to football etc. A significant element of Tramlines is that
it goes on through the night, relocating from stages to clubs. Here the interaction
is between festival-goers and clubbers. Possibly not a marriage made in heaven!
MY TRAMLINES:
I only ‘did’ Saturday and Sunday with an overnight stay
in an hotel on Saturday (bit more luxurious than the tent last weekend)
I managed to sample a range of musical styles from folk
to hip-hop, Indi rock to blues; motown to heavy metal – why not! With few of the
bands being household names, I had to rely on the online information
(programmes having sold out) which was helpful but not always complete. It was
good to hear some local bands and to realise the wealth of talent on our doorstep.
So on Saturday I oscillated between Main Stage, Devonshire Stage, Cathedral,
City Hall and Peace Gardens as well as just soaking up the atmosphere (weather OK).
The Cathedral was probably the most surprising venue; pews
cleared and bar installed, it attracted large crowds to hear acts such as Seven
Tors, Hannah Lou Clark, Polo, Ultimate Painting… Some were solo performers but
others were full four piece bands. I’ll come back to the Cathedral later.
With few ‘anthems’ being performed there was less joining
in with the songs and it wasn’t always easy to catch the words so my interest
in lyrics was somewhat subsumed by a study of atmosphere and presence.
After the final band at Cathedral, I tried and failed to
get into Millennium Gallery and then went on a quick circuit of the Devonshire/West
Street route. This is where the clubbers gather. The atmosphere at 11.00pm was close
to what I had witnessed a couple of weeks earlier at 2.00am and it didn’t feel
too safe; the bottles that are normally gathered by Street Pastors were already
building and I wondered if there would be a clash of cultures between clubbers
and festival goers. However sorry to say, having been on my feet go 12 hours I didn’t
hang around but thanked God for the wonderful ministry of Street Pastors in
this and so many other cities. My Fitbit said I had walked 15 miles so it was time
for bed!
Sunday dawned fair but that didn’t last. I had wanted to spend the day at Folk
Forest and survived until 4.00pm. Again a range of local and UK folk-inspired bands
and a party/family feel. As in previous years there were crafts on sale,
holistic healing available and generally good, positive spirits (despite the persistent
rain)
I wondered if I would enjoy this festival as much as last
week’s but in different ways I did. There was the same buzz around, the authenticity
in music which stirred my soul, appreciation of movement, music and words,
celebrating creativity and just having a good time!
TRAMLINES WORLDVIEW:
The main strapline used in all material is ‘Inner City
Music’ The bar at Main Stage sported the slogan ‘Peace, Love and Unity’ (who
could argue with that….) but I didn’t see those words highlighted elsewhere.
So I guess the world view is very much about Inner city music.
That includes staging a lot of music that is created in studios, bedrooms and garages in inner city Sheffield and elsewhere.
There is also something about the interaction of music and the life of the city
as mentioned above. I wondered if there had been the unwelcome creation of a festival
elite as those with armbands had access to places and music from which the general population
were excluded. The crowd at the free Peace Gardens stage certainly seemed
to reflect the full diversity of the city and I’m not sure that was the same elsewhere.
The interaction was most acute at Ponderosa where the stage
is immediately adjacent to a large (social) housing area. How did the residents
feel about this invasion? Windows were open
in some of the high-rises and there were certainly plenty of people enjoying music
for free. I’ll need to look at the local paper to find out what was being said….
So I suppose the world view is about the power of music to
unite; the potential for music-making that is contained within each one of us;
the diversity that is celebrated through music and above all that music can
help to bring the inner city to life.
GOD AT TRAMLINES:
Well, of course I have to start with the Cathedral. I
wondered if my friend the Dean had personally vetted all the lyrics but probably
not (!). There were certainly some earthy words being sung. Interestingly a couple
of performers commented (‘that’s perhaps a bit saucy for church’ and ‘forgive
me for getting that wrong; but this is the right place to ask for forgiveness isn’t
it’) Several performers commented on the ‘awesome’ nature of the building and
they didn’t just mean the acoustics (which were excellent). The crowd picked
this up and I noticed that many people who were videoing the bands panned round
to get a view of the stained glass and architecture.
So God was there in the life- affirming and realistic lyrics, in the heaving mass
of bodies again representing incarnation, in the passing comments about the building,
in the creativity of performers and synergy of audience participation. And in the
beer! Yes there was a bar in the cathedral!
Where else was God? In creativity certainly, in family,
in relationships and shared company. The place that I didn’t expect to find God
was in the murky depths of City Hall. Had I known that the innocuous sounding
bands with titles like ’Rolo’ and ‘And so I watch you from afar’ were heavy
rockers complete with thrashing hair, head banging and very loud music I would probably
have stayed away. Yet there was something in the presence of so many bodies and
in the intricacies of harmonies alongside the pulsating drum and bass that I
found almost perversely worshipful. If you seek God you can find God in any
situation!
THE END
Referring back to the quote from ‘Personal Jesus’ a couple
of blogs ago;
Music, ritual and worship share a great deal of
common ground in that they
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| Devonsire Green |
(1) help us to shape self-identity, (The festival’s
inner city identity was fairly prominent;
music brought together people who enjoyed particular genres. What can the church
learn from highlighting particular styles of worship and creating a community
around them? Or perhaps more relevantly, how can we create a musical style that
matches our identity?)
(2) assist in the organisation of communal
life, (I guess this is something about music as the soundtrack ot ones life.
Why should; the music that we enjoy outside our worshipping life be kept
separate. One of the big challenges for the church is integration of whole life
– as in Frontline work LICC etc. – how can we use the music that helps our life
to run as part of worship? As an aside, whilst
at Tramlines I went on and out of various shops all of which were playing
musak. It really is ever present! Why indeed should the Devil have all the good music?
and (3) allow humans to experience alternate
states of being' (It’s possible to don a different persona when enjoining music.
I saw this at Main Stage where there were clearly people who were not used to festival
going; they donned some of the typical garb found at festivals and with it a
more liberated way of being. Transcendence in popular music and religious worship
can lead to a different sense of reality but clearly in worship it focussed on ‘the
other’ not oneself. How can we help people who experience such transcendence go
beyond themselves?)
