Photos: Kickstarter Music Communed with the Cosmos (and the Golden Dawn Arkestra) at SXSW 2019
Meredith Graves, our Director of Music, shares highlights from our Ritual to the Sun King party at SXSW. Photos by Ryan Vestil.
Back in 2014, the Kickstarter Music world got socked directly in the third eye thanks to a renegade group of angels hailing from a broad series of solar systems (but landing in Texas) calling themselves the Golden Dawn Arkestra.
We’ll let them describe themselves, because we couldn’t possibly say it better: “The Golden Dawn Arkestra is an avant-garde collective combining deep grooves and cinematic textures. Adorned in shimmering regal robes reminiscent of intergalactic kingdoms of yore and featuring cosmic go-go dancers, the Golden Dawn Arkestra will keep your body moving on the dance floor while raising your consciousness past the outermost reaches of the cosmos.”
“Come and join our journey,” they said.
Flash forward to 2019, when myself (Meredith Graves, Kickstarter’s faithful Director of Music) and my cohort (Russell Elliot, my Unofficial Second-in-Command) successfully and secretly Kickstarted a time-travel machine, allowing us the privilege of going back in time to 2014, receiving their message, making sure we jumped along, and, through a series of CGI-heavy outer-space montages, scrambled the universe using Julia Child’s omelette recipe, lightly sautéeing space-time itself —
— so that we could show up with and for the Golden Dawn Arkestra at their fourth annual Ritual to the Sun King party, thrown during SXSW at their home venue, Austin’s incredible Sahara Lounge, along with about 1,000 other people, all of whom got to attend for free.
Why? Because, you sillies, that’s what we do at Kickstarter Music. We help musicians and music-lovers get a handle on where and how the dreaded money part factors in, radically redistributing resources in service to a more equitable scene (and world!). We prove that it doesn’t take a million dollars, a candy bar endorsement, or, god forbid, a record deal in order to make huge, incredible, multicolored, mellifluous, intergalactic music events happen.
And we do it by calling in an ark-load of help from all our favorite friends and collaborators, which for this event included Texas-based music photographer and all-around creative genius Ryan Vestil, who basically came straight from a gator BBQ at Willie Nelson’s ranch and ran right to the front of the stage to take these beautiful portraits of Golden Dawn initiates doing what they do best: rocking the heck out.
Take it away, Vestil!
— Meredith Graves
