The mission of the annual VIA Festival is to showcase “artists who are pushing the boundaries of their fields,” and in some cases, that includes “pushed,” as VIA doesn’t mind looking back as well.
The headliner of its Main Event on Saturday is MC Lyte, the Brooklyn artist who in 1988 became the first female rapper to release a full-length album, “Lyte as a Rock.” She went to the top of the rap charts in the late ’80s with the hits “Paper Thin” and “Cha Cha Cha,” and then made her biggest impact in 1996 with her fifth album, “Bad As I Wanna B,” charting “Keep on, Keepin’ On” and “Cold Rock a Party,” which introduced Missy Elliott.
Where: Spirit, 51st and Butler streets, Lawrenceville.
When: 4 p.m. Saturday-2 a.m. Sunday.
Tickets: $30; $35 at the door; via-2015.com.
In July, the artist, whose real name is Lana Moorer, released her first album in 12 years, “Legend,” on which she said she tried to combine the “new” (as in modern production style) with the “true” (real instruments and old-school elements).
Quinn Leonowicz, who curates the music for VIA, says what sparked his interest was seeing her on the 2014 BET Hip-Hop Awards with Brandy, Queen Latifah and Yo-Yo.
She fills that favored festival slot of the “classic, respected, hip-hop artist,” he says. He saw from the BET awards that “she’s not much different than she was [in the ’90s], except the quality of the video is clearer. She’s a good one. It gives you a weird feeling that someone like that is coming.”
Rather than topping a hip-hop bill, in VIA style, she’s part of an eclectic lineup with perky Baltimore indie-pop band Lower Dens, touring on third album “Escape From Evil,” Canadian synth-pop artist Jessy Lanza, doing a rare tour with a band, rapper Abdu Ali and electronic artist xxyyxx (Florida’s Marcel Everett).
“It’s on the other end of the spectrum from Lower Dens,” Mr. Leonowicz says of xxyyxx. “One guy with machines. It’s hazy electronic music but very dance-y.”
That will be the upstairs portion at Spirit in Lawrenceville. Downstairs there will be a house/techno stage with a showcase by Discwoman, a Brooklyn-based music collective featuring Volvox.
“Discwoman is an advocacy group for females in electronic music,” Mr. Leonowicz says. “It’s really recent and relevant in New York. They just celebrated their one-year anniversary.”
Speaking to the sonic diversity of VIA, he says, “There’s a large segment of people, myself included, I went to clubs and went to hardcore shows in North Jersey [where he’s from]. There’s a lot of people who will go see all that stuff. They’ll go see Deafheaven, and go to techno night. There’s been an interesting shift over the last 20 years from Smashing Pumpkins to what we have now.”
Scott Mervis: smervis@post-gazette.com; 412-263-2576. Twitter: @scottmervis_pg.
First Published: October 1, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
