New Manchester showcase Beyond the Music unveils first lineup details
The event has been masterminded by Oli Wilson, son of local legend Tony
By Joe Goggins
Beyond the Music, a new musical festival and conference in Manchester, has announced the first details of its inaugural lineup.
The showcase event runs from October 11-14 and is describing itself as the world’s first “change-making” festival, with a strong social and ethical focus. It looks set to be a spiritual successor to the In the City event that ran around the same time of year up until 2010, and was set up by legendary music mogul Tony Wilson; his son, Oli, is behind Beyond the Music.
Now, the festival has announced 60 names as part of its first artist drop, with the likes of Walt Disco, July Jones, [K S R], Tokky Horror, Human Interest, L’Objectif and Tayo Sound all set to play Manchester as part of the event. Additionally, the festival have revealed that industry heavyweights like SXSW, NQ Legacy, Nice Swan Records and School Night will host their own showcases around the Northern Quarter, at iconic Manchester venues including Night & Day Café, Band on the Wall, Gullivers and The Castle Hotel.
The names announced so far are part of the festival’s Discovered programme, which places emphasis on new acts, particularly those who may find traditional routes into the music industry closed off to them. As part of this strand, punk upstarts Loose Articles play as part of ‘Kick Like a Girl’, a lineup of all-female musicians that they’ll curate themselves. “As a band we aim to showcase female identifying and non-binary talent as much as possible,” the group said in a statement.
“Recent news articles have stated that women are seen as too much of a “risk” for headline festival slots, with statistics showing if you count the total number of performers on stage during headline slots, only one in 10 (11%) are women and even less (2% are non-binary people),” they went on.
“We need to change the attitudes towards female identifying and non-binary musicians and this starts with support from conferences such as Beyond the Music who have given us a platform to do this. We aim to showcase as many talented musicians as we can to highlight this issue in the hope that this will start to effect change in the way festivals are booked.”
Submissions are now open for artists without an established industry team to apply to play as part of Discovered. The link is here.