Gonna rock this town

Oliver Good

• Last Updated: November 05. 2009 12:52PM UAE / November 5. 2009 8:52AM GMT

The post-punk trailblazers Echo and the Bunnymen, who have been going strong for 31 years, are one of the headlining acts at the festival. Bryan Bedder / Getty Images / AFP

This weekend, Dubai will host a music industry first. The inaugural Dubai Sound City festival will feature a multitude of artists and luminaries descending upon the emirate for three days of live performances and discussions about the future of music.

Modelled on industry showcases such as South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and MIDEM in Cannes, the festival is not just a party for label executives and hangers-on; the entire line-up of almost 80 artists is open to the public in seven venues across the city. With a bill that includes indie stalwarts such as Doves and Happy Mondays and plenty of emerging talent to boot, the event will be a welcome change for anyone bored of the usual cycle of stadium-rock juggernauts and diamond-wearing divas.

“I’m excited and completely confused by it all,” says Matthew Murphy, the singer for the Liverpool-based guitar-pop trio The Wombats, who play the event on Saturday. “We’re on before Super Furry Animals, who are just an incredible band. So many musicians really look up to them. Echo and the Bunnymen are Liverpool legends and there are lots of new young bands that rarely get the opportunity to play to people in that part of the world.”

Like many of the acts taking part in the event, The Wombats have never set foot in Dubai before.

“I don’t really have any preconceived ideas about Dubai, other than there are lots of great golf courses, which I plan to get to at some point,” he says. “When I’m not busy being an indie boy, my alter ego is an avid golfer.”

The festival will include 78 bands, artists and DJs from around the world; the largest performances will take place at the 6,000-capacity Irish Village. Headlining shows will come from three platinum-selling artists: the synth pop group The Human League, the stars of the Madchester scene Happy Mondays and the post-punk legends Echo and the Bunnymen. A host of smaller acts and DJs will take the stage at venues such as Alpha Club, 360, The Apartment, Warehouse and Chi at The Lodge.

Alongside the live shows will be a series of debates addressing such topics as Music Is Free and All You Need Is Cash – Money Can Buy You Love. The event will also feature keynote speeches from the likes of the Radiohead manager Brian Message and Kimi Kato, the managing director of Universal Music in Japan, all taking place at Emirates Towers.

“People like to go to nice places and pleasant surroundings, watch some great live music and do business,” says David Pichilingi, the co-founder of Dubai Sound City. “We have a real opportunity here to start something that can be long-standing and build that into the music business calendar for the future.”

If it sounds like the event’s organisers know a thing or two about putting on a festival, that’s because they’ve done it before. The Sound City brand hails from Liverpool, the place that brought the world The Beatles, Elvis Costello and, more recently, The Coral.

“I was out at South by Southwest in Texas a few years ago and it occurred to me that some of the greatest talent in the world had come from a 30-mile radius of where I was born, so I started an event called Liverpool Sound City,” says Pichilingi. “That was five years ago.”

As well as bringing a host of the region’s newest bands to the Texan event every year, Liverpool Sound City became a festival in its own right in 2008. This year’s event featured no less than 450 bands from 20 countries and attracted 35,000 music fans to the city. For this reason, Dubai Sound City has a distinctly Liverpudlian flavour, as well as featuring several artists from neighbouring Manchester. But the idea to start a sister festival in Dubai came not from Pichilingi, but his fellow industry insider Alex Bracken.

“He is a very persuasive and enigmatic individual,” says Pichilingi. “He came over to Liverpool and just bluntly said: ‘I want to do this in Dubai.’ It was something that had never occurred to me, but when I went to Dubai, I realised we could do it. I learnt how central the city was to different locations all over the world. There’s a real willingness from a lot of people for this to happen and all the ingredients and the infrastructure seem to be in place.”

Besides well-established and emerging acts from the West, there are also a number of Middle Eastern musicians and DJs appearing on the bill. Liverpool bands that were given a boost by the UK event, such as Bicycle Thieves and Sound of Guns, have also been invited to play in Dubai.

Few disagree that the line-up offers something for almost everyone, but some may find the choice of headline acts a little odd.

Topping the bill are three very British bands: Human League, Happy Mondays and Echo and the Bunnymen. All three reached the height of their fame in the 1980s – strange choices for an event that promises to bring emerging talent directly to the market. Some might suggest that Doves, who recently headlined the BBC’s prestigious Electric Proms series, or De La Soul, a big draw on both sides of the Atlantic, might have been more suitable headliners. They’re not new artists either, but they’re certainly more hip.

“This event is 21-plus, so demographics came into it a bit, as well as the kind of audience over here,” says Pichilingi. “[The three headliners] have back catalogues that speak for themselves. They’ve had several platinum albums over 25 years and very strong songs.”

But he says that putting together a festival line-up can be a highly political process.

“You’re also dealing with fragile egos. Some are happy to be somewhere on the bill where others would not be. It’s a juggling act.”

In keeping with the Liverpool event’s commitment to emerging talent, Dubai Sound City offered a number of slots to local artists. The Road to Sound City was a month-long series of events in which 18 acts competed to play the festival. The winning band was Sho?, a hard-rock expatriate four-piece living in Dubai.

“It’s awesome and great exposure for our band, particularly as we only just got together before the summer,” says Zara Quiroga, the group’s 27-year-old singer who hails from Portugal. “There are not enough opportunities for bands in Dubai. The local scene is very young and small for now, but it’s developing fast. What holds it back is that it can be very expensive for bands to play in nightclubs. If they can’t play they won’t become good.”

Quiroga believes events such as Dubai Sound City will not just be good for artists but the people of the city too.

“It makes a huge difference. People here are thirsty for live music and seeing international acts of all sizes is something that a lot of music fans miss, whatever genre they are into,” she says. “If you start creating a live music culture in the city, people will become more enthusiastic about music in general; buying music, seeing music, playing music, everything.”

While musicians old and new battle for audiences in the festival’s live venues, many of the names behind the music will be squaring off in the conference rooms of Emirates Towers.

Unsurprisingly, the music industry’s current plight – declining record sales brought on by the digital revolution – will be a subject of great interest to the attendees. An authority on the matter is Message, who oversaw Radiohead’s headline-grabbing “pay-what-you-like” tactic, for the release of their last album.

“It’s a massive time of change in our industry,” he says. “The internet has become a great communication tool between artists and fans and I’m keen to talk about that artist/fan relationship and using that to build artists’ businesses globally.”

Although best known for handling the Oxford five-piece, Message’s artists include the likes of Supergrass, Faithless and Kate Nash. Despite being involved with a number of major artists, the manager says he can’t recall his acts touring the Middle East.

“I don’t have much of a feel for the Middle East, but I suppose that’s part of the reason I’m quite keen to go,” he says. “Clearly there are a number of established artists that go there to perform and get paid well, but I’m taking more of a global perspective on things, whether that’s selling records, touring live or partnering with brands.

“With the changing structure of how our industry works, you have to look at the Middle East as a market. No part of the world should be excluded.”

Dubai Sound City takes place today until Saturday.

ogood@thenational.ae