In many ways, Khatsahlano is one of the main arteries of the beating heart that is Vancouver’s summer arts and culture scene.
The annual outdoor music and vendor festival takes over a stretch of West 4th, from Burrard to MacDonald, for a day in early July. It provides a family-conscious, eight-block alternative to the hole-in-the-wall arts spaces that typically define the cultural scene.
It’s grand in every sense of the word. In fact, Khatsahlano is Vancouver’s largest free music and arts festival. The day offers only the finest selection of Vancouver’s local music scene with a line-up curated by Zulu Records, a record store and label situated on the stretch of Kitsilano’s West 4th that the festival occupies.
This year, the event landed on July 6, where performers, vendors, organizers and festival-goers were all greeted with sweltering 30ºC heat. But the crowds didn’t waver — sunlight poured onto the streets, people poured around the stands.
Vibrant crochet knickknacks with splashes of yellow and green neighboured fresh-baked pastries warmed by the sun. The businesses of West 4th that would otherwise inhabit the lowrises lining the road instead spilled onto the street. Giving in to vendors means giving back, because most businesses at Khatsahlano are local.
The microeconomy that defines the charm of the area is what contributes to its tight-knit persona. In an introverted city like Vancouver, everyone seems to know each other — we peered over our shoulders to catch neighbours greeting one another with sweat-stained hugs and genuine conversation. As an outsider, you may get the sense that West 4th is a special phenomenon.
When we made it at high noon to catch Rosemary Ginger, one of the day’s opening acts, people were already splitting the way for a near constant flow of strollers, hand-holding couples, waddling kids and panting dogs.
“It's always nice to play a free show where anyone can just walk on by,” said Adam Doucette, Rosemary Ginger’s founder, singer-songwriter and a recent UBC graduate.
“Maybe they have no idea who we are, or who any of the bands are, and they're just in the area and then they hear something they like. That's always, I feel, a special kind of thing for me with these outdoor music festivals.”
There’s a certain sound that comes out of being friends first and bandmates second. Rosemary Ginger is Doucette on vocals and synth, Amy Tan on vocals, Carter Fortney on guitar, Jack Zhao on bass and Elias Rieger on drums. The quintet opened the event at Khatsahlano’s Burrard Stage for what would be Rieger’s final show with the band.
“I think that sort of dynamic [of being friends] has been brought into the band, making it very easy and a very safe space for all of us to experiment and to be silly and goofy,” said Tan.
Tan is also part of another UBC-based quintet, Ramen Fog, alongside guitarist Rowan McDonald, drummer Adam Gold, keyboardist Ben Rossouw and bassist Josh Collesso. The band played this year’s Khatsahlano too, lending their airy funky jazz tonality to a vast swaying crowd at Vine and 4th behind a blinding sunlight. Doucette also joined them for a time on sax.
When Ramen Fog performs, you hear each individual instrument shift around each other in a composite whole. You see stage presences that are delightfully genuine. You’d rather squint than look away. This is a product of the band’s creative process, which holds space for every musician to add their own artistry to their songs. Ramen Fog and Rosemary Ginger share that quality.
“What makes [our] genre hard to define is that we're all pulling influence from different places and different songs, and [it] just makes it fun,” said Fortney.
Some have pinned down Rosemary Ginger’s genre as being dream jazz, but in reality, it’s simply Doucette’s warm keys atop Tan’s fluttering vocals, the crunch of Fortney’s guitar and the bubble of Zhao’s bass steadied by Rieger’s drum all rolled into one dulcet vehicle.
Rosemary Ginger and Ramen Fog create the kind of atmosphere that is often synonymous with Vancouver’s enclosed arts spaces: vibrant yet intimate — almost homey, like sitting in on a group of friends jamming in the garage.
But these venues are often fragile and fleeting. Currently, two-thirds of cultural spaces in BC have leases lasting less than five years and face rent instability.
Despite the countless events that fill the city’s often dwindling live local venues, Khatsahlano is one of the most well-known arts and culture events in Vancouver. Perhaps that says something about the fact that many art spaces require at-the-door payment from patrons just to stay alive.
Just in the last week, Kingsway 648, a venue tucked away in an East Van rowhome well-known as a start-out space for emerging artists, announced it would be closing its doors in the fall and considering a new venue to occupy.
Many of these venues draw a specific subset of the city’s demographic: people over 19 who are willing to put in the money for at-the-door entry.
So what Khatsahlano mends is the prospect of accessibility to the local arts by drawing on a crowd that runs in parallel with independent art spaces.
“Having [Khatsahlano] be a free space, and also a very different crowd than we would usually perform to, I think allows it to be a lot more accessible,” said Tan. “[Underground venues] appeal to a certain demographic, like our age group or people out to have a good time.”
“But I think it's cool to be able to perform to families and to parents and kids … and just seeing how that resonates with people.”
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