Arise Festival focuses on uplifting music, ideas

By Quentin Young

In the Yoga Zone section of the Arise Music Festival, visitors can try Neurosculpting Yoga, which, the festival says, “focuses on meditation ways to re-align the internal wiring of the right and left brain.”

Elsewhere, in the festival’s workshop tent, a group will be led in “deep play,” which involves the rejection of old patterns of behavior in favor of freedom and the unknown. In an area called the Healer’s Village, festivalgoers can learn about such subjects as tantra, embodied chakra healing and blues dance.

Arise, as organizers proclaim, is “more than a music festival … (it’s) a movement.”

The music is merely the festival’s main energy source.

The third annual Arise is scheduled for Aug. 7-9 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland. The first two festivals attracted such big-name acts as Michael Franti, Beats Antique, Xavier Rudd, Keller Williams and The Infamous Stringdusters.

The lineup this year includes such national acts as The Polish Ambassador, Shook Twins, Ozomatli, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, Peter Yarrow, Larry Keel, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.

Popular local acts on the bill include Gypsy Moon, Caribou Mountain Collective, The Congress, Bridget Law and Bonnie Paine of Elephant Revival, Jaden Carlson and Intuit.

Intuit, based in Nederland, played Arise last year, and guitarist Neil Sullivan said the band is happy to return.

“It was probably one of the more exciting festivals in the area,” Sullivan said during a recent interview. “It was kind of awesome to see all my favorite local bands and a tasteful selection of big-name headliners.”

One of his favorite local artists is Carlson, who played the festival’s inaugural event two years ago.

“I played a lot and just had a ton of fun,” the teen guitarist said about her first Arise experience. “It’s very laid back; it’s very spiritual.”

Arise focuses on “conscious music” — material that aligns with its qualities of mindfulness, activism and empowerment — but offers a wide variety of performers, and they don’t all sing about enlightened consciousness and being one with nature. Denver band The Congress is on this year’s lineup, and they’re pretty much a rock ‘n’ roll band.

Gipsy Moon, from Nederland, however, seems to hew close to the festival’s core values.

“Our music, lyrically, is very nature based,” guitarist Mackenzie Page said. “Environmentalism is something I’m really passionate about.”

It will be Gipsy Moon’s second time playing Arise, Page said, and this year the band’s bassist, Matt Cantor, will help lead a Saturday evening workshop, “Tapping Into the Acoustic Bass.” The bassists from Pert Near Sandstone and Chain Station also plan to participate.

Sunrise Ranch itself is an apt match for the festival. It was founded by Lloyd Meeker, who in the 1930s experienced a spiritual conversion and started a movement he called Emissaries of Divine Light, according to the ranch’s website. The ranch today is “dedicated as a teaching and demonstration site for this essential wisdom — both the inner knowing of Universal Being and the practical application of that knowing.”

The festival this year is adding a program devoted to electronic music and visuals. Called Area 51, it will feature Defunk, Ill-Esha, SaQi, Unlimited Gravity and other local and national artists on the lineup.

Other festival attractions include visual art, performance art, a children’s area, educational programs and overnight camping.

Quentin Young: quentin@dailycamera.com and twitter.com/qpyoungnews