Tucked away in the ByWard Market, Music and Beyond’s headquarters are filled with boxes of vintage vinyl records. They sit on chairs, tables and even on the floor. People flow in and out, thumbing through the stacks and letting out quiet gasps when they come across a treasured album. The objective is not to keep them hidden in this space, but to give them new homes to raise funds for the Music and Beyond Festival that takes place in Ottawa every year.
“It’s amazing what [people] are donating and not playing anymore,” said Lisa Best, marketing and media co-ordinator for Music and Beyond. “I call this ‘rescue vinyls,’ you know, like rescue puppies. It’s all going to go to a good home.”
The classical music and multi-disciplinary arts festival will be entering its eighth year next summer. But before the main event in July 2018, the organizers will be putting together various fundraising events.
“We are a classic musical festival,” Best explained. “The beyond part is a twist of everything else, including the Vintage Vinyl Sale.”
The Music and Beyond website outlines introducing youth to music and the arts as a key aspect of the organization and its events. And despite the ongoing rise of digitized music, it seems the old school still has students.
“I had a young man in here earlier, about 10-years-old, and his dad was showing him how the turntables work,” Best said. “He was right into it and he bought a Beatles album, an original. I was so proud of him.”
Adrianne Gore, a young woman from Halifax attending the sale, explained why she thinks vinyl is still important.
“When you play music off your phone, I find we skip through songs a lot. But when you put on a record, you play it to the end,” she said. “So, it sounds the way the artist meant the arrangement of songs to sound.”
For Gore, record sales can be a “social activity,” she added.
The sentiment was echoed by others at the sale event, including Adrian Butts, the official sound system provider from Tetra Speakers.
“People are starting to care about the sounds that they’re listening to, and that’s what vinyl brings back,” Butts said. “I think we’ve all isolated ourselves . . . to be on your headphones and not sharing the music, to me, is a sad way to go. When was the last time you really talked about music with anyone?”
Music and Beyond’s next event is a wine auction on Sept. 29, followed by the Viennese Winter Ball, described on the website as “one of the most glamorous and elegant cultural galas in all of Canada.”
Photo by Samuel Gabriel
