How Bumbershoot rose from Boeing Bust roots

Bumbershoot kicks off this weekend, and for $130 per day, you get a dizzying array of artists – from Lil Wayne on Friday to Fleet Foxes on Sunday.

But this annual festival, so focused now on music, wasn’t always that way – or this expensive.

KUOW’s Angela King spoke to arts and culture reporter Marcie Sillman about the event’s roots.

A lot of us think of Bumbershoot as a music festival. Was that what organizers had in mind?

Not exactly. Some listeners may remember 1971 -- that was the year that Bumbershoot started. Seattle was in the depths of the Boeing Bust – thousands, tens of thousands, of people had lost their jobs, and Mayor Wes Uhlman thought his citizens needed a little spiritual morale boost. He'd been to New York City where Mayor John Lindsay had introduced him to the idea of a citywide free arts festival. Sounded good to Uhlman, so when he got back to Seattle he scraped together a grand total of $25,000. And he tapped some folks to replicate the idea at the Seattle Center.

So that first festival, there was music but there was also everything from laser shows, which were something new, to goofy art robots to buskers. Tens of thousands of folks came. That surpassed expectations and so they thought that was cool and by the way wasn't called Bumbershoot. That first year it was called Festival ‘71.

OK, so when did it morph into Bumbershoot?

Two years later, 1973. and it really didn't start evolving into what we think of as Bumbershoot now until after 1980. That was when the organization One Reel took over festival production and incidentally that was the same year they started to charge admission. It cost $2.50. Compare that to this year, with the price for a one-day pass to Bumbershoot at $130. And it goes up from there.

So what will festival goers get to sample this Labor Day weekend?

Lots and lots and lots of bands and music. I can't even begin to name them all. Lil Wayne as you mentioned, Blondie’s going to be there. They also have a catchall program category called “Conversation and Comedy” that features exactly what it sounds like: interviews and comedians. And along the edges of the Seattle Center grounds you're going to find the traditional music poster exhibition, a small sampling of theater, a little bit of dance … but by and large those nods to the historic traditions of the festival are gone.

Festival goers should know there's something important to note this year that's new: Instead of the wrist bands that you used to get when you paid your fee and you could go in and out of the stages and the festival grounds, if you go to Bumbershoot this year you cannot come and go. You spend the day there or else you leave and you're gone. That's it.