The Bumbershoot Official Site back to review
Bumbershoot, the outrageous four day umbrella arts showcase that rocks the Seattle Center every Labor Day weekend turned 30 years old in 2000. To celebrate that milestone we pieced together this brief history of one of America’s wildest celebrations.
Bumbershoot: The First 30 Years
In some ways it’s surprising that any Seattle tradition has survived the city’s personality changes over the last 30 years, but Bumbershoot’s identity is rooted in something deeper. It’s a ritual that springs from Seattle’s psyche, one that has shaped the Northwest as much as reflected its evolution. Even in the years before it was known for its coffee and virtual virtues, Seattle has always been a city that loved activism, the arts, and a good party.
In the early ’60s, the city’s population growth was paralleled by its emerging identity as an arts center, a business hub, and a port city that looked East and West. The city was basking in the success of the 1962 World’s Fair, which captured the imagination of the world with its futuristic monument The Space Needle. But toward the late ’60s, the Boeing depression became a reality, the city was broke, and Seattle’s Mayor Wes Uhlman trolled for ideas that would put Seattle on the national map.
Uhlman put the question to a citizen advisory group: the Mayor’s Festival Committee. With the memory of the World’s Fair still present, and inspired by the emergence of outdoor rock concerts like Sky River Rock Festival, Woodstock, and New York City’s Mayor’s Arts Festival, the committee put forth a modest proposal for a new festival. Located on the campus of the Seattle Center, the festival was envisioned as a means to celebrate the moment in Seattle’s history while looking ahead to its bright future as a major American city.
The festival was held in 1971 on Labor Day weekend, the first event to use the World’s Fair campus since ’62. Even without a proper name, any headlining talent save country artist Sheb Wooley, or a substantial budget ($25,000), the festival attracted over 100,000 people and was deemed successful by the local media and Seattle at large. Looking back, the first festival most resembled the now ubiquitous street fair but with a real flair for the avant garde; a collection of troubadours, food and crafts vendors, and regional performances were matched by laser beam and light shows, an amateur motorcycle race, a Miss Hot Pants Contest, inflatable soft sculpture and body painting. It was from these humble but eclectic beginnings that Bumbershoot was born.
The early ’70s were good to Bumbershoot, despite the rattled Seattle economy. The Festival was produced by the city, and funded by revenues from concessions, along with some grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1973, the name Bumbershoot was coined, a reflection of the city’s reputation for rain but more as a metaphor for Bumbershoot as an umbrella for the arts. The event crept up and down in size, spread out over as few as three and as many as 11 days during some years, but generally prospered as a free arts event and took hold as a Seattle Labor Day tradition.
The artists who performed in those days spanned music, theater, dance, visual arts and comedy, but the emphasis was on Northwest artists, sparked with a few better known names: Claes Oldenburg, John Handy and Joe Venuti. From its earliest days, Bumbershoot distinguished itself with its irreverent attitude, reflected in projects like the Shout at the Sun Booth, Reverend Chumleigh’s Sideshow with Brodie, Dog of the Future, the BumberNational Artist Soap Box Derby with entries like The Holy Roller, Rainbow Rider, and Super Skull, and the legendary performances by The One Reel Vaudeville Show.
The Festival was dealt back to back blows by the NEA and Mother Nature in 1975. It’s funding was cut leaving it vulnerable, then Bumbershoot experienced heavy rains and the financial fallout was devastating. The City, eyes wide open now to the perils of producing special events, began to search for an alternative. The late ’70s proved the motto that you have to like living dangerously if you want to produce outdoor events in Seattle. Rain made an appearance at several festivals, and in 1979 the City cried uncle, and sought the expertise of an outside producer. In 1980, Bumbershoot’s campy cult performers moved off stage and into the office as One Reel assumed producership.
One Reel began its stewardship of Bumbershoot by making three big changes: introducing national headline talent to the programming mix, seeking sponsorship, and charging a low admission. The Festival was still a City-financed proposition, but the revenue streams now included admissions and sponsorship to help pay for a bigger, better event. Admission in 1980 was $2.50, and the stages filled with names like Emmylou Harris, Eiko and Koma, Chuck Berry, and Art Ensemble of Chicago.
The early ’80s saw some of the biggest growth Bumbershoot had experienced, artistically, physically and in attendance. The Festival expanded to 15 stages, exhibit galleries and venues, and the combination of nationally known headliners built on a bedrock of Northwest talent began to pay off in national recognition and financial stability. Acts like The Eurythmics, Spinal Tap, James Brown and Tina Turner went side by side with the art-oddities of Bumber-legend: a giant inflatable pencil unleashed at the Festival which eventually touched down in Lynnwood; Clair Colquitt’s 8’ high propeller-powered Quintcycle, and the BumberNationals.
One thing that remained constant was the public’s sense of ownership of Bumbershoot, clearly a festival of the people, by the people and for the people. These two forces, money and citizen empowerment, came head to head in 1985 in the now-infamous "Bumberwars." In a decision that angered the public and the City Council, leaders at the Seattle Center bypassed the City and announced the appointment of a new producer for the festival. In glaring contradiction to One Reel’s grassroots, artsy personality, the Center’s pick was a rock concert producer. Open Council hearings were held, and in the end the small guy prevailed, as Bumbershoot was returned to its committed, quirky stewards, One Reel.
The late ’80s found the festival experimenting with art forms, adding stages, cultivating international artistry. Artists like Bonnie Raitt, Robert Creeley, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Randy Newman, Chaka Khan, and Los Lobos made way for others like Alla Pugachova, Sandi and the Sunsetz, and BumberDrum with Zakir Hussain and Samul Nori. Every available space was filled with music, theater, dance, poetry readings, performance art, video, film, kids arts, and a small press bookfair.
The Festival launched into the ’90s with a 20th anniversary showcase that broke all box office records. The admission was now $6, and Festival-goers sampled their way through four days of Ziggy Marley, Gladys Knight, Queen Ida and John Barth. The Festival’s rich history was celebrated with a T.R. Uthco Reunion of inflatables, a Retro-Art-O-Rama and Artists Lunchbox Reunion, and special invitationals honoring Tom Robbins, Norman Durkee, and Peggy Platt.
Financially Bumbershoot remained a risky proposition, subject as always to the weather, public tastes and increasing competition, but with a mandate to keep providing a stellar showcase of arts from around the globe – all for an affordable ticket price that encourages discovery and adventure. In 1993 and 1994 the event saw back to back losses, and the City again worried out loud about the wisdom of financing a festival. In 1995, Bumbershoot was set free by the City of Seattle, entrusted to its stewards of the last 15 years One Reel, and celebrated in fine style with the first-ever Jimi Hendrix Festival & Tribute Concert.
In the last five years, Bumbershoot has continued to refresh, reinvent and raise the artistic ante with new programs, new venues, and new takes. Committed to honoring hometown talent, Bumbershoot has showcased artists like August Wilson, The Foo Fighters, The Presidents of the United States of America, David Guterson, and Sir Mix-A-Lot, while serving up tasty offerings from other global points like Oliver Mutukudzi, The St. Petersburg Ballet, Agelique Kidjo, Shooglenifty and Les Tetes Brulees.
Many celebrants now come to check out just one of the festivals within the mother festival: The 1 Reel Film Festival, Bumbershoot Bookfair, Northwest Court Visual Arts Exhibits, Kids Hands-On Arts and Literary Arts Program. But the heart of the festival still lies in the richness of its Northwest artists and the paddock-style admission that encourages drifting and sampling. From neon sculpture to clogging, gravity racecars to robotic art, hip-hop to hatmaking, alt rock to cinema, Bumbershoot is built on more than 500 performances by these talents and hopes to re-invent itself for another 30 years to come.
