With the East Coast Music Awards, Festival and Conference ready to go, artists across the region have been gearing up for a busy weekend in Cape Breton. Here at home, thirteen Cape Breton artists are nominated or eligible for awards, and dozens of local artists will be performing in official and non-official showcases all over Sydney during the weekend event. Venues and promoters are finalizing their entertainment lineups, restaurants and coffee shops are reorganizing their business hours, local radio stations are getting ready for live broadcasts and special programming, and cultural institutions from the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design to Cape Breton University are getting ready to feature special, music-oriented exhibits and presentations. It is going to be a busy time indeed.
In these days leading up to the event, WGO has been focussing on ECMA with previews of the showcases, profiles of award nominees and local showcasing artist, reviews of cds by nominated and showcasing artists, and, of course, listing ECMA and associated events in the WGO Events Calendar. We’ve looked everywhere for these events listings and put them all in one place for everyone to see just how much is going on this weekend in Sydney. Check it out, it’s seriously staggering.
We will also take a look back at What’s Goin On magazine’s coverage of the ECMA over the years in the archives. WGO started covering the East Coast Music Awards in 1996 and continued to cover the event extensively until 2002. There’s lots of memories in those pages, and it’s kind of fun to look back and see what’s come before, how much things have changed (and how much they haven’t), and even playing a little “where are they now?” and “what ever happened to…?”.
In addition to presenting the previews and the archives, WGO will be at the ECMA this weekend, going to the shows, roaming the streets, hitting the parties, and playing some of the gigs, to bring back that old “just like being there” coverage that What’s Goin On has been known for.
To facilitate this expansive coverage, we have set up a new section, called ECMA 2010, in which you will find all the preview articles gathered, as well as links to the archived issues (check back often for updates as we are still putting these together), and the on the spot reports and reviews from the weekend.
ECMA weekend offers a great opportunity to get out and experience music right in your own backyard, but it is more than that even, it’s a time to really feel the excitement that this type of activity can bring to your town. There will be hundreds more people living in downtown Sydney this weekend and that is bound to be a shock to the system–in a good way. Enjoy the atmosphere and soak up the energy. Get out to see some music and take in some of the events. And every now and then, take a breather and check in with WGO to find out just what exactly is goin’ on around here.
adrienne says
thanks WGO!