Thursday, September 15, 2011

Free Like Me to Play Chinatown Moon Festival on Saturday Night

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If you missed the two Saturdays of Chinatown Summer Nights, or had so much fun, you want more, this Saturday night is the 73rd Annual Moon Festival featuring Eddie Lin from Deep End Dining as host on the chef cooking stage. And for the first time ever, a non-Asian band will play the Festival, and that is a story onto itself. Last Saturday, Free Like Me that features Lucy Gallant from Australia and Daniel Urbina from Venezuela came to Chinatown with their videographer to gather footage for their music video. What they didn't know was that they had come upon Chinatown Summer Nights, a festival that the Downtown News had given special recognition to earlier this year for transforming three Chinatown summer evenings back in 2011.


Seeing an opportunity to play for an audience they bootlegged one of the smaller performance spaces along one of the side alley's off the main plaza. Thus, as I was wandering around the festival, I stumbled upon Lucy and Daniel mesmerizing the crowd, getting people dancing, and having a good time. Even though the crowd begged for more, and since they were just borrowing the stage, this was their only performance. But enough people saw this performance, including George Yu, Executive Director of the Chinatown BID, that he decided to invite them to the Chinatown Moon Festival and they would be the first non-Asian band to ever play the Moon Festival in its long history. Free Like Me will be in the same performance space, and has been given a 9 pm to midnight time slot.

Since I only heard the one song, I have had to do some research on Free Like Me which blends the talents of Lucy and Daniel who each previously had performed on each other's CDs. Now they have a CD being released later this year that fully combines their talents, which sometimes includes Daniel singing in Spanish. Due to their extensive travels and exposure to different cultures, their music is a blend of different world music genres. You will be haunted and enchanted by Lucy Gallant's voice.

It should be lots of fun to see Free Like Me perform again in Chinatown. Help them by becoming a Free Like Me Fan on Facebook. Click here if you have an iPad to see the rest of the Free Like Me pictures taken at Chinatown Summer Nights, or watch the slideshow below:









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