Sunday 6 May
MUSICAL ICON TRIBUTE CONTEST
If you would like to take part, please email nimbinmardigrass@hempembassy.net or simply turn up and register before the rally on Sunday 6 May.
To celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Nimbin Aquarius Festival, this year’s MardiGrass will launch a tribute competition, featuring such legends as Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and many more. The competition will be a celebration of counterculture ideals, as personified by the groundbreaking musicians who led the way back in the heady 60s and 70s. These legends inspired generations with their enduring messages, not just in terms of drug prohibition and enlightenment, but also as advocates for the environment, alternative lifestyles, civil rights and peace. It may be five decades since Bob Dylan penned the times are a-changin’ but the dream still lives on and so does the music. These legends laid down the soundtrack for the turbulent times, culminating here in Nimbin in 1973 where thousands of young people gathered for the Aquarius Festival, a ten day celebration of love, peace and music, which has since grown into legend.
MardiGrass expects a good roll up of talent with “all the big names locked in” including Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, Bob Marley, John Lennon, and Jimi Hendrix as well as Janis Joplin, Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell. The tribute artists will go head to head, and whilst we welcome dressed-up doppelgangers, we also want people to be free to reinterpret original works in their own special way.
The judging panel will include celebrity judge, Senator Derryn Hinch. This year will be an acoustic unplugged affair, and is open to both professional tribute artists and rank amateurs. The only criteria is the music must be associated with a counterculture icon, an artist who is strongly identified with the peace and love values of Aquarius. Sadly, that means no Elvis’s need apply.
If you would like to take part, please email nimbinmardigrass@hempembassy.net or simply turn up and register before the rally on Sunday 6 May.
