What's Porchfest?
Porchfest is a small music festival celebrating local musicians and performers. Throughout the day, performances happen on the neighborhood porches! It's a lowkey Porchfest actually originated in Ithaca, NY (where I currently live)! Since its inception, it has spread to many cities across the US and Canada.
Like many Ithaca festivities, it's very lowkey type of fun. The neat thing about Porchfest is that it's across a wide area, and features a lot of local talent! Anyone in the local area can sign up, which is really cool because for example, you can find your professors playing music.
How did I decide to perform?
Growing up, I always enjoyed singing. I'd be constantly singing in the backseat of my family's car, often times to the opening theme songs of Pokemon. My mom thought it'll be fun for me to take vocal lessons, so I did that for a while, which helped me build my head voice. I was also in the high school chorus, and occasionally performed in the cabarets, but I didn't continue singing in any "official" venues. Instead, I'd sing in the shower, or occasionally do some home karaoke with my friends. I spent many evenings in grad school doing home karaoke by myself, which helped as a destresser and also a way to express myself outside of my research.
After living in Ithaca for about five years, I've tossed around the idea of doing Porchfest a couple of times in my brain, but I never had the courage to actually get myself to sign up. I almost exclusively listen to Japanese pop music, which most of Ithaca wouldn't recognize or understand, and who am I to just get up and sing?
A week before the performer registration deadline, a close friend encouraged me to sign up. After waffling about it for a couple more days and asking friends for validation and encouragement, I decided I'll try it out, and see what happens.
What do you need to perform at Porchfest?
All you need is:
- A porch (necessary at sign up time)
- A performance setup (NOT necessary at sign up time)
...which sounds simple on paper but may be more complicated, especially for folks that don't live in the direct area they're holding the festival at, and might not have done outdoor performance before.
1. A porch. The wonderful organizers have the daunting task of constraint solving so that sound bleed isn't too bad between venues, so that each performer can be heard. At sign up time, you just need to let them know what porch you're planning to perform at, and which hours you'd be available to perform. Because I didn't live in the festival area, I had to ask a friend who lives there whether I can borrow her porch, and luckily her and her roommates were happy to have me. Honestly the best strategy is to ask friends, their friends, or your colleagues for help...
2. A performance setup. If you're used to doing performances of any kind, this should be ok. But for me, a home karaoke singer, this was quite difficult. I ended up buying a big party speaker that has dual input, and a set of wireless microphones as a semi-belated birthday present. I also grabbed a simple speaker stand once I realized that it might be helpful to have audio input behind and above me, but this retrospectively may have been overkill.
Choosing a Setlist
As mentioned above, I am a big J-POP enjoyer, and I knew that I wanted to sing J-POP exclusively. I hoped this would be fine because the audience (besides my friends) would be cycling in and out of different performances, so if someone truly got bored of hearing songs in a language that they didn't understand, they can move onto the next porch.
That being said, because I was singing in a language that most people didn't know, I wanted to make sure I'd hit "mainstream" songs, or at least songs or artists that someone might recognize. The Cruel Angel's Thesis was inserted a week before the performance because I wanted to add an iconic song that many people have heard before.
My Setlist
- 晴る (Haru - Sunny) by Yorushika
- 怪獣の花唄 (Kaijuu no Hanauta - The Monster's Flower Song) by Vaundy
- ギラギラ (Gira gira) by Ado
- 死ぬのがいいわ (Shinunoga E-wa) by Fujii Kaze
- 真夏の果実 (Manatsu no Kajitsu - Midsummer Fruit) by Southern All Stars
- Lemon by Yonezu Kenshi
- 夜に駆ける (Yoru ni kakeru - Racing into the Night) by YOASOBI
- Dramaturgy by Eve
- Charles by Balloon
- 残酷な天使のテーゼ (Zankoku na Tenshi no Teze - The Cruel Angel's Thesis) by Takahashi Yoko
- 千本桜 (Senbonzakura) by Whiteflame feat. Hatsune Miku
- 真夜中のドア~Stay with me (Mayonaka no Door~Stay with me) by Matsubara Miki
- Pretender by Official HIGE DANdism
Performing
I actually got a tiny bit of the