Make Music Pasadena is an annual music festival unlike any other. While most festivals boast large budgets and multiple days, which most of us hardly make it through without losing our wallet, our friends, or our sanity, Make Music provides one day of music-binging for a fraction of the financial backing. At the cost of FREE, anyone can attend, truly making it a community-focused event. Last Saturday, the festival, now in its fifth year, offered 149 performances across six different stages, booking artists like Grimes and Dam Funk. Flaunt spent the day roaming the streets, cooking in the sun, and practicing our crowd surf to as many genres as possible.

Dengue Fever, a Cambodian pop, psychedelic rock group based out of Los Angeles, moved the crowd to a frenzy; babes gathered around the stage to shake, shimmy, pop, and roll. 

Grimes’ cotton candy colored hair bounced up and down as she grooved around to her fairy-like, synth-driven beats. Her infectious stage presence spread to the packed parking structure overlooking the stage where fans swayed back and forth to hits like “Oblivion.”

The heat was dissipating at last as we made our way through the crowds to Colorado Street, passing an art walk and a magic show encouraged by happy and familiar faces. The final stop was down a cobble stone alley. We squeezed by parked cars, craning our necks in search of the entrance at the end of tunnel.  When at last we arrived, we found ourselves in a beautiful outdoor terrace, covered in trees with drooping branches and strands of hypnotic lights. The foliaged nook, coupled with Black Flamingo's dark melodies, gave way to a proper “cool down” from the day.

At once relieved, we reflected on the day, thrilled to have not gone far to see such incredible performances in such a short amount of time. Thank you Make Music Pasadena for a festival worthy of a scorching Southern California Saturday.

Written by Alexis S. Kozak