Mission Statement

The purpose of this music festival is to 1) promote and educate experimental and avant-garde music in the Boise and surrounding Treasure Valley, 2) provide an annual venue for local experimental musicians to express their art amongst their peers and potential experimental music enthusiasts, and 3) foster local artistic diversity, awareness, and fair representation of unusual and avant-garde forms of art.

Traditionally, the Boise and surrounding Treasure Valley has been a predominantly conservative-minded area in the Northwest, and this mindset tends manifest itself in the types of music that become the focal points for music listeners and the media. This mindset is of no fault of the Boise community, but is a natural consequence (to name a just few sources) of the demographics of the area, the geographical location of Boise in the Northwest, economic pressures on venue owners to cater to public taste, and the overall philosophies of those who promote and foster musical diversity in the area. As a result, with exception of an occasional world-fusion, art rock, looping, or out-of-state performance, the music scene in Boise has evolved to be somewhat monolithic from a genre perspective, fostering and continuing to foster styles of music such as country, pop, classic and modern rock, traditional jazz, punk, folk/folk-rock, and classical. This is not to say that there are no radical experimental musicians in Boise; rather, there simply aren't ample opportunities for them to perform, gather, and share their art.

The 1st Annual Boise Experimental Music Festival is just one of many potential vehicles that serve to proactively and Positively supplement Boise's artistic cultural diversity. It is a focused and collaborative effort to celebrate a music genre that is very much alive and thriving in cities around the globe, and has been in existence in various forms since the 1950's.