West Philly Porchfest
June 9, 2024
Philadelphia
I woke up at noon on Saturday, startled and drenched in sweat, to the sounds of whining guitar riffs escalating into manic chaos: West Philly Porchfest had started, and it was winding up right outside my window.
I had been in the middle of a nightmare in which I was lost in a strip mall and then suddenly encased in a flash mob where I was the only one on the outs.
Minutes later, awakened to real life, I was out on the streets, gripping a map of my neighborhood littered with dots, locating seemingly endless performances scattered across a half-mile stretch of Baltimore Avenue between 12 and sunset. It felt like an uncanny extension of my night, or mid-morning, terror.
I’d been anticipating this day as a chance to get acquainted with the many bands producing all kinds of music that represent the uniquely outspoken melting pot of cultures that make up West Philly. It would also be my first time experiencing any kind of “porchfest,” the house-to-house-based concert formula that started in Ithaca back in 2007 and that has since spread to cities all over the states.
My friends and I trudged through growing crowds and hot weather, sweating more profusely than I had been during my night terror, continuously arriving just late enough to catch only the final songs of carefully curated sets. We observed an encore demanded loudly from a crowd gathered around the smartly named band, The Side Chicks, who blasted a high-energy sax solo over Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie.” We were left wanting more and sad we’d missed their start — though we’ll reportedly get some come July, when the band is slated to release their latest album.
After too much moving around, my friends and I decided to make a plan, and headed over to the “opera house,” only to find that the chanteurs must have double booked themselves.
We discovered a similarly robust and dramatic ensemble of singers, however, through “Sing Slavic,” a choir of femmes and nonbinary people focusing on intricate melodies from Poland, Ukraine, Croatia, etc. The flower crown effect did, unfortunately, remind me of Ari Aster’s drug-trip horror movie, Midsommar, in which a Pagan cult kills a crew of visitors to the Swedish summer festival with the exception of one blond girl whom they crown the May Queen. I tried to discern the meaning of a Serbian song about a “Little Carnation Girl,” which, as far as I could tell, was about a man trying to discern the sexual past of a woman through smelling her — a story that the soloist explained “is, depending on your perspective, either a really flirty song or a really creepy song.”
Slavic Sing spurred my realization that porchfest, just like life itself, is all about perspective. Just because loud music had been pouring into my windows against my will that morning, and just because I had been caught in a comically miserable dream at that same point in time, didn’t mean I didn’t have the agency to control my own experience at my neighborhood’s porch extravaganza. I was ready to get lucid.
From then on, it was immersion therapy. Instead of lingering on the outskirts of an ever-expanding mob, I joined in — and admired the symbiotic relationship between porch performers and street goers.
I did take a beat by stopping at a laid-back deck where where the lead singer of Pleneros de la Cuaranta y Cuatro was giving a relatively gentle performance. At one point, her soft voice seemed like it may give way — and the crowd immediately backed her up, their boisterous knowingness amplifying the traditional Puerto Rican music.
Around the corner, back on Baltimore Avenue, The Guachinagos took the tempo from slow acoustic to high-energy hula-hoopers hosing down a street of partiers with water while the band played a fusion of cumbia and son jarocho. A conga line formed amid the intergenerational duos dancing with ease and skill along pavement, sidewalk, porch and roof.
At the end of the night, we retired to a friend’s place, our feet aching from walking in circles around our own neighborhood for hours, paying close attention not only to the musicians who live amongst us, but also to the urban gardens, architectural intricacies, and recycled design schemes of porches lining our streets.
Just as I was ready to call it a night, a metal band called Fuck Tomb started screaming next door. Instead of letting the performance lead me back to nightmare land, I went to the front and met up with some moshers. The introductory power of porchfest permits a special paradox: Everyone is an equally valuable part of the crowd, no matter how little they know about the scene.
The whole day turned into a fusion of people, porches and perspectives. Sometimes it felt like a showcase of mixed-use suburban serenity; other times it was the catalyst that pushed me deeper into my own mental pandemonium. But when I hit the hay at day's end, my brain was empty and exhausted enough to forbid anymore insomnia or nightmares.
Whereas in other neighborhoods porchfest might be the end of the dream, West Philly is always filled with community events — like dollar strolls, farmer’s markets and weekly street side book sales. So long as I wake up in West Philly, I can gaze at colorfully ornamental and affordable homes everyday … until the nightmare of gentrification (as seen by the $4,000 two-bedroom luxury Baltimore Avenue apartments that disrupted this year’s porchfest) finally has its way.
