Each year, Las Vegas’ festival calendar grows. But between the annual rock and dance juggernauts, R&B, soul and funk festivals feel few and far between.
Until now. Downtown will soon welcome us into Paradice, a one-day festival featuring soul revivalists group Thee Sacred Souls, fast-rising R&B star Ravyn Lenae, Colombian psych outfit Balthvs and more on September 27. (Tickets starting at $86 are available at paradicefest.com.)
After years of booking undiscovered gems, local creative collective We the Beat will finally have a chance to host its own festival, in partnership with the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center.
“We’ve seen this music, this genre, this community, do so well on a smaller level,” says Kirk Reed, co-founder of We the Beat. “I was a director of marketing at Brooklyn Bowl when Thee Sacred Souls first started selling out that venue, and I just couldn’t believe that so many people ... came out and loved real soul music like that.
“We saw this bubbling genre community in Vegas that didn’t have its own festival on a big stage, and we thought Downtown was perfect for it.”
We the Beat excels at booking artists before they break big. Reed sees Paradice as a golden opportunity to scale that approach.
“We’re not just doing it because we think it’ll sell,” he says. “We really see a lot of these artists getting bigger. Like Balthvs—why can’t they be as big as Khruangbin? It’s just about giving them a platform and a stage.”
Paradice will likely be one of the last times we see “Love Me Not” singer Ravyn Lenae before she sells out arenas. And it’s a chance to discover Vegas’ Johnny Ruiz & the Escapers, Peruvian chica band LA LOM and singer-songwriter JMSN.
“This isn’t just a one-time thing,” Reed promises. “We want this to be the first year of something that grows into something bigger and annual.”
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