Sled Island Music Festival is Where Great Memories are Made: Hemen Tor-Agbidye, Festival Manager
Photo Credit: Zack Pinkowski
REVERIE: What is the essence of Sled?
HEMEN: For me, it’s community. I love the fact that even our headliners that we book, those artists will have to go down to pass pick-up and pick up their passes. It’s great because then young bands who are going to go pick up their pass can potentially run into their heroes. That happened to me last year with Akintoye. I’m a huge fan of his, but I was just rolling up to pass pickup to meet submission bands and hang out. Then literally the fi rst person I run into is Akintoye. I was gonna walk by but he came up to me and said, “Yo, is that the homie?”. We had a good laugh. Now he and I are homies and we’ll chat from time to time. It’s hilarious because it creates the sense that everyone is on the same level. Community is the right word to describe it. At the end of the day, they’re all like us. I remember running into SESSA at pass pick-up too and we had a good chat and went on our way. The next day, I’m posted up at pass pick-up in the early afternoon and he’s about to leave to catch the shuttle to the airport and he came looking for me and said, “It was great to meet you.” Like that’s crazy! You’ll never get to experience that at Coachella or SXSW.
REVERIE: What was your introduction to Sled Island prior to working for the festival?
HEMEN: In 2014, I remember ditching diploma prep early so I could see Shad play the kick-off show for Sled. That was my fi rst time. He was playing a show at Luke’s Drug Mart and it was an outdoor show. Once I got there I saw all the Sled banners and I thought this is cool. Then the next year I played Sled at 19 years old and I’d go to a few Sled shows here and there over the next few years and the rest is history. I remember going to a patio show as a venue manager and everyone having a great time, and I remember saying that week, ‘by summer 2023, I want to be working in music’. And then sure enough, Shawn Petsche decided it was time to change paths and I got the job.
REVERIE: Do you have any fond memories of Sled Island?
HEMEN: Seeing JPEGMafi a was insane. I listened to him here and there but I wasn’t like a JPEGMAFIA fan, but I remember my DJ saying that it would be a sick show to go check out. Commonwealth was packed from wall to wall and I remember us going crazy and JPEGMAFIA going crazy. I remember him starting the set, I look over to my DJ and then I look back, and his shirt’s gone. I’m like, ‘okay, bro, he’s getting crazy’. I look back at my DJ again and then I look back at JPEG and he’s in the crowd. Common has these high-top tables so people can put their drinks on it and he stood on one of those in the middle of the crowd and he was rapping from the audience on top of this table for two songs. That’s a super memorable experience. And I saw De La Soul in 2015 and I was 19 squashed amongst 1,000 people. If you were in that crowd, you weren’t leaving until the show was done. There was no space unless you wanted to be that guy shoving people.
REVERIE: We’re excited for guest curator Show Me The Body. Why does Sled have a guest curator every year?
HEMEN: The most important part is that the guest curator brings another dimension. They bring artists that we may not have had on our radar. If you have the same team picking the same artist year in, year out, or the same style of artists, you won’t get much variety. This year, Show Me The Body picked some interesting and highly energetic experimental groups, no matter the genre. Normally, the guest curator sends us a list of 20 artists and we’ll generally get around 8-10 of those to the festival. It adds a layer of surprise to Sled. People will look at the lineup and be like, I do not know three-quarters or more of these artists. Sled is a discovery festival and it allows folks to discover new artists. It’s not like we’re getting a guest curator to be like, “Oh hey, you should book Drake, book Beyonce!” We’re getting guest curators who recommend their friends or people they’ve met or have had good relationships with.
REVERIE: You’re an artist, The Blue. What perspective does being an artist give you when you’re curating a festival?
HEMEN: It gives me the perspective to know what might work.I create my own shows as well, but the big aspect is I know how I want to be treated. With building a festival schedule, there’s a lot to think about. If I put on a show at 2pm where it’s only out-of-town bands, how many people will show up? It allows me to know which artists to stack onto what bill. And there’s the opportunity to mix and mingle. It would suck if we put these four Montreal bands on the same bill. It’s like, “Cool, we all know each other, we didn’t meet anyone new.” In the curation aspect, I’ve learned to take more of a step back from what I want to see and understand that this is for the audience. What do the people in this genre like? What do the people in these bands want to see? What would be cool for them?
REVERIE: Last question, how do you want Calgarians to see the music scene in the city?
HEMEN: I want them to see that it’s blooming. A lot of folks don’t know this scene exists. I’ll go to shows and have friends ask me, “How do you hear about these things?” The misconception all the time is that there’s nothing going on when there is so much going on. People don’t know where to look. For Calgarians, I want them to see that there is a scene here and that there are so many options. Everyone’s ready to drop however much money to see Drake at the Saddledome, if it were to happen. I’m ready to spend that money on big names but also, the big names were once not big names. I think people should be ready to spend five, ten, fifteen, twenty bucks on local acts to see them, support them, and build that culture in their scene. I’m so invested in that thought process that if someone comes to me or they message me and say they want me there, I’ll do my best to come to their show. We all gotta support each other. That’s how it should be!
Tickets for Sled Island are on sale now, find them here. Sled Island takes place June 19-24, 2024.