Riley Bean performs as Beanstalk and hosts the Groove On Up music festival. Photo courtesy of Riley Bean
Six years ago, Riley Bean decided to bring a groove-filled music festival to Southeast Michigan.
The producer, drummer, and DJ launched the Groove On Up festival to spotlight local jam, soul, funk, hip-hop, DJ, and electronic acts on his South Lyon, Michigan farm.
“My personal music taste has always been groove-based as have many of the bands that I’ve been a part of over the years,” said Bean, who hails from Ann Arbor and performs under the artist moniker Beanstalk.
“I was just thinking about the amount of talent that Michigan has to offer and trying to have an accessible camping festival experience that folks can attend locally and not have to drive hundreds of miles for.”
This year’s Groove On Up festival, which runs September 13-15 at Bean’s 14-acre farm, features a mix of returning and new acts on three indoor and outdoor stages, including the new Portal stage. Local visual artists, food vendors, and flow artists/fire performers will also be featured.
The heads of music nonprofits the Amplify Project and Spin Inc. will co-host the Detroit Electronic Music Conference (or “D Mack”) on March 2 at Washtenaw Community College’s Morris Lawrence Building.
“I first met DJ Jungle, who’s the executive director of Spin Inc., at a meeting with Grove [Studios], and they were looking for some opportunities to partner. Spin Inc. came and participated in our TAP IN event in 2023 and we talked about how we could collaborate,” said Wallace. about the free conference, which takes place March 2 and last occurred at the now-defunct Detroit Institute of Music Education in 2022.
“We had a conversation about his interest in bringing back the ‘D Mack,’ and I said, ‘Well, listen, we have a great partner in WCC … and [we can] tie it in with the arts management coursework that we’re teaching.’”
As part of D Mack’s preparations, the Amplify Project and Spin Inc. have enlisted WCC arts management students to help run the conference since their capstone class is built around event creation, collaboration, and execution.
Formula 734 brings intergenerational men of color together to create hip-hop anthems about overcoming struggles and sharing successes. Artwork – CW Creatyv for Be Creative Studios
As a fresh community-based hip-hop album, Formula 734poetically encapsulates shared stories of struggles and successes for men of color in Washtenaw County.
“I feel as though we’ve created a historical document for this particular time in history for Washtenaw County that people can refer to, or they can gain some primary source analysis of what it was like to be in Washtenaw County during the COVID-19 pandemic and the unrest related to the death of George Floyd,” said Rod Wallace, who co-executive produced the project with Jamall Bufford.
“Jamall and I started to talk about our desire to engage young people with hip-hop in a positive way that taught a number of different skills. We started planning for the project, and our first meeting was in November,” Wallace said.
“One of the intentions of WMBK is to engage in discussions with men across generations as opposed to only focusing on young men. There are men across the spectrum of color who need support and who need positive experiences, so we try to bridge that gap, and through this project, we were able to do so,” Wallace said.
Concocting Formula 734
With Wallace and Bufford at the hip-hop helm, Formula 734 weaves introspective rhymes, thoughtful monologues, crisp beats, old-school jams and deep grooves while authentically amplifying the voices of local men of color. All 12 tracks challenge false narratives about men of color and raise awareness about the underlying causes of systemic racism.
“We want change to happen in our communities, in our neighborhoods and in our schools. One album probably won’t accomplish that, but we want this to be a stepping stone in the right direction to some of the systemic changes that we want to see for black men and young men of color in our community and around the country. We want this to hopefully be a catalyst for the conversation that needs to take place about what’s happening in our communities,” said Bufford, who’s a WMBK project specialist and Formula 734 co-executive producer.
The Stratton Setlist 