Outsiders Festival jazzes up the metaverse

As I enter the Ropeadope Lounge, Jamaaladeen Tacuma glides across the room to greet me, decked in a crimson jacket and bright yellow pants accented by sky-blue glasses. The colorful outfit is nothing out of the ordinary for Tacuma, who is almost as well-known for his eye-popping fashion sense as he is for his virtuosic, avant-funky bass playing. For once, the rest of him is as animated as his wardrobe — we’re meeting in a virtual reality space that will host a crowd of avatars this weekend for a performance by Tacuma’s trio Strings & Things.

The unusual concert, which will take place in front of a flesh and blood audience at the Painted Bride’s new West Philly home, is the highlight of this year’s Outsiders Improvised & Creative Music Festival, which Tacuma has hosted since 2015. While the in-person attendees enjoy a traditional live music experience, audience members can attend virtually to view a livestream within the metaverse and mingle with one another as well as, following the show, band members.

“The whole concept of the Outsiders is that we’re consistently moving,” Tacuma explained via a somewhat more traditional Zoom meeting. “When we first started our festival, we started off with one marathon concert. [Now we have] a space available where people from all around the world could come to the concert. We see so many possibilities.”

Saturday’s virtual concert will be hosted by record label and media company Ropeadope, which launched its metaverse lounge earlier this year. ”With the metaverse, I had the same sort of apprehension that anyone would. Am I really going to put on goggles and disappear from the world?” said Ropeadope CEO Louis Marks. “But once I went in and began to speak to the people — real people — I realized that it’s nothing more than a website where I can actually talk to the people that come and look at it.”

Tacuma shared Marks’ initial trepidation. His first experience with virtual reality came via a Ropeadope listening party for Free Form Funky Freqs, the trio of Tacuma, drummer G. Calvin Weston, and Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid. Tacuma strapped on a VR headset and waded into the crowd: “I walked into the space and started moving my head and they were like, ‘Oh, damn. There’s Jamaal. The vibe is just like him!’ We were won over.”

Marks sees that ability to be physically represented and expressively communicative within the virtual space as the future of the internet itself. “I suddenly realized that the most isolating experience is what we’ve been doing: staring at our phones or going to a website on our computer … Having the opportunity to talk to a jazz fan in London or Mongolia is far superior to just pushing stuff out on Twitter and hoping that people will see it.”

The bassist’s wife and business manager, Rahima Tacuma, sees the potential for a more inclusive concert experience in the future. “There are so many reasons why it could be used for people that can’t go out, who have a phobia about going outside, or who can’t walk. Now they’re in [the virtual realm] and they’re free and walking or flying around and having a good time.”

“The concept is to have a balance,” Tacuma added. “Folks will be able to go into [VR] and enjoy that and then come out in the world and enjoy that as well. But there are things that you can do in there that make it fun — and we need fun.”

The rest of the 8th Outsiders Festival is the more familiar live model. It kicked off last weekend with a pair of concerts at South and will conclude Dec. 2 with a tribute to poet and activist Jayne Cortez at the Community Education Center. Saturday’s concert will begin with a screening of a previous Tacuma performance and feature his Strings & Things trio, with guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Tomas Fujiwara.

The Outsiders Improvised & Creative Music Festival continues 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19, at the Painted Bride Arts Center, 5212 Market St. Tickets: www.eventbrite.com/e/429792148887. Information for accessing the Ropeadope Lounge: ropeadope.com/rcc/2022/6/20/the-ropeadope-lounge-getting-started.

The festival concludes with “Power to the Poets” at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2, at the Community Education Center, 3500 Lancaster Ave. Tickets: www.eventbrite.com/e/outsiders-improvised-creative-music-fest-presents-power-to-the-poets-tickets-430277861667