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The free, all-ages Beaverton Music Festival is a “labor of love” from the Beaverton community, Florian Raqueño tells WW. The nonprofit Beaverton Music Festival holds its second annual event on Aug. 23 from noon to 9 pm at Griffith Park.
“It’s really a passion,” says Raqueño, who serves on the nonprofit BMF’s three-member board and produces the event through Florian Raqueño Productions. “We want to touch as many people with live music. Music has the power to bring people together. It’s amazing.”
This year’s festival will feature a lineup of seven bands who are local to the Pacific Northwest, but span across style and genre. Raqueño says she intentionally chose a variety of genres in order to be inclusive to audiences. The festival’s lineup—which spans genres that include country, folk, funk, rock and Motown—consists of the groups Wildflowers and Whiskey, Robert Henry and the Repeaters, Conjunto Alegre, Glitter and Gasoline, Ben Rice and the PDX Hustle, Ms. Vee and a Badass Band, and Precious Byrd.
Between sets, audiences can expect a line-dancing lesson, a hula performance, and a raffle that supports the festival. Around 20 vendors will attend, including artisan vendors, food carts like Hasta La Pasta, and drinks from Lazy Days Brewing Company’s beer garden and Sokol Blosser wine. VIP tickets include parking, a reserved canopy, and a meal voucher.
“I want people to dance and I want people to just enjoy life,” Raqueño says. “There’s a lot going on right now, and we need to set some time to just replace it, take it in, get your happy hormones going and remember we’re all the same.”
Raqueño says the volunteers who string the festival together are motivated less by profit and more by their desire to see live music performed for free in Beaverton. Event planner Paige Jacob and media promoter Carl Sundberg from Stonemonk Media are just two of the many people whom Raqueño credits with making BMF happen. The three-member board, including Raqueño, Megan Collins and Brenda Seymour, also worked to create this year’s BMF. She currently counts 80 people who have volunteered to help set up the show, check IDs, and greet guests. But relying on volunteer labor doesn’t mean that the festival will be scrappy. BMF is funded by over 20 sponsorships, including the Beaverton Area Chamber of Commerce.
“What really drives us is just providing this to people who otherwise would not experience live music,” she says. “We just have a different model we really believe in giving back to the community, you just get back in happiness what you bring to the table.”
SEE IT: Beaverton Music Festival at Griffith Park, 4800 SW Griffith Drive, Beaverton, beavertonmusicfestival.com. Noon Saturday, Aug. 23. Free–$75.
