Just Announced – UMS Cancels Three-Day Festival, Plans New Event for July 25

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It was only a matter of time before our beloved Underground Music Showcase (UMS) made an announcement regarding the tentative three-day festival that takes over Broadway every summer. With live music on an indefinite hiatus, a festival of that caliber was a tentative no-go. Although the festival has announced that it will not hold its usual annual three-day run across Broadway for the safety of the performers and attendees, they are evolving their concept, dubbing it the “Underground Music Something.” 

READ: Review – UMS 2019 Brought Crowds and Curation To South Broadway

“Underground Music Showcase as we know and love is out of the question for this year. We won’t be jeopardizing a single music lover’s health for a party. But we’re sure as hell not giving up on what we stand for. UMS is more than just a good time and a bad hangover. We support 20+ Broadway venues, 200+ artists, and a family that makes this festival come true. And we’re not going to shy away from that support when we all need it the most.

So we present to you: Underground Music Something. What’s that? We’re honestly not really sure and would certainly hate to spoil a good surprise. All we know is to mark your calendar for Saturday, July 25th as we set out to do two things: raise money for musicians and rage safely. Be warned, we’ve been known to make it rain,” stated the official press release for UMS.

Casey Berry, Founder of Two Parts, wanted to make the distinction between cancellation and adaptation clear, especially amidst the slew of rescheduled and canceled shows and festivals that have left a devastating hole in the live music scene.
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” As soon as UMS 2019 ended, we started thinking about what we could create and build on for this year. As the world continued to change throughout this time, we held on to hope and optimism for a while, but we soon realized what we knew we wanted to do was impossible. Even so, we sat there and we said, ‘we can’t just cancel. It’s our livelihood, it’s such a fun, incredible weekend for everybody.’ We shifted our thinking. It felt like we still had a cool opportunity to do something for the community. We have hundreds of artists that want to collaborate. And as this has been going on, we haven’t felt like there was a lot of support for these artists, and we wanted to do what we could to show them we’re still here to be that support. The last thing we want to do is send out the generic press release. I understand why that’s happening, but that’s not what we wanted to say. We’re going to put our foot down to say we have to come up with something on this date [July 25] and use that pressure to create something special for the music community,” said Berry on a call with 303 Magazine.
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UMS has already started supporting local musicians throughout this hiatus by producing a live-streaming platform called Streams With Grit that goes live every night of the week, so the UMS team is sure to up the patronage even more with this new endeavor. For now, mark your calendars for July 25 and check in with us as this story develops.