Why Diversity Has Been The Key To Mullum Music Festival's Success

For ten years now, the Mullum Music Festival has taken over the somewhat sleepy town of Mullumbimby, just under a half an hour drive from its well-known neighbour, Byron Bay.

In its first decade, the festival has seen over 600 artists from all over the world take to their stages and thousands of patrons pass through the gates.

When The Music catches up with director Glenn Wright, he describes his morning as "kind of frantic but good." It makes sense given that they're only a day away from what is potentially their biggest year yet.

"It's sort of two prongs of the line-up. There's these great interesting, international artists like John Cleary and Frazey Ford, and also Too Many Zooz and Marlon Williams. The great thing about Marlon Williams is that he's one of those artists that played the festival when no one really knew who he was and he's popular and that's part of the thing that I think we do really well - spot emerging artists, like Tash Sultana last year. We booked Tash in April/May last year and she blew up come November/December last year as far as popularity and that kind of things goes," explains Wright.

"There's those kinds of artists that are coming for the first time. The Teskey Brothers, Stella Donnelly that are kind of debuting here and then there's the artists that have made the ten years really special and we, I suppose, try to champion, artists like Tin Pan Orange, Mama Kin, Harry Angus, who's doing his new, eight to ten-piece gospel band, Jazz Party, these great Melbourne, sort of cult, jazz heroes, Lucy Thorn... Artists like Jo Jo Smith [who is] celebrating her 50 years in music this year, and she was in the Marcia Hines band back in the 1970s, and so artists like that, that we really champion because they're so amazing and they're career artists."

Wright is extremely proud of their diverse line-up, not only do acts range from ages 12 to 70, they're also one of the only festivals in Australia to reach gender parity.

"The great thing about the Mullum Festival is that is it's not ageist, so an artist like Jo Jo is championed, and also we have a wonderful youth mentorship program, which artists from the festival mentor five different groups and young artists, and there's also 12-year-olds performing at the festival. We're certainly not ageist and there's a lot of talk in the music industry about sexism and that kind of thing is pretty rife at the moment and we're on parity this year as far as to profile bands and female/male, which I think is a really positive thing and great.

"We don't just try to find 'the' popular female artist and then go back to booking men. We actually program the most popular artists or the artists we're interested in, regardless of whether they're male or female, which is a big distinction I think."

The community has always played a huge role in what makes Mullum Music Festival special, and it's something that Wright holds quite dear.

"A third of the artists of the festival are from the local region and that really means that the impact of the festival - not just in an economic sense, but also in a social sense, and a cultural and artistic sense - is really significant because you've got all these artists that are performing that are getting to perform with great artists from all over the world and all over the country, and that shows through in the friendly, welcoming nature of the festival and that's what we are, and that's what we're really proud of."