Lawnya Vawnya contained multitudes on its fourth day of operation, spanning both the downtown core and the duration of the day in a noon-to-closing marathon of music, art and participant engagement. Scene keeners up and at 'em in the early afternoon were treated to a music crawl that dipped into a number of downtown St. John's hotspots before breaking into another afternoon of absorbing workshops and discussions about art, genre and the marketing and consumption of such.
Unless the committed cosmopolitan could superposition themselves between multiple gigs at once, no amount of person-about-town bar hopping could allow for taking in all that Lawnya Vawnya had to offer on that slightly rainy Friday night. However, anyone in attendance at St. John's staple the Rockhouse was certainly want-for-naught as every act who took the stage had the audience in rapt attention with palpable stage presence and crowd work throughout.
St. John's-based Latin flavoured psych/dub/dance-duo CUERPOS may have held the earliest slot of the night, but judging by the size of the crowd, you'd think they were the headliners. While synthesizer and Ableton aficionado Francis Dawson kept the dance floor rolling with a selection of deep, club-friendly rhythms that varied in intensity as the set stormed on, vocalist/guitarist Nadia Duman bounded all across the stage and into the crowd as she barked a bevy of diatribes in her native Spanish. Duman was a confrontational force who sang directly into the faces of concert goers at numerous points during her set, and repeatedly asked the lighting tech to dim the lights as though no dance floor could ever be dark enough.
Keeping with the current of formidable front-women held aloft by on-point electronic music, Toronto rapper myst milano. offered a set of searing hip-hop bars over her very own electronic cuts with styles as diverse as trap, techno and jungle. She, too, blurred the lines between stage and dance floor with call and answer vocalizations, in-your-face audience engagement and a dance down a divided crowd, split by her beckoning like some biblical sea or earthen fissure.
In between sets, drag performer and event host /garbagefile brought comic relief with their signature personality beloved by the city's drag scene, arts scene and all of the Venn diagrams found therein. Although they're always good for a laugh, /garbagefile used their stage time and platform as a magnetic personality to draw attention to the ongoing situation in Gaza, bringing out a gigantic banner reading "No one is free until all of us are free" with fellow St. John's drag performers.
Co-headliner and Toronto musician DEBBY FRIDAY closed out the night by rocking the house with her towering, left-field industrial club machinations that were in total command of the entire room. Pounding kick drum and synth screeches filled up every nook and cranny of the Rockhouse's multi-level layout, specifically entrancing those close to her sphere of influence. Ribboned throughout these imposing productions were her wailing vocals, at once full of hope, despair and celebration, hammering everyone's souls with distorted kick drums and heady synths. "I love love!" the audience would shout repeatedly after FRIDAY's lead, with an enthusiasm that couldn't possibly be faked.