Bangalow and Byron Bay will host a new four-day music and arts festival this October, with organisers promising a program built around the towns themselves rather than a single fenced festival site.
The inaugural DINGO Music and Arts Festival runs from Thursday, 8 October to Sunday, 11 October. It is anchored in jazz but stretches across soul, hip hop, electronic music and contemporary club culture, with performances set across Bangalow’s halls, showgrounds, record stores and back rooms, as well as venues in Byron Bay.
Festival Director Si Jay Gould said building a festival from nothing has been the hardest part of the process.
“Probably convincing people to take a chance on something that doesn’t exist yet,” Mr Gould said. “With an established festival, artists, audiences, venues and sponsors already understand what they’re buying into. With DINGO, we’ve had to communicate the idea while simultaneously building it.”
The festival’s structure adds to that complexity. Rather than one main stage, DINGO spreads across the A&I Hall, Moller Pavilion and Scout Hall at Bangalow Showgrounds, Bangalow RSL, The Lumber Yard, Flo Records, You Beauty, Ciao Mate and Mangosteen.
An opening party will be held at The Great Northern Hotel in Byron Bay, with a closing party at the Beach Hotel and a Saturday after party at Paradiso.
“We’re using halls, clubs, shops, streets and unexpected spaces across Bangalow and Byron, so there are a lot of moving parts,” Mr Gould said. “But that complexity is also what gives DINGO its character.”
Leading the inaugural program are three-time Grammy nominees Hiatus Kaiyote, London group Kokoroko, Philadelphia selector Rich Medina and DJ Coco Maria, alongside Australian artists Nai Palm, Miss Kaninna, Harry James Angus and Barney McAll.
Mr Gould said the line-up was chosen for a shared musical curiosity rather than genre alone.
“DINGO is anchored in jazz, but we’re interested in where jazz intersects with soul, hip hop, electronic music, club culture, Latin music and experimental music,” he said. “Kokoroko sits naturally within a jazz lineage, while Rich Medina and Coco Maria come from DJ and dancefloor culture, but they all share that sense of discovery and deep musical knowledge.”
With no track record to point to, Mr Gould said booking international artists for a first-year festival relied on relationships built over years working in music.
“We could approach people with a clear idea of what DINGO was trying to create rather than simply asking them to fill a slot on a bill,” he said.
The program has also been shaped by a group of local music programmers, including Flo Records, Main Arm Records, Mangrove Symposium, Musical Bonanza and La Sape Records, with arts programming from Dr Stuart Grant. Production is being led by Moniker Audio in collaboration with students from SAE.
That collaboration extends into the program itself. Ahead of the festival, Frollen Music Library is recording material at SAE that will be passed to artists including Steve Spacek, Sampology, Cazeaux O.S.L.O and Clever Austin to reinterpret, with those threads coming together around the festival weekend.
“I’m hoping some of the best collaborations are things we don’t actually know about yet,” Mr Gould said. “Creating the conditions for musicians to meet, improvise and surprise each other is more interesting to me than announcing every possible combination in advance.”
Beyond the music, DINGO includes artist conversations, workshops, performance art, sound installations, local food and a live BayFM broadcast. Mr Gould said the festival’s smallest moments could end up being the most memorable.
“You could go from a packed live show to sitting with 20 or 30 people listening closely to ambient music, stumble into a makeshift rave to then see a harpist performing in a room you didn’t know was part of the festival that looks like heaven, or find yourself at a very strange life drawing session,” he said. “We want DINGO to reward wandering around. It shouldn’t feel like you’ve failed if you haven’t studied the timetable.”
Sunday’s program includes The Big Bang, a free, family-friendly day in Bangalow with a parade and community involvement. Mr Gould said keeping part of the festival free was a deliberate choice.
“If we’re going to bring a festival into a small town, it shouldn’t only belong to the people who can afford a ticket,” he said. “We want DINGO to feel like something happening with the community rather than an event temporarily occupying it. The free Sunday program is probably the clearest expression of that.”
Asked which moment of the festival he was most looking forward to, Mr Gould named two.
“It’s a toss-up between Coco Maria on Saturday afternoon in A&I Hall and Steve Spacek’s late-night session in the Scout Hall and Hotmess Club, both hot dancefloor moments for me to shake it all out and celebrate,” he said.
Tickets for DINGO Music and Arts Festival are on sale now at dingofestival.com.
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