Mapleton Hill PorchFest

Mapleton Hill PorchFest is a neighborhood walkabout where local musicians play and sing unplugged music on the beautiful porches of Mapleton Hill in Boulder CO. As Rob Steuteville has pointed out, this eclectic, community-building musical event "... is beginning to spread to other cities and towns, from Napa, California, to Somerville, Massachusetts. The only requirement is a walkable neighborhood and some home-grown musical or other talent. It's a great way to build culture and community and show off these assets..." Come enjoy your neighborhood and it's musicians!

In The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited (Florida, 2012), Richard Florida points out that “Places are valued for their authenticity and uniqueness. Authenticity comes from several aspects of a community – historic buildings, established neighborhoods, a distinctive music scene, or specific cultural attributes…People…define authenticity as the opposite of generic…Music is a key part of what makes a place authentic. The phrase ‘audio identity’ refers to the identifiable musical genre or sound associated with local bands…that give a city a unique sound track…Music…plays a central role in the creation of identity and the formation of real communities. Musical memories are some of the strongest and most easily evoked. You can often remember events in your life by what songs were playing at the time. Simon Frith writes that music ‘provides us with an intensely subjective sense of being sociable. It both articulates and offers the immediate experience of collective identity. Music regularly sound tracks our search for ourselves and for spaces in which we can feel at home.”