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The Bakersfield Californian Thursday, December 27, 2012
Eye Street Editor Jennifer Self | Phone 395-7434 | e-mail jself@bakersfield.com
Index Breakout artists of 2012 .......................... 18 Antique Show and Sale............................ 20 Scott Cox’s favorite concerts of 2012 ......21 Arts Alive .................................................. 22 Spotlight/Burrberry World Cafe.............. 23 The Lowdown with Matt Munoz ............ 24 New Year’s Eve ........................................ 25 Calendar .................................................. 30
Bakersfield’s year in culture Music, architecture top the list of 2012 accomplishments BY JENNIFER SELF Californian lifestyles editor jself@bakersfield.com
L
ooking for Bakersfield’s proudest cultural achievement of 2012? Get in the car and head east. Like 2,000 miles east. After decades of perceived indifference, the capital of country music finally recognized its rowdy cousin, the Bakersfield Sound — a music born of equal parts jubilation and desperation by a remarkably gifted cadre of displaced musicians, many of them Okies, thrown together during the great westward migration. Though there are displays and collections of Bakersfield Sound memorabilia at several spots around town — Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace, the Kern County Museum, Trout’s — no single location has ever housed so much history from the era as the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. The 5,000square-foot display includes a sweeping mural that beautifully tells the story of the Dust Bowl migration, troves of memorabilia, costumes, instruments and hightech displays, including a touchscreen feature that plays every top 10 hit ever recorded by Merle Haggard and Buck Owens (and that’s a lot). But the real power of the exhibition is that it bestows muchdeserved acclaim on the performers not named Haggard or Owens who gave the piercing sound forged in those loud barrooms an identity that has endured for decades. The exhibit will be up for another year, through December 2013. But even if most Bakersfield folks can’t make it back East, thousands of tourists from all over the world will have the opportunity to see the influence our city had — still has — on country music.
A ‘100-year building’ It’s not every day that a $28.5 million building goes up in Bakersfield. And it’s certainly not every day that one as architecturally significant as the new federal courthouse in the Mill Creek area of downtown is erected (just
HENRY A. BARRIOS / THE CALIFORNIAN
Ten-year-old Julia Cibettini from St. Louis tries one of the interactive displays at the Bakersfield Sound exhibit running through Dec. 31, 2013 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tenn. The exhibit uses many multimedia displays to tell the story of the Bakersfield Sound.
look at some of the horrors built in the 60 years since the 1952 earthquake as proof of that). The modern gem on 19th Street — a marvel of green construction, state-of-the-art security and stunning design — opened in July. The U.S. General Services Administration awarded the contract to Rhode Island-based Gilbane Building Co. and NBBJ Architects, which has offices all over the world. With the elegant Bakersfield Museum of Art just to the west of it, the 33,400-square-foot building, divided between two stories of glass and steel, is the last and most spectacular piece of a once dilapidated area that has been transformed in recent years — starting with the rehabilitation of Mill Creek Park — into one of the
CASEY CHRISTIE / THE CALIFORNIAN
The new federal courthouse is reflected in Mill Creek in this evening scene.
most stunning blocks in our city. Oregon artist Lucinda Parker, commissioned to create original
artwork for the courthouse, contributed five stunning abstract pieces that give the illusion of
water in our parched climate. (All that’s missing is a name. The CONTINUED ON PAGE 26