Bringing the World to the Twin Cities

The Cedar Cultural Center is the most essential music venue in the Twin Cities. Close any other venue, and the shows would move elsewhere. Close The Cedar, and entire genres of artists would cease to perform here.

Last year, with the release of Live at the Cedar: Visionaries, the first in a planned series of CDs, Malian singer-guitarist Ali Farka Touré, Sámi singer Mari Boine, American guitar legend Bill Frisell, singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco, and the famed local blues trio of Spider John Koerner, Dave Ray, and Tony Glover were among the artists sharing a disc. This diversity is what The Cedar is about—providing a home for culturally important music, whatever the genre. The man behind that vision is artistic director Bill Kubeczko.

“When I took this job, I really wanted to make my programming here as eclectic as my own taste,” says the fifty-two-year-old, sitting in his office, a small room at The Cedar that doubles as a storage closet. “One of the things I really strive for every month is a strong mix of things, so when someone comes in the door for the first time, they look at what’s happening this month and next month and go, ‘Wow. I might want to see that too.’”

That eclecticism has led to programming that’s often ahead of the cultural curve. The Cedar has hosted the Twin Cities debuts of artists such as Greg Brown, Martin Sexton, Cape Verde singer Cesaria Evora, and DiFranco—acts whose audiences now exceed The Cedar’s capacity. So far this year, shows have ranged from Finnish folk luminaries Värttinä to New York klezmer masters The Klezmatics, the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival, Jorma Kaukonen of Hot Tuna and The Jefferson Airplane, and gospel greats the Holmes Brothers.

“I have a lot of freedom to bring in music I feel is important in some places, whether it’s American, regional, Minnesotan, or some other part of the world,” says Kubeczko (pronounced cue-BEZ-coe). “If I think it’s really important, and I see the reaction of other people to this music in other places, then I feel we should be sharing that here.”

Kubeczko sent a copy of Visionaries to Ian Anderson, editor of England’s influential fRoots music magazine. “He called me immediately and said, ‘I can now die happy knowing that someone else has vindicated me by saying that you can put Koerner, Ray, and Glover [and] Ali Farka Touré on the same record. I can die happy knowing that someone else has my same vision of world music,’” Kubeczko says. “That was a real affirming statement because this guy runs an amazing magazine.”

Kubeczko’s passion for music is rooted in his childhood. Growing up in Chicago and Elgin, Illinois, he attended many Polish weddings, where the music and dancing lasted all night, and he worked three paper routes to feed his record-buying habit. With the rise of progressive FM radio in the late 1960s, he found himself absorbing a new array of sounds. “There was a fantastic station in Chicago called Triad Radio,” he says. “They would play a lot of things from Europe, a lot of prog rock at the time. They were the first ones to break things like King Crimson, The Moody Blues, and stuff like that. You could hear all of [Pink Floyd’s] Atom Heart Mother or Meddle weeks before it was released in the States.” Soon, the Grateful Dead, British folk-rockers Pentangle, and other influential bands were turning him on to the folk sounds that now regularly fill The Cedar.

Though generally referred to as “The Cedar,” the venue truly is, as the second half of its name suggests, a cultural center, committed to the people who make it special—staff, artists, volunteers, and audience members. “It’s a very organic community, and a lot of it is respect,” Kubeczko says. “We treat the artists with respect, but if they don’t treat our staff [and volunteers] with respect, they don’t come back—no matter how big of a draw they could be. We want to make a lot of people very comfortable when they get here.”

And people are comfortable. You see it in the interactions among staff, volunteers, and audience members. In the way returning artists greet staff like family. The Cedar cares for its artists in ways that sound simple, but are rare in the industry—a four-course Indian meal and a hot shower in the dressing room can mean the world to a road-weary musician.

This sense of respect and relationship-building has been central to Kubeczko’s career since he started in 1977 at Harry Hope’s, the famed Cary, Illinois, club where he served as soundman, house manager, and artist liaison. Muddy Waters was among the club’s regular performers. When nobody else would book him, Harry Hope’s had him four nights every six weeks. Later, when Waters became a hot commodity again, he remembered the club’s support. “When they wanted to do the live record, he said, ‘I’m not doing it at any of those places. I’m doing it at Harry Hope’s,’” Kubeczko says of what became the Grammy–winning Muddy “Mississippi” Waters–Live.