Rigsketball Tournament 2011

How do bands fraternize with each other in your city? In the wonderfully quirky and creative Portland, a band might just host a basketball tournament that features all kinds of local musical talent.

Wanting to see a tighter knit community of bands in Portland, Bim Ditson – from the band, And And And – took action. And thus through Ditson and company’s efforts,  “Rigsketball Tournament 2011,” was created.

Why the weird name, you may ask. Well, it’s not Portland’s style to simply host another mundane basketball tournament – with official sponsorships, official courts or even official rules. In this city, if a band is looking for some off-time fun and digs shooting some hoops, but are always on the move, they’ll put on their problem-solving caps and attach a basketball hoop to a van – plain and simple; problem solved.

“We initially thought it’d just be hilarious to attach a hoop to a van. Once we did it, other bands from shows we’d play would start challenging us,” says Ditson.

From this, the simple idea of getting some bands together to shoot hoops and get to know each other, manifested into a greater vision to use that unusual hoop to get bands better acquainted with their comrades in music in Portland.

Ditson said that hardly anything beats getting to know someone better than beating each other around with some basketball, playing by the same rules, rubbing up against each others’ sweaty bodies, and so forth.

“Once we started doing this, we realized this would be really good tool to get some hardcore band to play some hip-hop band, and realize that they’re not that different from each other,” says Ditson.

That’s exactly what Ditson was tired of seeing, in terms of inter-cultural-band relationships, where bands would only associate with acts in their own genres. Almost like a form of “genre-isim,” if you will, among the music community in Portland.

“I think that a lot of bands get stuck in their genres, as far as other bands that they hang out with, or that they meet, and they also get stuck in tiers of popularity. Which I think is total crap because we’re all in the same boat as bands, you know,” he says.

Once the idea of a tournament turned into actual planning, word-of-mouth spread like wildfire, and the coordinators actually had to place a cap of 32 bands that could be in the tournament. “It just turns out that in Portland, there’s not only a band in every other house, but also, everyone loves basketball,” says Ditson.

After gathering enough bands (and having to politely decline ten bands due to the number of interested parties), it took another three months of planning. The reason? “With bands, it’s like herding cats. It’s impossible to get a hold of them. Scheduling was terrible,” says Ditson.

The coordinating team created a Facebook event page, and a project on Kickstarter.com to raise enough funds to cover the event. Although they did not meet their goal of $1500, the tournament still managed quite well with the nice sum of $1104.

A small multi-media crew, headed by Ditson’s friend James Posey, a cinematography student, put together a video of the event that was made available to those who helped back the tournament financially on Kickstarter.

Overall, the tournament was a success – at least in its purpose of getting Portland artists better acquainted with each other.

rigsketball.tumblr.com

photo by James Posey