I recently had the opportunity to complete my latest photo project. This project involved documenting a day in the life of Austin MC, Bavu Blakes. This wasn’t just any day, as I was able to shadow Bavu the day of his Austin City Limits debut performance.

For those who may not know, Austin City Limts (ACL), is another one of Austin’s big annual music festivals and Bavu Blakes is also one of Austin’s top hip-hop artists. I met with Bavu around 8 AM, and from then on began capturing images. While Hip-Hop at ACL is a fairly big deal, having local Hip-Hop talent on the lineup shows how much of an impact Bavu has had on the music scene. Austin’s mayor, Will Wynn, provided Bavu’s introduction. He was also sure to let everyone know that he is a Bavu supporter.

The “Austin City Limits: Bavu Blakes” project can be viewed here…

http://www.ogphotographer.com/projects

Thanks for reading. Enjoy the images.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to take part the 2008 Austin City Limits (ACL) music festival put on by C3. As it is every year, Zilker Park was home to several stages (AT&T, AMD, Austin Ventures, AT&T Blue Room, Dell, and BMI) over the course of three days. Many great performers, performances, sponsors, organizers, workers, volunteers, and fans made this another successful ACL for the history books.

One of this years performers was Austin MC, Bavu Blakes. Bavu is one of Austin’s highly respected hip-hop artists and collaborators. Austin’s Mayor, Will Winn, introduced Bavu and even admitted to the large crowd that Bavu was one of his favorite musicians. Bavu lived up the the hype and put on a great show for all those in attendance at the Austin Ventures stage. I do have photos of his performance as well as a reason for not putting them at this time, however for now, here are a couple of reviews regarding Bavu’s set as well as a post performance interview..

Alex Daniel / Austin360.com Bavu Blakes Review…

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/music/entries/2008/09/27/acl_review_bavu_blakes.html

Bavu’s post performance interview with Deborah Sengupta-Stith of the Statesman / Austin360.com…

Matt Sonzala of AustinSurReal.com…

“Bavu killed that shit. I’ma make the declaration here once again that Bavu Blakes is the best performer in hip-hop. I’ve seen everyone. Probably seen every rapper ever live. 85% of them at least. Maybe 95% and Bavu Blakes is the best performer in hip-hop. Dude comes out and does a SHOW….

Bavu even came out in an Obama mask with sunglasses while his hype man came out as Hillary. Shit was crazy. Dude even did cover songs? Like he knew he had to hit them ACLers in the head so he came out in the Obama mask as the band did “Cult of Personality,” then later did “I Kissed a Girl,” (for the tween set???) and “Born on the Bayou” for Jon Fogerty who’d be playing just down the way a few hours later. Strange but it worked. “

Check out Matt’s full ACL report/review here.