LITTLE VILLAGE — When several friends and Little Village natives founded Villapalooza in 2011, they were pretty excited with a 200-person turnout.
The free one-day music festival had been scraped together with donations, and empty storefronts along 26th Street doubled as pop-up stages. The goal was to highlight local artists and create Little Village venues.
"Little Village has so many bands that play here in the neighborhood, but there's really no place for them to perform or get together ... to showcase their talents," said co-founder Hector Herrera, 33. "And there's no space for bands outside the neighborhood to come into Little Village and play. We wanted to build a combination of both."
By 2014, the grassroots festival had become so popular that it drew 5,000 people, Herrera said.
This year, more than 15,000 are expected to attend.
So the group's nine organizers, all of whom grew up in Little Village, are making things official. Villapalooza became a non-profit organization this spring, and the festival will shut down a portion of 26th Street on Sept. 5 with three stages between Millard and Trumbull avenues.
To help fund the event, Villapalooza launched a Kickstarter this month. The group hopes by July 31 to raise $5,000, which Herrera said would cover a portion of permit fees, as well as some payment and transportation for the bands.
The lineup will include acts from Chicago, New York and Puerto Rico, he said. Genres include salsa and mambo, ska and punk rock, psychedelic rock and traditional folk.
"As sons of immigrants in this country ... we have this diverse taste in music where [we] can rock out to Kanye West or Kendrick Lamar, but then you might also hear us listening to Ramón Ayala, which our parents used to blast the hell out of in the car," said co-founder Dahriian Espinoza, 25.
"This festival allows us to do that," he said." To reach out to folks like us that want to listen to a salsa band, but also want to listen to this punk-rock band with salsa influence."
It's estimated that half of Little Village residents are younger than 25. Of those, more than half are under 18, according to organizers.
By creating and expanding Villapalooza, Herrera and Espinoza said they hoped to tap into that youth demographic and provide safe spaces for young artists and musicians to perform.
"We felt there was so much talent here — why couldn't we have a place where we could showcase what was going on?" Herrera said. "There was nothing that was really being catered to the youth."
During the day, Villapalooza will offer pop-up art galleries, kids' crafts and family-friendly activities. Performances will skew traditional earlier in the day with folk and salsa music, while louder rock shows start at night.
"It has all the same elements as any other street festival you may go to, but I think what really distinguishes us is just the community aspect that we put into it," Herrera said.
In the past, Villapalooza has relied heavily on help from local non-profits, elected officials, the Little Village Chamber of Commerce, youth groups, family and friends. Though the festival is now run by its own non-profit, organizers still plan to tap into existing relationships to maintain that community feel, Espinoza said.
The Villapalooza Kickstarter runs through July 31. Rewards for donating include wristbands, T-shirts, festival posters, food and drinks.
For more information, visit www.villapalooza.org.
