A beloved local festival, West End Celebration, returns with new leadership and new bands.

One year shy from a quarter-century of its laidback existence, the West End Celebration is a fixture in Monterey County’s annual calendar of events. This street festival brings two days of free entertainment to Sand City for one weekend every summer, with musicians performing on multiple stages while local vendors, from craftsmen to food makers, draw passersby. The atmosphere is hyper-local and family-friendly; streets are closed to traffic, a shuttle and a bike valet are provided.

The 2025 edition will be the first one organized by a curator from outside Monterey County, Matthew Swinnerton of Event Santa Cruz. The experiment, which comes after Sand City’s City Council released an RFP seeking prospective coordinators, is being closely watched by the community. Even before the festival there are voices suggesting this year’s West End is more Santa Cruz-centric than past iterations. But both Swinnerton, responsible for the music lineup, and his business partner, Nadja De Maeseneer, who booked the craft and food vendors, deny prioritizing Santa Cruz. They promise a festival “based on ground-level input” that is “a living reflection of Sand City’s creative soul.”

According to Swinnerton, there are eight bands booked, and four more almost booked (as of Friday, Aug. 15), from Monterey County, four from Santa Cruz, and one from the North Bay. “I was just looking back at the 2023 lineup,” Swinnerton says. “The Santa Cruz County/Monterey County balance isn’t much different from this year.”

The organizers are facing concern over the unknown. And there will be some changes, which are intended as improvements. One is that the total number of bands is smaller. In 2023, 29 bands/musicians played at West End; 25 played in 2024; only 14 (Swinnerton says the final number will be actually 17) are booked to play in 2025.

The second difference is the lineup, to some extent. Looking at the main stage lineup, Santa Cruz bands have four out of seven acts, two are from Monterey County (Monks of the Blue and The Rumba Madre), and one is from the Bay Area (the Anthony Arya Band, which got its start in Santa Cruz and has played at West End before). But local bands have expressed concern.

In 2023, the main stage hosted six bands from Monterey County and three from the broader Central Coast region. In 2024, five main stage concerts featured bands from Monterey County, one from Santa Cruz and two from elsewhere. Some Monterey County groups that played in 2023 in 2024 – such as Guitars not Guns and Sensory Tribe – were not invited back this year.

Some new Monterey County names are on this year’s schedule, including reggae/hip-hop band Dub Souljah, Dr T and the Remedy and The Mister Lucky Band.

“That’s the real win this year,” Swinnerton says. “We’re showcasing more local talent than ever.”

Out of this year’s 172 vendors, 31 percent are from Sand City or within a four-mile radius, De Maeseneer says. Fourteen percent (23 total) come from Santa Cruz, largely vendors that have been present at West End Celebration for years, she adds.

“Our approach is really to keep it as local and as authentic and homemade as possible,” De Maeseneer explains. “We’re not booking the big art. We’re really booking local, small-scale artists who are great at what they’re doing, but have a connection to the audience.”

There is, of course, only one way to test the West End Celebration under new leadership – to go and experience it. There are many things, as always, to be excited for, and The Rumba Madre (performing at 2:30pm on Saturday, Aug. 23 on the main stage), an international band that recently found its new home in Marina, is definitely one of them.

Who said music about social issues has to be solemn or stick to one genre? The Rumba Madre is all about fighting the stereotypes. Do you like flamenco? Check. How about salsa? Check. Tango, Celtic music, punk? Check, check and another bewildered check.

The band’s madre, or rather padre, responsible for “the thinking, the process, the concept,” as he says, is David Vila Diéguez. Where he goes, The Rumba Madre follows, recruiting new members along the way. At the main stage of the West End Celebration, he will play with six musicians from Marina, Monterey and Santa Cruz.

Vila Diéguez is as eclectic as his music. Hailing from Gellego-speaking Galicia in Spain, he grew up in the Basque country, drawing from all three cultures and languages. A musician, writer, academic and activist, he lived and created in London before deciding to move to the U.S. and explore the music scene of Nashville. Thanks to his job as a professor of Hispanic Studies at CSU Monterey Bay, he has been, since 2021, a Marina resident.

Bringing his bold politics and complicated biography to California, Vila Diéguez addresses the subject of immigration with no inhibitions in his music. The best example is a single from The Rumba Madre’s 2020 debut album, Prisiones y Fugas, titled “La Rumba Del Coco.” An accompanying music video (viewable on YouTube) illustrates this absurd social issues anthem. It shows the band’s members traversing the desert to get home for Christmas and being stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection due to a possession of a suspicious-looking coconut. All that in the background of a fiery melody and rhythm.

A new album – Abuela (Live from Church) – is coming out next year that consists of 11 songs that tell a single story. “It’s like a musical,” Vila Diéguez says.

The story speculates on the adventures of the 25,000 Spanish children evacuated to Mexico during the Spanish Civil War to escape the conflict and the rule of General Francisco Franco. One of those children becomes a woman struggling with machismo in her environment, another is a young man who moved to the U.S. and now votes for Trump, in a desperate attempt to assimilate.

“A socially conscious song should not only make you think,” Vila Diéguez says. “It should get you out of a chair and make you dance. All this sad revolutionary music just neutralizes you.

“We can’t physically fight ICE – but how about writing a song about an ICE agent who wants to buy an enchilada, and he can’t buy it because he doesn’t speak Spanish? That makes everything humorous and shows the stupidity of policing the immigrants.”

THE WEST END CELEBRATION noon-7pm Saturday-Sunday, Aug. 23-Aug. 24. Sand City, between Contra Costa, Redwood, Ortiz and Holly streets. Free. For the full schedule, visit westendcelebration.com.

This story has been updated to reflect the following corrections. Matthew Swinnerton and Nadja De Maeseneer are business partners, not also romantic partners as originally reported. 

The story also inaccurately referred to the Gallego language of Galicia as Portuguese; the two are in fact different languages.