Paul Bassis
Producer, Strategist, Benevolent Instigator
Brief Bio
Throughout his persistently unconventional career spanning more than 30 years as an entertainment entrepreneur, beginning with roots in environmental and social justice advocacy, satirical musical theater, comedy, filmmaking, and live political talk radio, Paul Bassis has consistently and uniquely found ways to bridge entertainment and activism in each of his entrepreneurial and creative endeavors.
By the early 1990’s he had firmly established his reputation in the live music industry as a producer of one of the era’s premier summer music festivals, the internationally celebrated Reggae on the River. For over two decades, the annual Northern California gathering was universally considered “the best reggae music festival in the world,” achieving unparalleled popularity in the reggae and world music genres, annually selling out well in advance.
After many years as a music festival producer, concert promoter, tour producer and artist manager, Bassis took a leap of faith when he left the music business altogether to create a boutique management company and speaker agency for high profile environmental activists. When describing the work he did during those years as “facilitating the radicalizing of celebrities and the celebritizing of radicals,” Bassis freely admits that he made up the word “celebritizing” but claims there was not a better one in the English language to accurately characterize the work he was doing of “helping important voices be heard.”
In 2013 Bassis took another leap of faith when he Co-Founded the ARISE Music Festival at the beautiful Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado with business partner and music industry veteran, Tierro Lee. By design, ARISE was intended to be a hybrid--a cross between a traditional music festival and a co-creative festival--and provided Bassis with yet another opportunity to be part of something that brings people together in meaningful, life-affirming ways. Over a seven-year period of time ARISE grew steadily to become the most popular camping and music festival in the state of Colorado. In the fall of 2019 Bassis and Lee negotiated a settlement agreement to part ways with the festival they founded, joined forces with Sunrise Ranch, and plan to launch a brand-new festival there in the summer of 2021.
In February 2020, under the umbrella of Bassis and Lee’s new production company, Instigate Entertainment, along with two other independent festival producing partners, launched the first ever Thrive Fest Hawaii, a 3-day music festival at the magical Kalani Oceanside Retreat Center on the Big Island of Hawaii.
While currently on forced hiatus from working in the live music industry due to the global coronavirus pandemic, Bassis is authoring the upcoming “revival guide handbook” titled, Seven Steps to a Guilt-Free Diet.
Paul Bassis is pretty certain that he has legitimately cheated death at least three separate times in his life and now reminds himself on a daily basis that this life we are living is not a dress rehearsal.
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