It’s tough being a nerd. It’s even tougher being a nerd musician. Do you let your music define you or do you define your music? Artists have been flirting with this subject (no one ever seems to get to home base) for a long time now. When it comes to nerd music, the answer could be “both.”

Sound complicated? Last weekend hundreds of fans gathered at Nerdapalooza, Orlando’s annual entertainment-themed festival of geeky soundcraft to make sense of it all – and have fun in the process. Nerd music - be it made by bands or rappers or solo artists - is clever, self deprecating, and full of hundred-dollar words. They’re smarter than your beloved teen idols and now they make better music than your favorite local band.

Everyone who plays at Nerdapalooza meets one basic criteria: they know how to package themselves. The two-day festival has everything from robots (The Protomen) to zombies (Zombies! Organize!!) to ninjas (Shael Riley). Let’s face it. Any marketable band or rapper out there has made himself/herself into an interesting, digestible character. The hard part is get the listener to care about this new avatar enough to buy their album.

Luckily, nerd music has the a history of characters to work with. They don’t just get sad; they get as sad as when they found out the princess was in another castle. Their life isn’t just hard; it’s as hard as making a decent X-Men film.
Geeky jokes aside, everyone who performs at Nerdapalooza has an agenda. It’s an inherent part of the business. Zombies! Organize!!, for example, a trio out of Ft. Lauderdale, were there to represent the girls in the industry. “We’re bringing the zombies and we’re bringing the feminism,” said Mary Magdalen, lead singer of the band, who had a head cold but still brought the noise.

She and her band came armed with synthesizers, guitars, and enough skill in rapping to blend in with the male-dominated scene, which didn’t mind the female-fronted action. “I know that this scene is more populated by male-dominated rappers, which is the social norm. That’s just the way it goes,” she said. “It’s even true in Nerdcore, but I think the guys in this scene are more open to us, which is awesome.” This was backed up by someone in the audience who commented that he’d never heard someone say “fuck” so much and sound so cute. But that’s Nerdapalooza, it caters to people with a cut-scene attention span – which is most of us, these days.

In our media-enriched world, these performers have tapped into the one thing people in the United States can’t seem to escape – entertainment. Enough of the music. Let’s get to the players. These aren’t rich people. They’re mostly 19 to 20-somethings who managed to get a weekend off of work and saved up enough scratch to fly or drive to Orlando to recruit new listeners. Some didn’t even get a return ticket back home, like Seattle’s Rappy McRapperson. “Yeah, I’m going to be here for a bit. The whole summer, at least,” he said. The plush surroundings of the Orlando Marriott (Nerdapalooza’s home this year) were his home for two days. After that, who knows? He sure didn’t "I got a couple books I’m going to be reading in the sunshine.” He doesn’t sweat the plans.

Other people have a bigger game plan. Phoenix’s Mega-Ran, for instance was near the end of a 2-week tour by the time he got to Nerdapalooza. He’s one of the more established rappers to perform over the weekend. When he wasn’t doing his own material he lending his smooth voice to newer acts or old friends. “Nerdapalooza is like a family reunion,” he said. “But still, to see a good 200 to 300 people in the crowd is a pretty awesome feeling.”

And that’s big potatoes for a lot of these artists who, admittedly, are used to trying harder than this to win people over when they tour. Rappers who haven’t been in the game for too long have yet to build up the energy it takes for something the size of Nerdapalooza. “You do the small stages first. You do the shows for ten or twelve people,” the Capcom-backed rapper continued, referring back to his days in 2006 (back when he was simply “Random”) when he dropped his first album. “You have to do a lot of that first until you can build up to being ready for a big stage. And even at this show, I can’t even lie but I felt a little overwhelmed by the size of the crowd.”

This comes as a nice change from a gathering like Comic Con International, where giant entertainment companies have figured out that a bunch of comic book nerds assembled in one place makes for easy advertising prey. At Nerdapalooza, the advertisers (mostly struggling artists) and the consumers are on an even playing ground. It seems Orlando hosts the one convention where the fans are just as dynamic as the stars, which is fine with most of the performers. “I have my fair share of hardcore fans and they know what I’m doing, but the weird thing about them is that most of them are not rap fans,” said New Jersey’s Devo Spice. “Most of them have told me that other than me they don’t listen to any rap. And I love them, but I need some rap fans too, because hip hop is the biggest market in the world. And if I’m not in it, then I’m kind of stupid. And rap fans come out to Nerdapalooza.”

Here lies a common problem for most of the rappers. They want respect as a hip hop act, but their association with Nerdcore gets them marginalized and often dismissed. No matter how much these nerds want acceptance, at some point want to grow up and be their own people. Others, like famed rapper YT Cracker, self proclaimed “original digital gangster”, are proud of the culture they’ve helped create, even if it mainly exists online. Some, however, see the need to grow beyond the boundaries of the computer-screen glow.

“Some of these younger artists who have this audience via the internet are part of this online community,” said Schaffer the Darklord, who didn’t just bring himself and his “STD” beat box from New York, but also a burlesque troupe, “but if they don’t do a lot of performing and especially if they don’t do a lot of touring, flying across the country to do this show might be kind of daunting.” Yet STD is one of those artists who kept at it, coming to Nerdapalooza year after year in between touring and performing back in his home town. He helped set the example for the younger artists who so readily accepted him as one of their own back in 2008 when Nerdapalooza was held in a restaurant, bursting at the seams and physically demanding to grow into something greater.

In a way, Nerdapalooza’s growth is as complicated as every musician who attends. It has always been easy to describe, but it is never consistent in style. It’s wildly popular, but only in to a sizeable, but singular market. It has great potential, but it just hasn’t made its way into the social spotlight. And maybe it never will. The nerds don’t seem to care – they’re having fun. According to the event organizers (and Nerdcore prophets themselves), attendance for the festival at least doubles every year. Nerdapalooza, and perhaps even Nerdcore is on its way up. And as Aaron Yarhouse, the event director put it, “You have to learn to crawl before you walk, you have to learn to walk before you run, and you have to learn to run before you can ninja-flip.” Game on.


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