Folk Fest has come and gone for another year. It’s not particularly possible, or productive, to apply any sort of critical method to an event like Folk Fest, which is so dependent on personal experience. We all bring our own expectations and moods to the event, the congregate nature of which is somehow created to be reliably consistent year to year — provided the weather is stable (we will not soon forget the abysmal rain and cold of Saturday ’08).
I know I wasn’t the only one who went into this year’s fest without any particular anticipation for any particular act. Sure, I like Andrew Bird, but not as fanatically as some. I’m not into rock ‘n’ roll enough to be pumped for the Dodos (who, bizarrely, were programmed at the same time as Andrew Bird). I was pleased to see Kinnie Starr back on the roster, even though I’ve kind of hated not enjoyed her last two albums, because she’s a charismatic and community-minded presence. Emmylou Harris is amazing, but she was just here the other year.
But none of this is a problem. When you don’t have a packed “must-see” schedule, it opens you up for discovery. For me and many others, the discovery was Pura Fé — a Washington-based indigenous American singer with the kind of voice that pours forth from her mouth like a undulent, unstoppable wellspring. At her solo concert at Little Stage on Saturday, she apologized for not having a band with her, but that apology was not only uneccessary but baffling given her absolutely virtuoso skill with vocal loops. Looping is all the rage, and we see it yearly at the Folk Fest (Owen Pallett, Mihirangi, Rebekah Higgs), but no one does it as pitch perfectly as Pura. She is hands-down the best looper I have ever seen perform. The truly skilled artists make it look effortless, and that is the essence of Pura Fé. (Let it also be said that she knows her way around a guitar, as well.)
There was much speculation about the identity of the “special guest” listed on the mainstage program for Sunday, and there was much bemused sarcasm when that guest turned out to be the Crash Test Dummies.
Other favourites of mine from the weekend: Well-dressed Saharan band Etran Finatawa, Indian multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Debashish Bhattacharya, and a scaled down Ghostkeeper.
Oh, one more thing — on the subject of the Folk Fest’s inroads into social media this year. The good: they created an iPhone app with schedules and autofills for Twitter and Facebook status updates and such. Useful! The bad: the iPhone carrier, Rogers, is notoriously spotty outside the city. The good: the festival offered free wi-fi! The bad: iPhones are basically crap at picking up weak wi-fi signals, so even though Shady Grove, Mainstage and backstage were supposed to be covered, I was never able to connect to the wi-fi once. Lest you think that backstage it would work, an iPhone-using pal of mine who was volunteering said that she was only able to connect to the wi-fi once backstage and the rest of the time no dice. Anyhow, all of these factors rendered the iPhone app much less useful than it might have been at the festival. I still referred primarily to the old-fashioned paper schedules over the newfangled app versions, and I’m a techie. It’s too bad, because the app is a great idea — a lot of the festival’s success depends on the casual festival goers getting the message from the people who are already there, that “Hey, the weather is great and the music is fine! We are having a super good time!” There are still some bugs to work out, though, and they’re the kind that dragonflies can’t sort out for you.
That said, I’m not going to cry too much about being un-connected at the fest, because attending the event does fundamentally involve some embracing of one’s inner hippie. Being unplugged isn’t the end of the world (which I think might be the entire message of folk as a genre).
Here are some pictures. See you next year.
CKUW’s own Mama Cutsworth spins between Jim Bryson’s performance (with the Weakerthans) and Rural Alberta Advantage.
The aforementioned RAA attracted a very young and very enthusiastic crowd to the Big Blue @ Night stage.
Read More »
