| It’s always difficult to review an event as large in scope as the Calgary Folk Music Festival, if only because it offers so much variety for so many music lovers. At the same time that I’m shaking my can at Big Sandy’s workshop on one stage, you’re halfway across Prince’s Island grooving quietly to the sound of, as one observer put it, "the Veda Hille-inspired dullness of Christine Fellows."
Of course, it may be a cop-out to say that it’s impossible to be in all places at once, but folk fest is not a David Lynch film so it’s also true. Nevertheless, it is possible to get a general impression of an event – and this year’s impression is bliss.
Yes, bliss. Never mind all the facts about the festival breaking even (and then some) on its $1.2 million budget (although it is very important, and thank heavens for the sunshine). Some things in Calgary cannot be measured monetarily, and it’s not every day that a gathering of your neighbours will remind you that they do indeed have soul.
But the folk festival did that this year with an approximate attendance of 37,000 people who, for the first time ever, actually appeared to relax and enjoy themselves. Granted, there will always be the cranky cries of "down in front" from the latecomers whose tarps are so far back in the crowd, you can’t imagine what they’d see if you did sit down, but they were neither as frequent nor as loud as in previous years. Maybe I was taking too many trips to the riverbank to chill out, but from my perspective the majority of festival-goers appeared to be happily engaged in the entire event – not merely popping in to grab a drink in the beer garden and see a select few headliners on mainstage.
Kicking off the weekend on Thursday night, and offering one of the best surprises of the entire festival, Ongo Trogodé entranced the audience with their polyrhythmic percussion and horn ensemble. Their performance on Saturday was even better, as the intimacy of the side stage venue allowed the group to maximize the effect of its minimalistic approach – all sustained notes and overlapping beats. Even though they play on traditional instruments, this is surely one of the most musically progressive acts the festival has featured in some time.
Of course, on a weekend that includes performances by David Byrne, Howe Gelb and Wimme, that’s saying quite a lot.
Byrne showed why his reputation as a consummate entertainer has grown over the years since his tenure as bandleader for Talking Heads. Still, even with the presence of a string ensemble for his mainstage set on Thursday night, it required old hits like "Once in a Lifetime" to get the crowd to its feet.
The next night, Cowboy Junkies stole the show right out from under Gord Downie, whose unfocused collaboration with The Dinner is Ruined and Julie Doiron lacked inspiration and respect for the audience – with 10 minutes left in his set, Downie proceeded to "improvise" a song about running out of time. What a treat from Canada’s premiere songwriter-poet. Sandwiched between the Junkies’ trippy guitar transcendentalism and Billy Bragg’s incendiary political rants, Downie and his lousy verse proved to be entirely forgettable.
And he was – forgotten, that is – on Saturday and Sunday when the workshops took over. Even before the booze started flowing on Saturday morning, Big Sandy, Tom Phillips and company delivered some mighty fine honky-tonkin’, with standout performances from Jimmy Roy on pedal steel and Brigitte Dajczer on fiddle. Howe Gelb, Wimme, The Rheostatics and Carolyn Mark made wondrous noise together, showing that improvisation can work sometimes, even if the PA doesn’t. If you want to talk about Africa and the diaspora coming together as one, the workshop on Sunday afternoon with Corey Harris, Eric Bibb, Njava and Boubacar Traore revealed the roots of the blues better than any ethnomusicologist’s field recordings ever could.
Of course, for every great workshop I attended, you were at one just as special. Maybe you heard Bocephus King covering "Billie Jean" and "Little Red Corvette" with The Waifs. Or maybe it was Howe Gelb manipulating Miles Davis into some posthumous soloing. Either way, that’s what makes the folk festival the most exciting musical event of the summer. |
