Each week we will announce a 2009 festival artist. Our full lineup will be announced mid May.
| BASIA BULAT |
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| Since the age of three, Basia has been sitting on piano stools and trying to hammer things out. It started with her piano-teacher mom, but along the way Basia’s picked up guitar, autoharp, banjo, ukelele, sax and flute. In high-school her instrument was the upright bass – a lone girl among “eight-foot-tall guys, goofing off with the tubas”. There’s a sense of play that still suffuses her music, jostling under the songs of regret and love, want and joy. When her brother began to play drums with punk bands in his teens, Basia joined happily in the jam. When she left for university in London, Ontario, musicians began to drop by her downtown apartment. Many nights were spent with these classically-trained friends, laughing and singing, and together they made a glad, bright noise. |
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Since those days Basia and her band have been busy touring across Canada and Europe, sharing stages with the likes of the Great Lake Swimmers, Julie Doiron, Sondre Lerche, and The Veils, leaving a trail of new fans and happy critics along the way. |
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| Darol Anger, Mike Marshall and Väsen |
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| Two virtuosos of new music in America, Darol Anger and Mike Marshall of Psychograss, join forces with Sweden’s most influential instrumental trio, Väsen. Together, these five musicians weave together centuries old traditional forms from separate continents forging the gap between the fiddle and dance tunes of Appalachia and the nyckelharpa and polskas of Sweden.Väsen play transcendent, contemporary music based in the rural Swedish tradition, featuring the unique nyckelharpa (keyed fiddle) along with 5-string viola and 12-string guitar. Darol Anger is a violinist, fiddler and composer: from the jazz-oriented Turtle Island String Quartet to the chambergrass Republic Of Strings, and the Grammy-nominated folk-jazz group Montreux, jam band the String Cheese Incident, Cajun artist Michael Doucet and his ground-breaking work in the David Grisman Quintet. He is truly a genre-jumping innovator.Mike Marshall, a master of mandolin, guitar and violin, continuously pushes the boundaries of acoustic instrumental music. Able to swing gracefully from jazz to classical to bluegrass to Latin styles, he puts his stamp on everything he plays. He has worked with jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, fiddler Mark O’Connor and banjo phenom Bela Fleck. |
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| Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band
The deceptively titled Big Damn Band plays junked-up country blues with little more than a National steel guitar and simple percussion. Reverend Peyton holds court with his mighty, full-throated holler while his wife Breezy and brother Jayme work the washboard and drums, respectively. This young modest three-piece from rural Indiana makes up for its size deficiency with a high-energy sound steeped in classic blues tradition. Influenced by country blues legends like Son House and Furry Lewis, the Rev’s authentic brand of blues sounds like it came out of the backwaters of the Mississippi delta. However above all, the stripped-down songs on their latest CD, The Whole Fam Damnily, wererecorded at a church in Bloomington, Indiana, Their music is meant to be performed live—and the band’s raucous shows have become the stuff of legend, with Breezy wearing clean through stainless steel washboards, the Reverend furiously picking like his strings are on fire and Jayme firing up the tempos with his kick and snare drum. These country-blues aficionados perform music that crosses the barriers between indie rock/punk rock kids, scenesters, and traditional blues fans.
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| Umalali |
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| The Garifuna Women’s Project is a result of years of song collection and the struggle to retain the unique language, music and traditions of the Garifuna people in the face of globalization. Descendents of shipwrecked African slaves who intermarried with the Carib and Arawak Indians of the Caribbean, the Garifuna people live primarily in small towns and villages on the Caribbean coasts of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.The group expands on the story of this fascinating community, blending rich vocal textures with echoes of rock, blues, funk, African, Latin and Caribbean music. Their songs tell of the struggles and triumphs of daily life: hurricanes, murdered sons, the pain of childbirth. Umalali are mothers and daughters who, while working to support their families, sing songs and pass on the traditions of their people to future generations.Umalali is an entrancing journey into the heart and soul of the Garifuna people. |
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| Hapa |
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| Stephen Still’s calls their music “masterful” while Billboard magazine called them “Hawaii’s hottest group”. Hapa’s Pan-Polynesian music is an amalgam of infuences ranging from ancient genealogical chants to the strummed ballads of Portuguese fisherman, Spanish cowboys, and the inspired melodies and harmonies of the traditional church choirs of the early missionaries. Add to this a dose of American acoustic folk/rock, and you have what the Maui Times describes as the “most exciting and beautiful contemporary Hawaiian music the world knows!” The overriding quality of their music is one of beauty and serenity, found in the majestic tones of the oli (chant), mele (song), the elegant movements of the sacred dance known as hula, and the exhilarating innovative sounds of virtuoso slack key guitar. Hapa’s self entitled debut CD, released in 1993, is the best selling CD by a group or duo in the history of recorded Hawaiian music. The group’s ground breaking music has established them as the most recognized name in Hawaiian music internationally with sold-out shows from Tokyo to New York. |
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| Great Lake Swimmers |
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| Tony Dekker ‘s Great Lake Swimmers have spent the past seven years performing on stages around the world. Dekker’s voice is capable of conveying heartache and comfort all in the space of a single phrase. Over time, the band has evolved from a sparse, delicate and hushed unit into a well-rounded folk rock band, sacrificing none of their original intimacy while upping both the volume and tempos when necessary. Their latest album, Lost Channels, was created in both rural splendour (upstream on the St. Lawrence River to the Thousand Islands) and urban Ontario makes perfect sense for a band that has always navigated the parallels between natural and urban rhythms. In 2008 Great Lake Swimmers shared the stage with an impressive list of artists, including Feist, Bela Fleck & The Sparrow Quartet, Hayden and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. |
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| Dick Gaughan |
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| His website states that “firstly, and most importantly, Dick Gaughan is a Scot, from Leith” while the new “Rough Guide to World Music” includes a five paragraph history of contemporary Scottish folk revival, two of these paragraphs are about Gaughan, whose “passionate artistry towers over three decades.”His first solo album won him a Folk Album of the Year award, and almost twenty years later in 1989, Folk Roots Magazine voted his album, A Handful of Earth, Album of the Decade. A past member of Boys of the Lough, Five Hand Reel and Clan Alba, Gaughan is one of the finest guitarists in the British Isles, and a brilliant all-around entertainer.
The Boston Globe named him “One of the most innovative and contemporary voices”, Folk Roots called him “A truly masterful performer” and The Guardian wrote this is “How music from the gut really sounds”.
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| Corey Harris |
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| Corey Harris is a griot for modern times, a musical alchemist who has found a unique place on the world stage through constant touring in the U.S. and abroad. Following his starring role in Martin Scorsese’s PBS series, ‘The Blues,’ in which he traveled to Mali to explore the links between African music and the blues. He collaborated with Ali Fara Toure on the landmark album, “Mississippi to Mali”, an album fusing blues and Toure’s music from northern Mali.
Harris is established as both a blues and reggae musician and his life and music embrace the black experience in all its dimensions. He has collaborate with many musicians and played guitar and sang on Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue. |
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