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The Vancouver Folk Music Festival is produced annually by the Vancouver Folk Music Festival Society, a registered not-for-profi t incorporated under the Societies Act of British Columbia. The society is a Canadian registered charity, registration #11926 1030 RR 0001. Mailing Address Suite 100 – 2425 Quebec Street Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 4L6 Phone 604.602.9798 Fax 604.602.9790 Email: info@thefestival.bc.ca Web: www.thefestival.bc.ca © Vancouver Folk Music Festival 2015 Printed in Canada by Mitchell Press Ltd. Information contained in this program is subject to change without notice – kind of like life. Acknowledgements ............................................................. 2 Welcome ..................................................................................3 Staff ...........................................................................................4 Festival Raffl e ........................................................................ 5 Festival Info ............................................................................ 9 Sharing our Common Ground ..........................................10 Passport Contest ..................................................................11 Donations: for Pete's Sake! ..............................................12 Festival Merchandise + CD Tent ...................... ......... ......15 Environmental Stewardship .............................................16 Accessibility Services ........................................................17 VFMF Special Projects ......................................................20 Friends of Pete .................................................................... 76 Volunteers ............................................................................89 PERFORMERS & SCHEDULES Evening Main Stage Emcees ............................................21 Performers + Their Schedules ........................................24 Artist Bios .......................................................................27-67 Friday Workshops + Concerts ......................................... 47 Saturday Workshops + Concerts ....................................48 Sunday Workshops + Concerts .....................................49 Evening Concerts ...............................................................50 SITE Little Folks Village .............................................................. 79 Food + Beverages ..............................................................82 Artisan Market .....................................................................84 Folk Bazaar ........................................................... ..............85 Community Village .............................................................86 First Nations Walks ............................................... ............ 87 Site Map ................................................................................95 ARTICLES Dedications ............................................................................ 6 Protest Music Marches On ...............................................69 West African String Theory .............................................. 73 Program Book Gwen Kallio, John Endo Greenaway, Editors John Endo Greenaway (Big Wave Design) Design Gary Cristall, Valdine Ciwko Performer Biographies & Contributing Writers Doug Heselgrave, Bruce Mason Contributing Writers Ola Volo Front Cover Image Anne Jew Ad Sales Special thanks to Lorne Mallin 38 Contents © Vancouver Folk Music Festival 2015 Printed in Canada by Mitchell Press Ltd. Information contained in this program is subject to change without notice – kind of like life. Site Map ................................................................................95 ARTICLES Dedications ............................................................................ 6 Protest Music Marches On ...............................................69 West African String Theory .............................................. 73 Special thanks to Lorne Mallin Page 2 Advertising Page 3 Welcome to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. I am often asked what is unique about our Festival, what makes it special. More often than not, no matter how many times I am asked, I am momentarily stumped, at a loss. Not because I don’t know what to say, but because I don’t know where to start. What makes this festival special? My mind jumps first to the music and the artists. This year we're welcoming over 60 acts from more than 15 countries – an incredible wealth of talent, many of whom you would not have the pleasure of meeting or hearing live were it not for this festival. Then there's Jericho Beach Park, a truly incomparable location for the festival. There are workshops, those gems of musical improvisation that are the heart and soul of the weekend – and we're opening earlier on Friday this year to add even more. There are the amazing volunteers, the great food, the fun and frolic of the Little Folks Village, fabulous artisans, our legacy and progressive vision, and the pride we take in being environmentally aware and responsible. There are those "moments" of magic: the joy of connection when newly-introduced musicians find a collective groove on a workshop stage, the smile on the face of a child joining a Little Folks Village parade; the sight of a multi-aged crowd dancing in syncopated abandon to a just-discovered band; and then there is the tradition of the lantern procession that ends each evening performance. This is who we are, and this is what we do. The fact is that words cannot ever really describe what's special here. You have to come to the festival to get it: it's the live experience, gathering together, the excitement of true connections, the anticipated, the unexpected. And, ultimately, what makes this festival distinctive is you, the folks who call this festival your own, embrace it and support it. Thanks for coming, and thanks to all the incredible artists, the volunteers, board, sponsors, donors, staff , and all our supporters for making the 38th Vancouver Folk Music Festival special and unique. Linda Tanaka, Artistic Director Whether this is your fi rst Festival or your 38th, thank you for joining us here on the shores of English Bay. As you fl ip through these pages and settle in at any of our seven stages, you'll discover a world of simply incredible music – music to provoke change, tell stories, delight and surprise. Our festival is known to be a journey of discovery, where new favourite artists are found singing and playing alongside familiar ones. It is at the junction where the two intersect that magic often happens. Every year, spontaneous collaborations take place on our workshop stages. These once-in-a-lifetime moments of musical exploration are part of what make our Festival unique and inspiring. Our small but mighty staff , supported by our committed volunteer Board, work throughout the year to make sure that the music you hear this weekend is relevant, powerful, maybe even life changing. Over the course of the Festival weekend 1,500 enthusiastic volunteers will make sure that everything runs smoothly. For them, and for us, it is a labour of love. Of course, while love may make the world go 'round, it doesn't pay the bills. If the Vancouver Folk Music Festival has a special place in your heart, please help us keep on bringing you the very best folk music from around the world. Visit the Donations: For Pete’s Sake! Tent over the weekend and become a sustaining donor. Even $5 or $10 per month helps us make it here every year. Buy a 50/50 ticket or a raffl e ticket – there could be something in it for you! There are many ways to help. We look forward to your ongoing support. Enjoy the magic of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival! Amy Newman, Chair, Board of Directors Page 4 • Quintet • • Trio • telephonic • Media Sponsors • Thank You To The City of Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation for allowing us to again make beautiful Jericho Beach Park our festival home. The staff of the City of Vancouver for their assistance with building permits, parking and a variety of other items. The Jericho Garrison and Jericho Hill Centre and Gym for assistance with our parking needs. • Foundations • Amy Newman, Chair Anne Blaine, Treasurer Linda Uyehara Hoff man Anneke Van Vliet Left to right: Tariq Hussain, Anne Blaine, Linda Uyehara Hoff man, Anneke Van Vliet, Mia EdBrooke, Amy Newman, Bill Hooker. Missing: Jack Schuller, Monica Dare. Vancity • Yamaha Canada • Vancouver Community College (VCC) Culinary Arts Program • St Mary's Kerrisdale Church Doug Alder • All Seasons Mushrooms • BC Fresh • Bunge Foods • Western Rice Mills Tariq Hussain Jack Schuller Monica Dare Mia Edbrooke 38thANNUAL VANCOUVER’S NEW ROCK The Employment Program of British Columbia is funded by the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia. Van Tel/Safeway Credit Union Legacy Fund 2 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 2015 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 3 Linda Tanaka ..........................Artistic Managing Director Samantha Kannegieter ........Operations Manager Jenelle Molyneux ..................Performer Services & Administration Ann Hepper ............................Bookkeeper Alyssa Brownsmith .................Sponsorship & Development O cer Brade Stanton ........................Volunteer Coordinator Samantha Francey ................Volunteer Coordinator Assistant Bryce Doersam ......................Administrative Assistant Karl Ventura ............................Customer Service Representative Rebecca Wong Him Yung ...Operations Assistant Anika Vervecken ...................Special Projects Coordinator Gwen Kallio .............................Marketing and Publicity Manager John Endo Greenaway ........Web and Graphic Design Laura Murray PR ....................Social Media and Online Promotion Anne Jew .................................Ad Sales David Kerr ................................Site Production Manager Jeremy Baxter ........................Site Technical Director Ken Daskewech .....................Production Manager Bob Sung .................................Food Vendor Coordinator Gabriella Klein ........................Folk Bazaar Coordinator Anya Keefe ..............................Head Chef 0 2015 Festival Staff Linda Tanaka ..........................Artistic Managing Director Samantha Kannegieter ........Operations Manager Jenelle Molyneux ..................Performer Services & Administration Ann Hepper ............................Bookkeeper Alyssa Brownsmith .................Sponsorship & Development O cer Brade Stanton ........................Volunteer Coordinator Samantha Francey ................Volunteer Coordinator Assistant Bryce Doersam ......................Administrative Assistant Karl Ventura ............................Customer Service Representative Rebecca Wong Him Yung ...Operations Assistant Anika Vervecken ...................Special Projects Coordinator Gwen Kallio .............................Marketing and Publicity Manager John Endo Greenaway ........Web and Graphic Design Laura Murray PR ....................Social Media and Online Promotion Anne Jew .................................Ad Sales David Kerr ................................Site Production Manager Jeremy Baxter ........................Site Technical Director Ken Daskewech .....................Production Manager Bob Sung .................................Food Vendor Coordinator Gabriella Klein ........................Folk Bazaar Coordinator Anya Keefe ..............................Head Chef Festival Site Crew Left to right: Rebecca Wong Him Yung, Brade Stanton, Anika Vervecken, Samantha Kannegieter, Samantha Francey, John Endo Greenaway, Alyssa Brownsmith, Jenelle Molyneux, Linda Tanaka, Bob Sung, Gwen Kallio. Page 5 Festival Raffle 3 TICKETS FOR $10 OR 1 TICKET FOR $5 Buy from a roving Raffle Seller or visit the Raffle Tent located between the information booth and the Donations Tent FABULOUS PRIZES Night Security AJ Andrien, Cheyene Bell, Chris Bradley Colin Clark, Kristin Daukier, Jill Dow Bill Fedoriuk, Kim Hunter, Kaya Hunter Heather Inglis, Kris Knutsen, Tobin Lade Susan Locey, Donna Orsi, Linsey Prentice Gary Puckey, Margo Running, Pat Smith Stephen Tweedale, Omid Vaziry Antonia Winkelmann, Joshua Wright Heather Wuschke Steve Adams, Marijka Asbeeke Brusse Jamie Burns, Luc Corbeil, Josef Chung Mike Cooper, Amber Cruikshank, Alex Dinwoodie James Douglas, Jeff Elrick, Peter Grier Neil Griffi ths, Lucas Hall, Jessica Han Dj Hicks, Tom Jones, Liam Kupser, Mac McLeod Erica Miller, Kyle Myhre, Kaden O'Reilly Don Robinson, Gavin Somers, Cassandra Tattrie Mark Tibando, Dustin Vaux, Larry Walske, Danny Wolff , Donna Wolff , Mya Wolff 1 Air North, Aurora Viewing Adventure – Includes two round-trip Vancouver-Whitehorse fl ights, 2 nights’ accommodation at Coast High Country Inn, two evening aurora borealis tours with Northern Tales Adventures, two Yukon Wildlife Preserve passes, two MacBride Museum of Yukon visitor passes, and two Yukon Brewery tasting and gift packs. Value - $1859 2 Vancouver Folk Music Festival VIP Package – Includes two passes to VFMF 2016 with Backstage Pass and meals, one-night accommodation for two at Skwachays Lodge, and VFMF swag including two t-shirts, programs, water bottles, and chairs. Value - $1359 3 Three Night Stay for Two at Hollyhock – Enjoy three nights’ premium accommodation at Hollyhock, Canada’s Lifelong Learning Centre on Cortes Island. Value - $1300 4 Newton Commuter Bike – Devinci Newton commuter bike with built-in self-generating light system. Value - $1199.99 5 Handmade Sterling Silver Sun Mask Pendant and Earrings – From Travis Neel Jewelry. Value - $220 6 Rocky Mountain Soap Co. Gift Basket – Assorted products from Rocky Mountain Soap Co. Value - $150 7 Salt Spring Coff ee Gift Basket – Aeropress coff ee maker and fi lters, two ceramic Truly West Coast mugs, small batch Ihani beans from Uganda, bag of Sumatra beans. Value - $120 8 West Coast Sightseeing – two 24-hour passes aboard Big Pink sightseeing hop-on hop-off tour. - $84 Page 6 As we enjoy this year's festival, we also take time to remember some very special people who left us in the past year, both performers and colleagues. We are richer for knowing them and the poorer for their passing. Let us honour their memories and their contributions, celebrate the music they gave us, and the comradeship we shared. Four very tall trees in the folk forest fell this year; and they did make a sound. They were heard by millions. Jean Ritchie, Ronnie Gilbert, Guy Carawan and John Renbourn had a profound infl uence on what we hear today when the word ‘folk’ comes up. Jean brought traditional songs from Kentucky and the dulcimer, Ronnie brought contemporary political and feminist songs and Guy brought both the music of Appalachia as well as songs of the Civil Rights and other political movements that came from his work at the Highlander Centre. John Renbourn took many British traditional songs and reinvented them as contemporary songs as well as helping to create a guitar style that redefi ned the instrument Taken together, these four visionaries played a major role in inspiring audiences and performers over more than sixty years. Jean Ritchie was a tradition bearer in every sense. Born in Viper in the Cumberland mountains of Eastern Kentucky in 1922, she was a member of a family renowned for their repertoire of traditional Anglo-American ballads. The British folklorist, Cecil Sharp, collected songs from Jean’s sister in the ‘teens. Raised in isolation from modernity, Jean’s family didn’t get a radio until the forties, preserving old songs for their own enjoyment. By then Jean had broken with the rural isolation of her birth, gone to university, graduated as a social worker and moved to New York. By 1949 she had found the left-wing People’s Songs movement and shared the stage of the Spring Fever Hootenanny with The Weavers and Woody Guthrie. By the early fi fties she was recording for Elektra Records and wrote a book about her family – Singing Family of the Cumberlands. In no small part, the repertoire of Appalachian ballads that became staples of the folk scene came from Jean and her family. She also wrote songs. Black Waters, about strip mining, was one of the fi rst environmental protest songs. Jean accompanied herself on the mountain dulcimer – in those days a rare and strange instrument. She and husband George Pickow went into the dulcimer-making business and launched the popularization of the now ubiquitous instrument. Her songs and her instrument became, and remain, elementary components of the folk music scene. She performed her songs at this festival in 1983. Ronnie Gilbert, Ruth Alice Gilbert, was born in New York City in 1926. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Ukraine who worked in the garment factories. Her mother, a trade union organizer, was also a dedicated woman of culture. She would take a break from working and organizing to listen to music. She would scrimp and save to attend concerts and would often take her daughter along. Ronnie always remembered one by Paul Robeson. Here is where she got her musical and political education. This was the milieu that helped produce the folk revival of the forties and Ronnie was part of it from the start. She spent time during World War II in Washington DC, where she joined the folk group, the Priority Ramblers, led by Alan Lomax. In New York she became part of a new project that Pete Seeger and Lee Hays were putting together. They called it The Weavers. Ronnie’s voice was a big part of the group’s climb to the top of the charts before being blacklisted in the early fi fties. Ronnie kept singing with The Weavers and as a solo artist. She also maintained her political activism. She became an actor and studied clinical psychology, working as a therapist. She moved to Canada and was involved with Tamanhous Theatre in Vancouver. In the early eighties the women’s music movement rekindled her passion and she was drawn out of singing retirement through the eff orts of Holly Near who had been inspired by Ronnie’s voice in The Weavers. With Holly, on her own and with HARP – Holly, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie and Pete Seeger she performed for hundreds of thousands well into the 2000’s, and was also a member of Women in Black, defending the rights of Palestinians. Ronnie played at this festival a number of times starting in 1982. Guy Carawan is best remembered as the man who taught We Shall Overcome to the Civil Rights movement, and through it, to the world. He did much more both before and after. Born in California in 1927, he was radicalized and introduced to folk music in the same left wing milieu as Ronnie Gilbert in the late forties, fi rst in his native California and then in New York. In 1953, along with Jack Elliot and Frank Hamilton, both major fi gures in folk music, he visited the community organizing school- Highlander- in Tennessee. It would play an important role in his life. During the height of McCarthyism and the persecution, if not prosecution, of American leftists, Guy left the country for an extended stay in England. Here he sang and recorded with British artists as well as fellow expats Peggy Seeger, Alan Lomax and Jack Elliot. He had a modest ‘hit’ with a recording of Michael Row The Boat Ashore. He sang, and won an award, with Peggy Seeger, at the 1957 Moscow World Youth Festival and, with Peggy, visited the People’s Republic of China when such a thing was forbidden by the American government. They took his passport away. Stuck in the USA, Guy, upon Pete Seeger’s recommendation, became music coordinator at Highlander. A year later, at a workshop for Civil Rights movement activists, Guy taught them We Shall Overcome, an old hymn that had been reworked in the forties as a union song. It caught on and has become an international anthem of the oppressed. Along with his wife, Candie, Guy worked at Highlander for many years, teaching music as an organizing tool to thousands. They co-authored books on the Georgia Sea Islands’ unique Afro-American culture, on Appalachia and edited recordings and a collection of songs of the Civil Rights movement. They also sang and played their own music at many music events, including this one. We were lucky to have them here twice – in 1981 and again, a decade later. Gary Cristall was a founder of the festival and its coordinator and artistic director until 1994. These days he mainly teaches arts administration and cultural policy at Capilano University and Douglas College. Folk music remains his fi rst love. Four of the Finest Jean Ritchie, Ronnie Gilbert, Guy Carawan and John Renbourn John Renbourn is the youngest of these four vital infl uences we have lost this year, being born in 1944. Ironically, while the only one who was not American, he was profoundly infl uenced by American music and got his start in skiffl e bands in the late fi fties, inspired by artists like Bill Big Broonzy and Lead Belly. In the early sixties, he abandoned skiffl e for R&B and then joined the folk music revolution. This ‘revolution’ saw a generation of young artists who were arranging folk songs in new ways with an emphasis on innovative guitar techniques. Among them was Davey Graham, father of the movement, and Scottish guitarist, Bert Jansch. As the John in ‘Bert and John’, Renbourn helped create a new guitarbased genre of music starting in 1963. A few years later, John, along with Bert and a few others created Pentangle and jump started a new way of playing folk music adding classical, jazz, world music, blues and other infl uences. Their infl uence was massive, inspiring hundreds of artists on both sides of the Atlantic. Having helped reinvent the guitar and then folk music as a contemporary genre, John went on to numerous solo eff orts and collaborations as well as leading The John Renbourn Group. He appeared a number of times at this festival starting in 1983. As a group, their lives and music tell much of the story of folk music in the second half of the twentieth century and point the way to the twenty fi rst. They all graced the stages of this festival in its early years and passed on to those that heard them both their music and the ideas that produced it. Some of you will remember. Many of you weren’t born when they played here. The point is that they helped build a bridge between the origins of folk music and its present. They are why we, and you, are here. by Gary Cristall DEDICATIONS Page 8 DEDICATIONS CONTINUED For the fi rst time in more than twenty years, Steve Beck will not be burning the midnight oil coordinating the festival's on site box offi ce, and the VFMF will be without its key go-to guy for all things ticket. To say "he will be missed" just doesn't cover it. After a short, courageous battle with cancer, Steve died peacefully at home on February 28, 2015. Steve was a true friend of the festival. For over two decades he was unwaveringly generous with his time, talents, and skills - as well as with his good-natured and caring spirit. He was also passionate about music, and an inspired musician and songwriter. A few years ago, he recorded an album of original songs called Kissing Buddha's Daughter that spoke eloquently to his outlook on life. Copies of that album are on sale in the festival's merch tent this weekend. He leaves behind a great legacy of important work for the festival, and a huge gap that people will work hard to fi ll this weekend in his memory. Festi val Info Monte Jones Monte Jones was "the man" at the festival's main backstage gate for many years. While perhaps an unlikely-looking security presence, he was unerringly polite, always friendly, even-handed, and very strict! He was also a remarkable harmonica-player and raconteur – and a prominent citizen of The Drive. Monte left us in May of this year. In tribute Monte Jones was a scary guy Everyone said so when you met before you knew him He glared Pushing his hair back That black long half breed hair a challenge to not be afraid to risk to accept a lifelong friendship full of late nights gambling, whiskey, guitar playing and stories rodeo stories, Dave Van Ronk stories, Bill Morrisey stories, Elija Wald stories, race track stories… bad brother/good mother stories He was the highway between two solitudes solitary and strong He played harmonica up and down the drive in every club and dance hall with musicians older and younger gruff honest with ethic and heart A union man without a union A spiritual man without a church A ladies man He lived a life did Monte Jones A name he gave himself long before he knew us, long before he stood on the corner of Commercial Drive and Grant Street, with his cane and whisper voice now gentler and smaller and less scary on his way to a gig at The Libra Room, his last gig…before the bell rang and the wooden barrel was moved into Santos one last time and his voice returned just long enough to laugh and blow his harp and remind you that the world was never about the good old days just the days you live... by Wyckham Porteous Craig Stacey Long-time Security committee volunteer and Folk Festival supporter Craig Stacey lost his battle with cancer in January. He was on the Perimeter Security Team C for 30 years, serving as Team Leader with his wife Kate Lekas since 1988. Craig was always willing to lend a hand, including doing many a fence repair and pruning blackberry bushes back in the days when the brambles were part of the site. He designed and built the snack cart, which has been rolling around the site feeding and watering volunteers for 25 years. He was even a "cover boy" for the festival - appearing in the photo on the 1996 program guide cover and promo poster. It was a testament to how much the VFMF meant to Craig that he continued to volunteer the last two summers while undergoing chemo. He will be greatly missed, but his spirit will live on in the hearts of all he worked with over the years – especially the festival's Security family. 8 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 2015 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 9 Monte Jones Monte Jones was "the man" at the festival's main backstage gate for many years. While perhaps an unlikely-looking security presence, he was unerringly polite, always friendly, even-handed, and very strict! He was also a remarkable harmonica-player and raconteur – and a prominent citizen of The Drive. Monte left us in May of this year. In tribute Monte Jones was a scary guy Everyone said so when you met before you knew him He glared Pushing his hair back That black long half breed hair a challenge to not be afraid to risk to accept a lifelong friendship full of late nights gambling, whiskey, guitar playing and stories rodeo stories, Dave Van Ronk stories, Bill Morrisey stories, Elija Wald stories, race track stories… bad brother/good mother stories He was the highway between two solitudes solitary and strong He played harmonica up and down the drive in every club and dance hall with musicians older and younger gruff honest with ethic and heart A union man without a union A spiritual man without a church A ladies man He lived a life did Monte Jones A name he gave himself long before he knew us, long before he stood on the corner of Commercial Drive and Grant Street, with his cane and whisper voice now gentler and smaller and less scary on his way to a gig at The Libra Room, his last gig…before the bell rang and the wooden barrel was moved into Santos one last time and his voice returned just long enough to laugh and blow his harp and remind you that the world was never about the good old days just the days you live... Page 9 FESTIVAL DATES + HOURS July 17, 18 & 19, 2015 SITE BOX OFFICE Friday 12:00pm – 10:00pm Saturday & Sunday 9:00am – 10:00pm GATES FRIDAY East Gate open 1:00pm – 10:00pm West Gate open 1:30pm – 10:00pm GATES SATURDAY & SUNDAY East Gate open 9:00am – 10:00pm West Gate open 9:30am – 10:00pm HOURS Friday 2:00pm – 11:00pm Saturday + Sunday 10:00am – 11:00pm EVENING CONCERT MAIN STAGE Friday - Saturday 5:00pm – 11:00pm Sunday 5:30pm - 11pm Note: All schedules and times are accurate when we go to print but remain subject to change without notice. Life happens, eh? Please check the white boards at the East Gate and at the Information Tent on site for updates, or visit thefestival.bc.ca. LITTLE FOLKS VILLAGE (located by Stage 1) Friday 2:00pm – 5:00pm Saturday + Sunday 10:00am – 5:00pm FOOD VENDOR AREA Friday 1:00pm – 11:00pm Saturday 9:00am – 11:00pm Sunday 9:00am – 10:00pm ARTISAN MARKET & COMMUNITY VILLAGE Friday 1:00pm – 9:30pm Saturday + Sunday 9:30am – 9:30pm FOLK BAZAAR Friday 2:00pm – 10:00pm Saturday + Sunday 10:00am – 10:00pm Tickets and Wristbands One-day tickets and weekend passes are exchanged for wristbands at the East and West gates. Your wristband allows you to come and go from the Festival site from opening until closing, but only if it’s on your wrist. Your wristband is your access to the Festival – please do not remove it. Wristbands are NON-TRANSFERABLE AUDIENCE COURTESY The Festival reserves special areas for persons with disabilities & their companions, seniors, and those with mobility concerns. These roped-off areas are located at the sides of day stages and on a platform at the Evening Concert Main Stage. Please keep these spaces clear for those who need them. Thank you! Page 10 HARMONY We understand that this is not an all-or-nothing situation. Sometimes the music (and the musicians!) demand that we stand up and dance, and if that's the case, that's what we're going to do. For the rest of the time, we are going to ask you to continue to be respectful of those seated behind you. Thank you! There are essentially two sets of folks at our Festival – those who want to gather on their blankets and tarps after a long day and enjoy the music in seated comfort; and those who want to stand and watch their favourite artists. We think there's room for us all to enjoy the music the way we want to. As a basic rule of thumb, if you are standing watching the music, take a second to look behind you. If you are standing in front of people who are sitting down, either sit down so they can see, or move somewhere you are not blocking anyone. It's common courtesy! It's pretty simple: if you're standing in front of someone who is sitting, the person or persons behind you can't see. This leads to confl icts we'd like to avoid. SIT, STAND AND DANCE IN HARMONY There are essentially two sets of folks at our Festival – those who and tarps after a long day and enjoy the music in seated comfort; and those who want to stand and watch their favourite artists. We think there's room for us all to enjoy the music the way we want to. Tweet with Pete @VanFolkFest @VanFolkFest THEFESTIVAL.BC.C GET SOCIAL 1. Bring your program guide, open to this passport page, to each of the four festival locations listed below. 2. Get your passport page stamped at each location. 3. When you have all 4 stamps, bring your program guide to the Donations Tent. 4. Fill out an entry form for a chance to win a pair of tickets to VFMF 2016 Contest closes at 9pm, Sunday, July 19. STAMP YOUR PASSPORT TO MORE MUSIC Page 11 NATURE TENT INFORMATION BOOTH CD & MERCHANDISE TENT FOLK BAZAAR CHECK-IN TABLE We are super excited, while remaining centered and calm, to announce our third year of FREE YOGA CLASSES on site at the festival! We have morning classes so you can start your days at the festival in a peaceful and positive state of mind, or you can balance out your day with an afternoon class. All levels. No mat required. Everyone is welcome - if you have a body and can breathe, you can participate! Join our team of certifi ed yoga instructors, connect with your fellow festival-goers, move your body, tune into the vibe, and have some fun. Note that there will also be pop-up classes on-site during the day, so keep an eye out for the yellow YOGA signs. MORNING YOGA CLASSES @ Main Gate: 9:25am – 9:55am Saturday & Sunday AFTERNOON YOGA CLASSES @ West Gate: 4:25pm – 4:55pm all three days. Page 12 some ways you can support the Festival To contribute, visit thefestival.bc.ca and click on the "Donate" button Pete Seagull Become a Sustaining Donor Making a monthly donation to the festival is easy on your pocketbook, and means a whole lot of wonderful to the festival. It helps pay the rent! The good folks at the Donations: For Pete’s Sake! Tent will be happy to help you sign up. Make a Directed Contribution You can choose to direct your support to the Brian Emery Fund, established to help bring political artists to the festival. This year the UK's Grace Petrie is appearing at the festival as a result of support for this fund. You can also contribute to the Rainy Day Fund so we have money set aside for ... you know. Join the Planned Giving Program Stop by the Donations: For Pete’s Sake! Tent to pick up a brochure with information about including the festival in your will. WE’LL GIVE YOU THE WORLD. AND CHANGE. Drop by the Donations: For Pete’s Sake! Tent and make a contribution today. A donation of $20 or more gets you a tax receipt. $35 makes you a member with voting rights at the AGM. OVER 2000 ARTISTS & GROUPS HAVE PERFORMED ON OUR FESTIVAL STAGES SINCE 1978. FOLKS LIKE: PETE SEEGER BILLY BRAGG QUEEN IDA AND THE BON TEMPS ZYDECO BAND PIED PUMKIN STAN ROGERS MAVIS STAPLES DAN MANGAN THE OYSTER BAND K'NAAN BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE STEVE EARLE GILLIAN WELCH MICHAEL FRANTI THE RED CLAY RAMBLERS THE FOLK ARTISTS OF SHAANXI UTAH PHILLIPS RITA MACNEIL RICKY SKAGGS SHANE KOYCZAN BOOKMAN EKSPERYANS RONNIE GILBERT ANDREW BIRD THE WATERBOYS GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS AND ANI DI FRANCO PLAYED THE FESTIVAL LONG BEFORE SHE WAS AN ICON, BUT SHE'S ALWAYS BEEN AN INSPIRATION. SINCE THE BEGINNING, 38 YEARS AGO, WE'VE BEEN BRINGING YOU SOME OF THE WORLD'S FINEST FOLK MUSIC. AND IN THE FACE OF THE INCREASING COMMERCIALIZATION OF CULTURE, WE CONTINUE TO PRESENT ARTISTS AND MUSIC THAT TELL ANOTHER STORY ABOUT WHAT'S HAPPENING AROUND THE WORLD AND IN OUR OWN BACKYARD. Page 13 Buy a Raffle Ticket! Buy a 50/50 Ticket! When you buy ticket (or many tickets!) for the Raffl e or the 50/50, you not only support the festival - thanks! - you also have a chance to win fabulous prizes, or in the case of the new 50/50 draw, cash! Help us find a home! We continue to search for a permanent space to call home instead of being at the mercy of having to move again to make way for yet another condo, or to battle with rent increases. As we go to press, we've been turfed out of our offi ce space on Quebec Street due to no fault of our own, and are again looking for affordable office space to rent or lease as of September 1, 2015. Yes, we know – that's soon! If you have any suggestions or solutions that would solve our immediate needs, please let us know right away. If you have a house or condo you want to give us, well, that'd be even better, wouldn't it? Over the weekend, visit us at the Donations: For Pete’s Sake! Tent. Our friendly volunteers would love to meet you. Page 14 PERFORMERS' MERCHANDISE Purchase performers’ CDs, t-shirts, and other fabulous souvenir items from this year’s artists at the CD Tent, (check the map for exact location). Some CDs are only available HERE, on-site at the festival, because they’ve been brought in especially by festival performers – so shop early and shop often as stock is limited! By Sunday at 8:00pm, only Sunday Evening Concert Stage artists’ merch will be available. HOURS Friday 1:00pm – 10:00pm Saturday 10:00am – 10:00pm Sunday 10:00am – 9:00pm FESTIVAL MERCHANDISE AND CD TENT shirts gifts artist cds bottles chairs SIGNINGS Musicians will be dropping by the CD Tent all weekend to sign your swag. Be sure to check the schedule at the Festival Merchandise & CD Tent for signing times. Page 15 JUSTICE CALLING! JUSTICE JUSTICE Once again, our unions are proud to join in partnership with the Vancouver Folk Music Festival to sponsor an amazing lineup of progressive folk musicians. We believe that by working together across cultures and communities we can nurture activism, build solidarity and create a common call for justice throughout the world. On behalf of our members – many who are here this weekend – we salute the artists who inspire us and the hundreds of volunteers and staff who make the festival happen. Check out our websites: bcfed.ca • bcgeu.ca • bctf.ca • cupe.ca • cupe.bc.ca • cupw.ca • heu.org • psacunion.ca DIYET THE DOWN HIL L STRUGGLERS RORY MC LEO D T M ARY GAUTHIER GRACE PETRIE PHOTO: DIYETMUSIC.COM PHOTO: G.WILEY PHOTO:T MI MORRIS PHOTO: RORYMCLEOD.COM JUSTICE CALLING SATURDAY • 12:30 • STAGE 2 LOTS OF GOOD STUFF O P EN U NTIL 10:3 0 PM! 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val Page 16 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 2015 MEDIA Members of the media should check in at Media Will Call, located at the East (Main) Gate at West 4th Avenue, to enter the site. To set up interviews with artists and Festival organizers, go to the Media Tent, located inside the park near Stage 3. See map. LOST KIDS Make sure your children know the location of the Festival Information Tent (it’s west of the Evening Concert Main Stage, near the pond) so you can connect there if needed. INFORMATION TENT The Information Tent is located near the pond beside the Festival Merchandise & CD Tent, west of the Evening Concert Main Stage. Helpful volunteers in this tent can assist you with the following: • Finding lost items • Accepting lost items you have found • Directing you around the Festival site • Providing transit and city information • Passing along messages to your friends • Reuniting lost kids with their families • Storing your stuff in our bag check for $1 per hour • Recording your comments and suggestions Lost & Found Items not claimed during the Festival weekend will be held at the Festival offi ce until August 15, 2015. All unclaimed lost & found items are donated locally and internationally. To fi nd your lost stuff after the Festival weekend, contact us at 604.602.9798 Page 15 the folk music festival we strive to make our idyllic beachside location as accessible as possible to every fan of folk music. A variety of services are available to patrons with disabilities or mobility issues, including: ATTENDANT TICKET POLICY Individuals with disabilities or mobility issues who purchase a full-price weekend or day ticket may bring an attendant or companion at no charge. ACCESSIBILITY GUEST SERVICES GATE Located at the east side of Jericho Beach Park at the end of 2nd Avenue, accessible from the 4th Avenue transit stop you will fi nd: • Easily accessible pick-up/drop-off area • HandyDART service pick-up and drop-off • Limited parking available for those with a designated Provincial Access Parking Permit • Large-print performance schedules and maps listing Accessibility Services THROUGHOUT THE SITE • Priority viewing areas can be found at most daytime stages for elders and patrons with disabilities or mobility issues. Limited priority viewing is available near the front of the Main Stage (stage right) for evening shows. • For patrons with disabilities and their companions, a raised and covered platform located near the middle of the Evening Concert Main Stage is available for seating. • Access corridors and ramp-accessible washrooms are located throughout the site. • Service animals are welcome on site. • Designated Accessibility Volunteers can also be found throughout the festival grounds, and are identifi able by the Access logo on the back of their shirts. Our thanks to the RBC Foundation for their generous support of the Accessibility Services Program. ACCESSIBILITY SERVICES ACCESSIBILITY SERVICES Page 16 The Vancouver Folk Music Festival is committed to raising awareness about our environment, supporting sustainability initiatives, and practicing good stewardship. A big part of this is encouraging respect for the beautiful surroundings we call home every summer. We strive to keep Jericho Beach Park clean and keep our impact to a minimum, aiming for a waste-free festival. We thank our partners in this endeavor: Big Rock Brewery, Recycling Alternative, Water Matters, and TD Friends of the Environment. GETTING TO THE PARK ECO-FRIENDLY SYLE Jericho Beach Park is easily accessible by a number of eco-friendly options: public transit, carpooling, bike, or via the old fashioned way - on foot. PROTECTING THE PARK Jericho Beach Park is home to a sensitive marsh area inhabited by a wide range of plants and wildlife, including ducks, fi sh, bullfrogs, dragonfl ies, turtles, and other creatures. To minimize our impact at the park, we ask that you do not pick plants or fl owers, remove leaves or branches, enter the pond, pee in the pond, or feed the wildlife. REDUCTING WASTE No bottled water is sold on-site, so be sure to bring your own container or purchase a refi llable water bottle at the Merchandise Tent (makes a great souvenir!). Water stations are located throughout the park for refi lling your containers, FREE of charge. There are recycling and composting bins located around the park. Take all your waste items to zero waste stations. Avoid throwing recyclable items in the garbage. Compostable cups, cutlery, stir sticks, and straws. These utensils and items are used everywhere at the festival. This includes the Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) cups supplied by Big Rock Brewery in the Beer Garden. Please be sure to compost them by removing the lids and placing your cups in the cup sucker tubes attached to the zero waste stations. Please note that while City of Vancouver health regulations forbid the use of cutlery or plates from home, we do encourage you to bring your own cups and napkins. We are thrilled to bring back our reusable plate program! It's the most environmentally friendly way to feast over festival weekend! Our kitchen and all food vendors will be using multi-use plates, and a new on-site dishwasher will be keeping them squeaky-clean. As in years past, all patrons are required to pay a two-dollar deposit on their plate at the concessions, and in support of this new dishwashing initiative $1 of every two paid, will be used to maintain this service. Thankyou for your support! Environmental Stewardship Thank you for helping to leave the park in the pristine state that we found it in. Cloe Aigner ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION Festival weekend is a great time to promote environmentallyfriendly habits and raise awareness to last all year long! Located at the pond, our Nature Committee educates festival-goers on the importance of eco-systems and marine protected areas. You can also stop by Community Village booths located around the site, and visit one of a number of environmental advocacy groups. I’M A SUCKER FOR YOUR CUPS! CUPS ONLY NO LIDS “ lping to reduce compostable hauling since 2015” IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Page 17 FESTIVAL PLEASE DO’S AND DON’TS • Do not bring alcohol or controlled drugs onto the site. Alcohol will be served inside at the Big Rock Beer Garden. Please respect your fellow festivalgoers, and imbibe responsibly: loud, aggressive, or disorderly behaviour may result in removal from the festival. • Leave your pets at home (with the exception of service animals). Do not tie them up outside the festival gates, or leave them in a car. • Audio and video recordings of any kind are not permitted at concerts or workshops. • Do not climb the stage or sound equipment. • Do not use toilets marked “Universal/Disabled Access/Wheelchair Only” unless you qualify. • Please allow children and pregnant women fi rst access to toilets. • Smoking is prohibited inside the festival site and park. Please smoke outside, away from others, in a “legal” area. We suggest bringing a container for butts. • Do not enter the roped-off areas at the sides of day stages, or sit on the platform at the Evening Main Stage, as these areas are reserved for folks with physical disabilities. ACCESSIBILITY GUEST SERVICES TENT Located next to the First Aid Tent, this location provides a private, shaded rest area for personal care needs. If you require a manual wheelchair, a limited number will be available for loan, and a space to charge electric wheelchairs will be available. NEW THIS YEAR: remove lids from your cups and stack the cups in our new Cup Sucker tubes! Eric Scott 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 17 Page 18-19 Advertising Page 20 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 2015 FESTIVAL MERCHANDISE For a special souvenir from this year’s festival, head over to the Festival Merchandise tent – where you'll fi nd a fabulous assortment of tees, hoodies, water bottles, mugs, cards, posters and other one-of–akind items. This year's graphic image was created by Ola Volo, a Canadian illustrator from Kazakhstan with a distinctive style drawn from history, multiculturalism and folklore. Her detailed works bring animals, people, architecture and nature together to articulate diverse stories that are rich with symbolism. Because multiculturalism has been a very inspirational concept for her work, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival was an ideal project to work on. This year’s VFMF art is fi lled with patterns, instruments and bright colors and was inspired by the diverse music styles and cultures that are seen at Jericho Beach every year. www.olavola.com Page 18 FIRST AID If you require medical attention, our volunteer nurses, doctors, and fi rst aid attendants can be found in the First Aid Tent at the end of the yellow path, near the Evening Concert Main Stage. PREVENTATIVE ADVICE: • Protect yourself and your loved ones from the sun with hats, sunscreen (SPF 30 or higher), sunglasses, and protective clothing. • Stay hydrated! No bottled water is sold inside the festival, so please bring or buy a refi llable container. There are water stations located around the park. • Keep your shoes or sandals on while strolling or dancing in the park. Be careful of uneven ground! • Watch out for wasps and bees near the bramble bushes. Page 20 VFMF Special Projects 2015 Margaret is the host of Hot Air, the longest-running program on CBC Radio. She's also been a regular part of CBC’s The Early Edition since 2001. Margaret’s ability to tune into this city and its culture, fi nding interesting stories off the beaten track, has given her a rare insight into what makes Vancouver tick. She’s won prestigious awards including the National RTNDA (Radio-Television News Directors Association of Canada Awards) Dave Rogers Award for Best Radio Feature and has been actively involved in community outreach, devoting her time and talents to many Vancouver events. Her passions include all things food and music, playing ice hockey, and chasing her young daughter all over town. She's excited to be back at the Festival for the 7th year in a row. We are presenting what we hope is just the fi rst edition of the Young Artists Program. This new initiative is providing an opportunity for 12 young, up-and-coming musicians to learn more about both the craft and the business of music. This year's group gained new knowledge and insights into songwriting from Said the Whale and Tariq Hussain (Brasstronaut), engaged in a Q&A session with other knowledgeable music artists, attended a workshop with industry veterans as well as a recording and editing workshop off ered in partnership with Vancouver Public Library at the library's Inspiration Lab downtown. They also get to spend the weekend soaking up the wealth of talent at this year's festival – a priceless experience! The program was off ered to songwriters aged 16 to 24. We were overwhelmed with submissions from talented young local artists, and choosing only 12 participants was no easy task. We hope to be able to expand the program and content in the future, and off er this opportunity to even more aspiring young musicians next year. Join us for a free performance by this year's Young Artists! Saturday, August 15, 2-4pm Vancouver Public Library Main Branch, 350 W. Georgia Street Margaret Gallagher Page 21 Evening MC's Grant Lawrence Grant Lawrence is a leading voice in Canadian arts and entertainment. For years, the gregarious and encyclopedic Lawrence has hosted the top-rated CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence, a weekly showcase of Canadian independent music. Grant can be heard throughout the week on various CBC Radio One programs such as DNTO, All Points West, On The Coast, and various afternoon programs across the country, and has been a frequent past contributor to Q, Spark, and Sounds Like Canada. Grant also hosts many major music events, such as the Polaris Music Prize Gala, the Western Canadian Music Awards and various festivals across the country, and conducts music industry seminars and keynote addresses on music and media related topics. Prior to his work at CBC, Grant was the lead singer of the internationally acclaimed Vancouver band The Smugglers. He’s also an accomplished author. He published two books: Adventures in Solitude and The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie. Grant spends much of each summer with his family at his cabin and the rest of time playing goalie with the Vancouver arts-based championship-winning beer league hockey team, the Vancouver Flying Vees. The VFMF is thrilled to welcome a group of new Canadians to the festival for their fi rst time, off ering them a free guided visit and the chance to get to know us, our city, and the warm and friendly community of festival-goers that are so much a part of who we are, better. Our guests receive transportation to the festival, meals, a souvenir t-shirt and program guide. a pre-festival orientation, and a weekend of great music in the park. The program was created in partnership with the Inland Refugee Society and Rainbow Refugee Canada, and it was made possible by the Van Tel/Safeway Credit Union Legacy Fund Page 24 assekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba | 43 Concert: Sun 5:30pm Main Stage Sun 12:40pm Stage 2 Pokey Lafarge | 43 Concert: Fri 7:40pm Stage 3 Sat 11:20am Stage 4 Sat 3:00pm Stage 5 Sam Lee and Friends | 44 Concert: Sun 2:00pm Stage 2 Sat 1:30pm Stage 3 Sun 11:20 Stage 2 (Flora & John only) Sun 4:30pm Stage 6 The Lowest Pair | 44 Concert: Sat 12:30pm Stage 1 Fri 2:00pm Stage 1 Sat 10:00am Stage 6 Lucius | 45 Concert: Sun 6:50pm Main Stage Sun 10:00am Stage 3 Sun 12:20pm Stage 4 Bongeziwe Mabandla | 45 Concert: Sun 11:20am Stage 3 Sat 1:30pm Stage 3 Sat 4:20pm Stage 5 Sun 3:10pm Stage 6 Mama Kin | 51 Concert: Sun 8:30 Stage 3 Sat 12:40pm Stage 4 Sat 2:50pm Stage 3 Sun 3:10pm Stage 2 Matuto | 51 Concert: Fri 6:20pm Stage 3 Fri 3:30pm Stage 1 Sat 11:20am Stage 6 Rory Mcleod | 52 Concert: Sun 1:30pm Stage 1 Fri 2:00pm Stage 4 Sat 10:00am Stage 4 Sat 12:30pm Stage 2 Sun 3:05pm Stage 4 Melbourne Ska Orchestra | 52 Concert: Fri 10:05pm Main Stage Sat 7:00pm Stage 5 Sun 4:30pm Stage 2 Old Man Leudecke | 53 Concert: Sun 12:30pm Stage 5 Fri 2:00pm Stage 1 Sat 10:00am Stage 4 Sat 2:20pm Stage 4 The Once | 53 Concert: Sun 11:10am Stage 4 Sat 2:20pm Stage 4 Sat 4:10pm Stage 3 Lindi Ortega | 55 Concert: Sat 11:20am Stage 5 Fri 3:45pm Stage 2 Sat 3:45pm Stage 4 Parsonsfi eld | 55 Concert: Sun 12:20pm Stage 1 Sat 11:20am Stage 4 Sat 3:45pm Stage 4 Sun 4:30pm Stage 3 Perch Creek | 56 Concert: Sun 10:00am Stage 1 Fri 3:30pm Stage 1 Sat 10:00am Stage 1 Sat 3:00pm Stage 5 Sun 1:40pm Stage 3 Grace Petrie | 56 Concert: Sun 11:10am Stage 1 Fri 2:00pm Stage 4 Sat 12:30pm Stage 2 Sat 4:20pm Stage 5 Sun 1:40pm Stage 5 Phosphorescent | 57 Concert: Sun 8:05pm Main Stage Sun 3:10pm Stage 2 Les Poules à Colin | 57 Concert: Sun 5:20pm Stage 5 Sun 11:20 Stage 2 (Béatrix & Colin) Sun 1:40pm Stage 3 Rising Appalachia | 59 Concert: Sun 6:00pm Stage 3 Sat 2:50pm Stage 3 Sun 10:00am Stage 6 The Sadies | 59 Concert: Sat 8:30pm Stage 3 Sat 3:45pm Stage 4 Sun 4:30pm Stage 3 Said The Whale | 60 Concert: Fri 6:25pm Main Stage Sun 11:20am Stage 6 Sun 1:40pm Stage 5 Scarlett Jane | 61 Concert: Sun 4:30pm Stage 4 Sat 10:00am Stage 5 Sat 3:45pm Stage 4 Sun 10:00am Stage 3 Shtreiml & Ismail Fencioglu | 61 Concert: Sun 10:00am Stage 4 Fri 2:00pm Stage 2 Sat 10:00am Stage 6 (Ismail Fencioglu only) Sun 3:05pm Stage 4 Son Little | 62 Concert: Sat 7:15pm Stage 3 Sat 12:40pm Stage 4 Sat 4:20pm Stage 5 Söndörgö | 62 Concert: Sun 12:40pm Stage 6 Sat 10:00am Stage 6 (Atila, Erin & Benjamin only) Sat 12:40pm Stage 6 Sun 4:30pm Stage 6 The Strumbellas | 63 Concert: Sat 6:00pm Stage 3 Sat 3:00pm Stage 5 Sun 4:30pm Stage 3 Tanga | 63 Concert: Sat 3:20pm Stage 6 Sat 11:20 Stage 6 Sat 7:00pm Stage 5 Sun 1:50pm Stage 6 Richard Thompson | 64 Concert: Fri 8:50pm Main Stage Fri 3:45pm Stage 2 Trampled By Turtles | 64 Concert: Sat 9:55 Main Ivan Tucakov And Tambura Rasa | 65 Concert: Fri 5:00pm Stage 3 Fri 2:00pm Stage 2 Sat 12:40pm Stage 6 Sat 2:00pm Stage 6 The Wilderness Of Manitoba | 66 Concert: Sun 1:55pm Stage 4 Sat 1:40pm Stage 1 Sat 3:40pm Stage 2 Sun 11:10am Stage 5 Marlon Williams | 66 Concert: Sun 2:40pm Stage 1 Fri 3:45pm Stage 2 Sat 10:00am Stage 1 Sat 1:30pm Stage 3 Sun 11:10am Stage 5 Hawksley Workman | 67 Concert: Fri 7:40pm Main Fri 3:35pm Stage 4 Sat 11:00am Stage 3 Jasper Sloan Yip | 67 Concert: Sat 12:20pm Stage 3 Fri 3:35pm Stage 4 Sat 10:00am Stage 5 Sun 11:10am Stage 5 Times and listings are subject to change without notice. Please check for any schedule updates on the white boards at the East Gate. PERFORMERS + THEIR SCHEDULES 100 Mile House | 27 Concert: Sun: 4:10pm Stage 5 Sat 10:00am Stage 5 Sat 3:40pm Stage 2 Sun 11:20am Stage 6 Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson | 27 Concert: Sun: 12:30pm Stage 3 Sat 12:40pm Stage 6 Sat 4:10pm Stage 3 Sun 3:10pm Stage 6 Annie Lou | 29 Concert: Sat 11:20am Stage 1 Fri 2:00pm Stage 1 Sat 10:00am Stage 2 (Sarah & Ann Louise ) Sun 11:20am Stage 2 Matthew Barber And Jill Barber | 29 Concert: Sat 2:20pm Stage 2 Sat 11:00am Stage 3 Sun 10:00am Stage 3 Sun 3:10pm Stage 2 Beans On Toast | 30 Concert: Sun 3:10pm Stage 3 Fri 2:00pm Stage 4 Sat 10:00am Stage 4 Sat 1:40pm Stage 1 Sun 11:10am Stage 5 Lurrie Bell | 30 Concert: Sat 12:30 pm Stage 5 Sat: 8:20pm Stage 5 Sun: 10:00am Stage 2 Sun: 3:05pm Stage 4 (Lurrie and Russell only) Blind Pilot | 31 Concert: Sat: 8:40pm Main Stage Sun 11:20am Stage 6 Breabach | 31 Concert: Sat 11:20am Stage 2 Sat: 4:10pm Stage 3 Sun: 11:20am Stage 2 (Megan & Calum only) Sun: 1:40pm Stage 3 Basia Bulat | 32 Concert: Sat 7:25pm Main Stage Sat 10:00am Stage 2 Sun 12:20pm Stage 4 Bustamento | 32 Concert: Sun 7:35pm Stage 5 Sat 2:40pm Stage 3 Sousou And Maher Cissoko | 33 Concert: Sat 5:45pm Stage 5 Sat 10:00am Stage 6 (Sousou & Maher only) Sat 2:00pm Stage 6 Sun 3:10pm Stage 6 Adam Cohen | 33 Concert: Sat: 5:00pm Main Stage Diyet | 35 Concert: Sun: 3:50pm Stage 1 Sat 12:30pm Stage 2 Sat 3:40pm Stage 2 Sun 10:00am Stage 6 Cécile Doo-Kingué | 35 Concert: Sat 4:10pm Stage 1 Sat 8:20pm Stage 5 Sun 10:00am Stage 2 Sun 1:50pm Stage 6 The Down Hill Strugglers | 36 Concert: Sat 3:00pm Stage 1 Sat 12:30pm Stage 2 Sun 10:00am Stage 2 Sun 4:30pm Stage 6 Paulo Flores | 36 Concert: Sat 4:30pm Stage 6 Sun 12:40pm Stage 2 Frazey Ford | 37 Concert: Fri 5:10pm Main Stage Sat 12:40pm Stage 4 Sun 10:00am Stage 2 Sun 12:20pm Stage 4 Fortunate Ones | 37 Concert: Sun 10:00am Stage 5 Fri 3:35pm Stage 4 Sat 1:40pm Stage 1 Sun 1:40pm Stage 5 La Gallera Social Club | 38 Concert: Sun 7:15pm Stage 3 Sat 11:20am Stage 6 Sat 2:00pm Stage 6 Sun 4:30 Stage 2 Mary Gauthier | 38 Concert: Sun 3:00pm Stage 5 Fri: 3:45pm Stage 2 Sat: 12:30pm Stage 2 Sat: 4:20pm Stage 5 Jenn Grant | 39 Concert: Sat 1:40pm Stage 5 Fri 3:35pm Stage 4 Sat 11:00am Stage 3 Sun 12:20pm Stage 4 Ash Grunwald | 39 Concert: Sun 6:25pm Stage 5 Sat 10:00am Stage 1 Sat 8:20pm Stage 5 Sun 10:00am Stage 6 Sarah Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'donovan - I'm With Her | 41 Concert: Sat 6:10pm Main Stage Sat 10:00am Stage 2 Sat 2:20pm Stage 4 The Jerry Cans | 42 Concert: Sun 8:45pm Stage 5 Sat 11:20pm Stage 4 Sun 10:00am Stage 6 Sun 1:50pm Stage 6 Angélique Kidjo | 42 Concert: Sun 9:25pm Main Stage Sun 12:40pm Stage 2 Eric Scott 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 25 Page 26 Advertising Page 27 100 Mile House[ALBERTA] The name is taken from a small northern BC community. The band’s website is British. The record label is in southern Alberta and the band, a duo plus, is based in Edmonton. This puts in context, perhaps, the universality of the music created by Peter Stone and Denise MacKay, the writing, performing and life partnership that is the core of the group. They are from England – hence the website’s home. They moved to Edmonton half a dozen years ago and hooked up with multi-instrumentalist Scott Zubot. They’ll be in Vancouver with cellist Andrea Case. The town of 100 Mile House is known as the “Log Home Capital of North America” and when you hear 100 Mile House play, the name, too, makes sense. Living inside wood resonates in the music of 100 Mile House. The music is contemporary string ensemble – guitar, fi ddle, cello and other strings – along with the human voice. They once described what they do as “transatlantic folk.” The music certainly transcends any easy geographical location. The songs are universal and that is what is best about them. They tell stories, not in a linear narrative – there’s too much poetry for that – but not far away from it either. The stories and the voice that is telling them draw you in rather than grab you. You want to follow the story told in each song to its end. That is the essence of the folk tradition and one that fi ts well into the image of sitting in a wood house being told tales. It has certainly led 100 Mile House to fi nd willing ears in this country. They have recorded four albums, performed at numerous festivals and concerts and have been nominated for, and won, a variety of awards including Group of the Year and Single of the Year for their most recent recording, Wait With Me, at the 2014 Edmonton Music Awards. Congrats. It’s some Englishman’s nightmare: a Scot and an Irishman playing AC/DC covers on the pipes – Irish uilleann and Scottish border pipes, to be specifi c. It is sublime to those with a developed musical palette, a rare treat for the sonic taste buds. This is a metaphor for why folk music is alive and blowing in the UK and Ireland – young players have taken up the instruments and the tradition but they have also bent it to their wills, incorporating new approaches and repertoire. The fact that there are awards for young people playing folk music doesn’t hurt either. Both Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson have been part of that. Ross comes from Perthshire and has been piping since he was eight, in both the local Perth and District Pipe Band and the famous Vale of Atholl Pipe Band. Meeting Dougie MacLean brought him into contemporary music and winning the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year competition in 2002 helped out as well. Various stints with various bands, including the world music Salsa Celtica, helped hone his skills and broaden his musical horizons. In 2003 Ross met Irish piper Jarlath Hendrson at… yes… a piping festival. Jarlath, from Dungannon in County Tyrone, is a similarly indecently-talented prodigy. Piper since the age of 10, at 19 he won the All-Ireland Champion Uilleann Piper award. He’s won two times since. Jarlath is the only Irish person to win the BBC Radio 2 Young Musician Award. Ross and Jarlath recorded Partners in Crime in 2008 and have worked together when other commitments have permitted. Jarlath studies medicine at Aberdeen University! They continue exploring the possibilities for a duo of pipes in the folk canon and taking on contemporary tunes as well. Both Ross and Jarlath play other instruments and singing is also a possibility. Here is why folk music is going to survive for the foreseeable future. Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson [SCOTLAND/IRELAND] Page 28 Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! • 2-Oct-15 The classic Stones live album re-imagined by some of Vancouver’s finest Kay Meek Centre Greg Brown • 10-Oct-15 A rare Vancouver appearance by the beloved US singer/songwriter Electric Owl Márcio Faraco • 15/16-Nov-2015 Brazilian singer/songwriter mixes bossa nova and samba with a French twist Kay Meek Centre Studio Theatre Aurelio • 31-Jan-16 Honduran singer/songwriter performing music of the Garifuna people St. James Hall Alex Cuba • 6-Feb-16 Latin Grammy Award winning Cuban singer/songwriter Kay Meek Centre Jeff Lang • 11-Feb-16 Leading Australian roots singer/songwriter and slide guitarist St. James Hall Noura Mint Seymali • 28-Feb-16 Mauritanian hypnotic Afro-desert rock António Zambujo • 5-Mar-16 The new voice of Portuguese fado The Black Hen Travelling Roadshow Revue • 2-Apr-16 Special musical revue with Steve Dawson, Roxanne Potvin, Alvin Youngblood Hart and Russell DeCarle 34 Puñaladas • 12-Apr-16 Risqué and bold singer/guitar tango group from Argentina Presentation House Theatre Lemon Bucket Orkestra • 14-Apr-16 Canada's only balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk-super-band Capilano university 2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver CAP GLOBAL ROOTS SERIES Flex Packs on sale (save up to 20%): August 26, 2015 All tickets on sale: August 28, 2015 Box Office: 604.990.7810 Online: capilanou.ca/centre 2015-2016 Season BlueShore Financial CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS António Zambujo Noura Mint Seymali Aurelio Alex Cuba Roxanne Potvin Page 28 Sometimes it is love at fi rst listen. This is certainly the case for many with Annie Lou. The band was described as what might have happened if the legendary old timey Coon Creek Girls had gone to work building the Alaska Highway and stayed – the combination of old timey banjo-driven music and songs that carried with them some of the spirit and experiences of the Yukon where Anne Louise (Annie Lou) Genest was living. She’s moved to Vancouver Island but the spirit is still there, as are the musical settings for the stories she tells. On Tried and True, her latest recording, she’s taken a few more musical chances, expanding her old timey sound to embrace more contemporary descendants of Appalachian folk tradition, but remains true to truth telling and the celebration of life’s occasional small pleasures. Some are chronicled in In The Country, a perhaps tongue-in-cheek celebration of an idealized country life. Envy Won’t Leave Me is not idealized but rather a tale of broken love with the wish that “I could drink like you… acting like nothing happened at all… lie like you…” – a series of enviable traits that paint a not-sovery-enviable portrait. It is a bluegrass classic as good as anything written in the genre. Annie Lou continues to serve up some beautiful tunes as well, playing guitar and banjo. She is helped in that regard by the talents of musicians she has toured and recorded with. Max Heineman handles string bass and vocals when he is not teaching or playing with the Foggy Hogtown Boys bluegrass band. Andrew Collins brings his mandolin, fi ddle and voice to the table. He, too, has a variety of projects including the Creaking Tree String Quartet and a Juno nomination a couple of years back for Best Instrumental Album. Sarah Hamilton on fi ddle and vocals is another Yukon veteran who has moved to southern climes, in her case Toronto, where she plays in both the jazz ensemble Combo Royale as well as The Living Daylights Stringband. Page 28 Annie Lou[BC/ONTARIO] Matthew Barber and Jill Barber [ONTARIO/BC] The Early Edition @CBCEarlyEdition With Rick Cluff Weekdays 5 to 8:30am Page 29 When you hear of sibling duets at folk music festivals you might expect something along the lines of the classic American old timey pairings like the Louvin, Delmore or Monroe Brothers. This ain’t one of those. Each of the two has their very own style and career. Jill is a singer’s singer embracing just about every popular North American musical style. She is proud to write songs in the tradition of the Brill Building where so many classics saw the light of day in the hands of writers from Carole King to Bobby Darin. In fact she name checks King along with Etta James and Ray Charles as her drugs of choice. Mix those together, close your eyes and imagine the sound. Add some Piaf and you’ll see she is one of the best singers in the country, several countries in fact. She’s made a bunch of records, teaches at Capilano University and generally gets around. Brother Matthew is best known as a Toronto-based singersongwriter. His infl uences are a somewhat diff erent take on Americana than his sister’s, a bit rockier and a lot more country. His latest solo project is the soundtrack for a musical called Haunted Hillbilly. He, too, has a half-dozen recordings and a whack of touring to his credit. So… two siblings who live a couple of thousand miles apart and inhabit very diff erent parts of the music biz forest get together to do a show called The Family Album. The idea of two disparate artistic visions united by blood taking on a project that combines their approaches while maintaining their individual style is an exercise in courage. Think 52nd Street meets Thunder Road. The Family Album is a collection of originals composed by the siblings as well as covers from popular music over the past 50 years. The voices of these two are awe inspiring on their own. Combined, they restate the musical truth that there is nothing that equals the voices of siblings. Page 32 Beans on Toast The name conjures up the most emblematic of English proletarian cuisine – cheap and easy, full of protein and prone to fl atulence, but generally good for you. So it is with the eponymous artist in question. He is very much full of beans, as we say on this side of the Atlantic. Armed with a guitar and looking a bit like Marcel Marceau, Beans on Toast – Jay McAllister – carries on the tradition of taking no prisoners while wielding his talents in the service of all that is good in the world and taking down all that is bad. The good things are those that generations of British workers fought for, from the Chartists to the Miners Union. The bad? Tories, racists, homophobes, anti-immigrant ranters. There’s a good deal of Rory McLeod and a helping or two of Billy Bragg as well. Before that there is Ewan MacColl, John Hasted and A.L. Lloyd – the unholy trio of the fi fties folk revival – pioneers of the unabashed song as weapon. The Chicken Song is a ringing denunciation of how chicken is produced, while Beer and a Burger laments the death of the traditional English pub. Both songs make important points, with humour in the former and pathos in the latter. There is much more to Beans on Toast than provocative language and an attitude. Beans on Toast is a British success story. He’s been around for a decade or so but made his breakthrough at the Glastonbury Festival in 2007. Since then he has made a bunch of records and won a substantial following. He has performed for tens of thousands of folks as an opening act and found his own audience at home and now abroad. Last year he landed in America for the fi rst time. Now he is making his Western Canada debut. Perhaps best known for his political songs and rough language, he is also capable of a great love song like New Orleans Honeymoon that manages to evade any mention of Hurricane Katrina, rather focusing on the earthlier delights of the Crescent City. Lurrie Bell [ILLINOIS] Fontella Bass once said that the difference between blues and gospel was simply that in blues songs she sang “baby” and in gospel “Jesus.” The feeling was the same in both – a deep passionate expression that combined joy and pain. Fellow denizen of Chicago and fellow performer of blues and gospel, Lurrie Bell sounds like he would agree. His last two recordings – one secular, the other religious – share a holy embrace of the object of the singer whether it be a lover or saviour. Lurrie Bell comes by it honestly. His father was legendary harmonica virtuoso Carey Bell and besides the genetic material that might account for the son’s talent, there is also the environment, growing up surrounded by the very best practitioners of the Chicago blues. He spent a bunch of time in Mississippi and Alabama with his grandparents where he absorbed the gospel tradition. Choosing guitar rather than harmonica, he played with his father and at 17 he was part of the band of Willie Dixon, author of some of the classic blues songs, including Spoonful. He went on to play with Koko Taylor and a whole bunch of other folks. Basically, Lurrie Bell is an integral part of the living tradition that chronicles the blues from its rural origins at the end of the 19th century to its current relevance at the beginning of the 21st. And relevance is the key to this. Lurrie Bell is no exercise in resuscitating a near-forgotten genre. This is vibrant contemporary music rooted in the tradition but looking forward and not backward. With over 50 recordings to his credit as leader or sideman, Lurrie Bell has been nominated for a Grammy, and has received multiple Blues Music Award nominations as Best Guitarist and Best Traditional Male Blues Artist by the Blues Foundation. In 2012 his recording of gospel songs, The Devil Ain’t Got No Music, was honoured with the Prix du Blues award from the prestigious French L’Académie du Jazz for the Best Blues Recording of that year. This is the real thing. Beans on Toast [UK] Page 31 Blind Pilot [OREGON] We won’t last long but we’re giving it our best try,” Israel Nebeker wrote in the title song to the band’s last recording a few years back. It was a not a direct reference to the band but some grander vision, yet it could also apply to Blind Pilot. But he would be wrong because Blind Pilot has already lasted a decade and shows no sign of stopping. Blind Pilot is based in Portland, a wonderful place for music by the sound of what emerges. Perhaps it is being on the road between Seattle and San Francisco that has given Portland artists so many infl uences and so much individuality. The band started as a duo of Israel on guitar and vocals and Ryan Dobrowski on drums and percussion. They added folks along the way and now Israel and Ryan are joined by Luke Ydstie on bass, Kati Claborn on banjo and dulcimer, Ian Krist on vibraphone and Dave Jorgensen on trumpet and keyboards. It gave the band the sound it needed to survive on big stages as well as more intimate venues. It also creates a symphonic array of sounds that fall somewhere between just about every genre. They did a West Coast tour by bicycle back in 2008 and toured in Europe opening for Counting Crows and back home with fellow Portlanders The Decemberists in 2012 after the release of their second, and latest full-length recording, We Are the Tide. From Coos Bay to Bologna, from Letterman to Ellen, the band has managed to reach millions of folks with songs that are intimate and thoughtful and music that is laid back and lyrical. It’s no small feat. The band seems to be at ease with who they are and where they are. They don’t overdo anything, from recording to touring. Comfortable in their own creative skin, this is a group that merits the indie badge and wears it with pride. There is a good deal of vision in this Blind Pilot. Breabach [SCOTLAND] Absolutely f----n’ gorgeous” is a short description of the music of Breabach. Very much in the footsteps of classic seventies revival bands (think Bothy Band) focusing on the beauty of acoustic instruments and the voice and language rather than the rockier treatment the Scottish tradition would receive a bit later on, Breabach is a treat to the ears. Not that they are afraid to step on the gas as in an original twin pipe tune, The New Paradigm. It’s clear that if the band wants to get folks up and spraining ankles dancing about, they can. The point is that they want to a do a lot more, like explore the beauty of slow airs and traditional songs in Gaelic. Calum MacCrimmon (pipes/whistles/bouzouki), Ewan Robertson (guitar/vocals), James Mackenzie (pipes/fl ute/ whistles), Megan Henderson (fi ddle/vocals/stepdance) and James Lindsay (double bass) have been on a 10-year roll ever since they won the Open Stage award at the Celtic Connection Festival in 2005. Since then they have received many recognitions from their peers from the Scots Trad Music Awards to a nomination for best group in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards last year. Perhaps their most wonderful accomplishment was to win the curmudgeonly heart of the veteran music writer Karl Dallas who, hearing the band a few years back, exclaimed that they had revived “my long-held belief that there is indeed life after folk.” Breabach have also toured widely in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. Their individual accomplishments are impressive and varied – heck, Calum started on the pipes in Edmonton! However this is an ensemble with an ensemble sound. There is no discernible front person. Breabach is a collective celebration of the Scottish tradition and a few of its cousins abroad. In a description of their latest CD, Urlar, they talk about treating the tradition tastefully and the tradition seems to have responded. The word urlar can be translated as “theme” and the theme of this band is making a seamless connection between the tradition, the present and the future. Page 32 Basia Bulat [ONTARIO] It’s been a while since a woman with an autoharp captured the hearts of a Massey Hall full house – perhaps Sylvia Tyson back in the day. The comparison is not entirely inappropriate. The voice has something of the bluesy audacity of one of Canada’s great singers and songwriters. Basia Bulat is that uncommon combination of a commercially-successful artist who also produces interesting music and songs with heart and integrity. This is no capitulation to selling as many whatevers as possible. This is an artist who has a vision and is going to project it, damn the torpedoes! Her music is a compendium of styles that range across pop and contemporary folk from your basic rock to a spare acoustic performance accompanied by a charango, which she plays well. How? Where? In her second recording she tells us: “I wrote on these walls / A simple charm / To keep the wounds at bay.” Maybe that is where the lyrics come from – lyrics of self-doubt, self-examination and self-pride. In the title song of her latest, Tall Tall Shadow, she says, “You can’t run away / When you know that the tall, tall shadow / Tall tall shadow / The tall tall shadow / Tall tall shadow / Is yours…. Tear it apart / Your own confession / Made in the dark.” There is a continuity there of merciless reflection that makes confessional and occasionally accusatory songwriting work when it is really good and allows us to inhale something that gives us insight into who we are. This is what has made some Canadian songwriters world artistic treasures over the years since the idea of the folksinger took hold, and Ms. Bulat may well be emerging as one of those. Whatever happens, today Basia Bulat is a bright, shining gem of a songwriter with some pretty hot accompanists, a whole bunch of great tunes and performance abilities honed to a fine edge. Bustamento [AUSTRALIA] Like Canada, Australia is a country of immigrants and diverse cultural expressions. The indigenous culture is either Aboriginal or Bush Band neo-country. If you are not from that tradition or want to do something else, you pretty well have to make it up yourself out of whatever you have at hand. For Bustamento, it is located in another island or set of islands far away from their own – The Caribbean – and the shores that enclose it, including Mexico and New Orleans. The Mento in Bustamento refers to a prereggae Jamaican popular music style. One of the best interpreters, who some veteran festival-goers might recall, are The Jolly Boys. Well, Nicky Bomba, inspiration behind and front man of Bustamento, has used that as a solid base for the band. Nicky is originally from yet another island, neither Australasian nor Caribbean. He is from Malta, although he arrived in Australia as an infant. He’s been drumming since he was eight and touring since his teens. The names of the bands he’s led or been in would take up more space than we have. Let’s just say that Nicky has been around and done just about everything you can do in the music business on and off stage. Two of the bands he currently leads are here this weekend – Bustamento and Melbourne Ska Orchestra. We’ll deal with the latter below. Bustamento, starting with a Caribbean fl air, has become a more global entity. Their latest recording, Intercontinental Journal #7, gives some indication of that. Ethiopia, Morocco, Jamaica, Trinidad and his birthplace Malta all have pages in this journal along with jazz and anything else that Nicky thinks fi ts. With percussion, horns, steel pan, guitar and vocals, Nicky and his associates are able to serve up an inspired music feast that makes you believe, even if briefl y, that the world could be a great place where cultures would mix and everybody could get along. Cissoko [SENEGAL/SWEDEN] The actions of two very different fathers, in two very different cultures, underlie the unlikely duo of Sousou and Maher Cissoko. Born and raised in Senegal in a large family of griots (oral tradition preservers and interpreters), Maher was thrown out of the house by his father – a message to him to find his own way in the world. He moved first to Mali where he immersed himself in the Mandinka tradition and then to Germany where he found a diff erent approach, integrating flamenco, jazz, reggae and more into his music. Meanwhile in Sweden, Hagberth Gottlow was growing up also immersed in music, living in a house with a room full of instruments with a musician father and two musician brothers. Violin at four was followed by piano, guitar and recorder. When she was 10 her father began to play music with the Gambian kora player, Alagi Mbye. Hagberth fell in love with the 21-stringed African harp and followed Alagi to Gambia to study it. Confronted by the question of Gambians as to whether or not she had her own culture, she also studied and performed Swedish folk songs as well as baroque music. On a visit to Senegal at the invitation of one of Maher’s brothers she met Maher and became Sousou Cissoko, a rare woman kora player. The result of that meeting is a delightful repertoire of instrumental music and powerful songwriting. These two jalis (a regional name for griots) carry on the ancient tradition of using music to tell vital stories. One song on their latest recording, Africa Moo Baalu, is dedicated to a Senegalese woman who fought French colonialism during the Second World War. Another chronicles the pain of poverty – "Poverty is like being in prison/ To live in slavery wanting to be free." The Cissokos have taken their songs around the world, recorded three albums since 2008 and generally emerged as important artists in the African music diaspora. Here they will be joined by Andreas Unge on bass, Johan Jansson on drums and Samba Ndokh on percussion. Adam Cohen [QUÉBEC] It is not easy for a child to follow their father into the family business. It is even more of a challenge when your father is an internationally revered icon of poetry and song. Talk about tough competition. It is a testimony to Adam’s abilities and courage that he has not only invited the inevitable comparison with Leonard but even looks at their relationship in his songs. It’s an impressive thing but only one reason why you want to pay serious attention to this singer-songwriter. First, he is no recent arrival on the scene. He has been writing songs and having them recorded by others since the mid-nineties. Second, as he says, “Forget that I am his son. I was tutored in lyric writing by Leonard Cohen and I had his sensibilities to draw upon.” Third, he has had enough tough experience in the music business “chasing a sound that was not entirely my own” that now he is very much his own man, so to speak. This comes across exceptionally well on When We Go Home, his latest recording. He was given some advice, it seems, described in Song of Me and You. "Write me a song she said / Get your guitar and bring it back to bed / Don’t make it too sad or too pretty/ No metaphors, don’t be too witty." And that was certainly not from his father. He has followed these instructions and come up with a series of searingly-honest ballads and (mainly) secular hymns, and an ambiguous one that is somewhere in between the two which deals with Dad. “And I’ll be the one with his father’s books and guns / his breath inside my lungs and his words upon my tongue." He lives part of the time in the house on the Greek island of Hydra that his father bought back in 1961. He also manages the painting collection of his father’s work. However, despite the voice and phrasing, the ideas of Adam Cohen are very much his and would be well worth the listen whatever his parentage and name. Basia Bulat [ONTARIO] Bustamento [AUSTRALIA] Sousou And Maher Join our online gallery Tag your photos #vfmf WIN FESTIVAL SWAG! 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 33 Page 34 Advertisement Page 35 Diyet [YUKON] The Yukon has produced an uncommon amount of music for a territory with less than 38,000 people – not even the size of a modest town most places. Blame the weather; there is lots of time when it’s dark most of the day and too cold to do much. Diyet is almost a poster child for Canadian clichés and diversity. The cliché is being born in a tent and raised in the bush in a traditional family. The diversity is her being the product of her sub-Arctic-Southern Tutchone-Japanese-Tlingit-Scottish family background. Oh yeah, her Japanese grandmother was an opera singer and Diyet left the Yukon for Vancouver to study opera. It didn’t take but she did get a music degree from the University of Victoria, a heap of experience and songs published in Japan, Canada and Europe. Five years ago, she decided to return home to Burwash Landing, Yukon, and make a record. The Breaking Point went on to receive nominations for Best New Artist and Songwriter of the Year at the Aboriginal People’s Choice Music Awards and Album of the Year at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards. Her second one, When You Were King, continues to combine songs of place with songs about the world. “Workin’ people keep a workin’ / poor man stays poor / one hand on the bottle... my heart beats like a drum for you.” On What I Want she denounces a whole parcel of societal ills. She knows what they are and uses her voice and brain to try to call attention to what is wrong and to make a few modest suggestions as to what might make things better. In addition to her musical activities she is also chair of the Kluane Corporation and has been deputy chief of her First Nation. Her music is bluesy contemporary but the vision is an old and well-rooted one. As Diyet says, “Yesterday, fi shing for our dinner on the ice; today, on the stage singing for you” – it’s curious, but a curiously eff ective mix. Cécile Doo-Kingué [QUÉBEC] Bloodstained Vodka just about says it all. Dedicated to the LGBT community in Russia, it captures the essence of a traditional delta blues and combines it with a contemporary relevance and a militant solidarity. This is what makes great art – a solid grounding in the tradition, a capable set of hands and vocal chords and something important to say. Put it together and you’ve got Cecile Doo-Kingue. Not that this is an attempt to channel Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith or Memphis Minnie – there is a solid contemporary feeling in a lot of what Cecile does. She’s comfortable with an African lick and a French lyric too. And there‘s a bit of Nina Simone and some jazz-funk as well. Heck! There’s a lot going on and it’s all good… better than good. Born in New York to Cameroonian parents, she’s also lived in France before settling in Montreal. There she has become an organic part of the scene, rubbing shoulders and sharing stages with folks like blues icon Michael Jerome Brown and the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir, among others, while opening shows for African music legends like Manu Dibango and Angelique Kidjo. She’s got three recordings out, the last of which, Anybody Listening Pt. 1: Monologues, is the fi rst, and solo acoustic part, of a trilogy exploring “blues roots and life in their myriad of aspects.” Stay tuned for Dialogues full band, Communion live. An organizer as well as a writer and performer, Cecile has co-founded Chick Pickin’ Mondays, an evening promoting women singer-songwriters, if you fi nd yourself in Montreal on a Monday. Capable of celebrating life in her music, and chronicling life’s challenges, to be polite, Cecile is also committed to using it to deal with social issues. Bloodstained Vodka, a denunciation of the indiff erence of the Olympic movement to Russian homophobia, is one. There are others addressing the persistence of racism and violence. Cecile Doo-Kingue takes her place in a long line of committed, strong women artists using their art to defi ne, delight and denounce. Page 36 The Downhill Strugglers [NEW YORK] Brooklyn has a long history of producing great American traditional artists. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott came from there almost 70 years ago and many others followed. The Down Hill Strugglers – Eli Smith, Jackson Lynch and Walker Shepard – carry on the tradition of serving up some superb old timey tunes. The band is very much in the spirit of two of the fi rst serious urban old timey revival superstars – The New Lost City Ramblers and The Holy Modal Rounders. It is therefore no surprise that John Cohen, veteran of that august ensemble, The Ramblers, has played with the Strugglers. In fact he recorded a whole record with them when they were called The Dustbusters. It is also no surprise that the group came together hanging around Modal Rounder Pete Stampfel’s house. This isn’t déjà vu, but it sounds pretty close. Whatever the moniker, the tradition has clearly been passed on. From the mountains where Cohen and fellow collectors picked up the music, to the streets of Greenwich Village back in the day, to a new generation of young afi cionados, these guys come by the music honestly and play it with the respect it deserves. Between the three members they play fi ddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, harmonica, jew’s harp and pump organ. They all sing. Unlike a number of ensembles who have adapted the music of the rural south to modern times – adding electric instruments and frog-marching the tradition forward – this is a tribute to the way it was. Both approaches have their strengths but this is clearly a project that has made a choice. The clarity and honesty of that choice is the strength of the band. You can’t tell the originals, if there are any, from the covers. And that is a compliment. It shows in some of the gigs they play. You would have to be pretty close to the true vine to play at The Rabbit Hash General Store in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, or The Crooked Road’s Mountains of Music in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. They have. ’Nuff said Paulo Flores [ANGOLA] Used to be, Angolan songwriters wrote and sang about the struggle for independence, civil war and revolution. These days it is more likely than not to be about the challenges of hyper-development and the unequal distribution of oil wealth. Paulo Flores is certainly singing about these issues. Flores was born in 1972, three years before the end of Portuguese colonialism and the long civil war between factions. He grew up both in the capital Luanda and in Lisbon. By the time he was 16 he had released his fi rst recording. Paulo sings in Portuguese and Kimbundu. The most prevalent style he uses is called semba. It is a modifi cation of samba in both spelling and form. It is very much in the Lusitanian – i.e. pan-Portuguese genre. You hear the Brazilian songwriters like Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento, the music of Cabo Verde and fado as well. Semba has the lyricism of Portugal and the strong rhythms of Africa. It is both a beautiful carrier of Paulo’s lyrics and a useful tool for dancing, especially the kuduro and kizomba dance crazes. Paulo is a singer and composer but mainly he is a poet, celebrating his country and addressing the things that can make it better. He celebrates semba music: “Semba is the street corner where people gather, it is spring rain, it is life, it is death. Semba is my anguished cry, looking at our life head on, semba is sweat, semba is people… the semba that brings freedom, the semba that is on our fl ag.” In Angola That Sings – Angola Que Canta, he writes about his country. In Bodas he looks at love. Paulo Flores is both chronicler of his country and a poet who looks at personal issues as well as societal. With Simão (Tedy ) Nsingi, a veteran of the legendary Franco band, on electric guitar, Antonio Adolfo (Pirika) on acoustic, Jeremias (Mias) Galheta on bass, Armando Gobliss on keyboards, João Ferreira handling percussion and Hélio Cruz on drums, Paulo Flores introduces contemporary Angolan music to the festival. Page 37 Frazey Ford [BRITISH COLUMBIA] It sounds like the Stax/Volt Revue is headed this way – Frazey Ford even holds up an Otis Redding album in the video for her song Done about getting rid of unwanted romantic baggage. The video is fi lmed in East Vancouver. This is very much a local artist. Her parents came here to get away from the Viet Nam war. They were part of the hippie commune scene that is now laughed at but was a pretty serious attempt to make a new and more humane life. That struggle continues in Frazey Ford’s music. A member of local heroines, The Be Good Tanyas, for a decade or so, Ms. Ford then took the solo route to tell her own story, one she describes as “moved by motherhood, earth and land.” She released her fi rst solo album on Vancouver’s Nettwerk label in 2010 and has just released a second, Indian Ocean. Her voice sounds like it has spent time in Memphis. It has – she recorded the record there. She worked with legendary soulsters the Hi Rhythm Section at equally legendary Royal Studios. The vision, however, is entirely Frazey’s. It’s tough stuff . On Done she addresses someone who was once an object of aff ection with anything but: "I was taking every hit from you / You drive-by-shooting son-of-a-bitch / And I'm done ... / Well you criticize by numbers / You hammer at the roots / Wait for me to fuck up to fi nd yourself some proof / And I'm done / You're just stoking the hatred of a story line / While you hide behind decorum and a fake smile." There’s many a woman who wished she had written those words. That is not all there is. Indian Ocean deals with betrayal and loss but also survival. In a way it’s the story that brought Frazey’s folks to Canada – fi ghting back, surviving and making a decent life out of every bad thing thrown at you. That makes it resonate with folks. That makes it folk music. Fortunate Ones [NEWFOUNDLAND] It is a sign, we suppose, that Andrew James O’Brien and Catherine Allan describe themselves as a “Canadian pop-folk duo” even though they tag themselves “Blissful Newfoundland Folk Pop Duo weaves hope, harmony and heart.” Both are true but it wasn’t long ago that few artists from The Rock would have used Canadian as an adjective. It speaks to the comfort that Newfoundland artists have found – and Fortunate Ones are not alone – in making music that is not clearly defi ned by place. You wouldn’t know where they were from by listening to the voices, the music or the words. It is simply really good songwriting. Andrew is from Mount Pearl, a suburb, more or less, of St. John’s. Catherine is from the “west coast” – Corner Brook. They met in St. John’s. He heard her sing. It was love at fi rst listen. He asked her to sing with him on a UK tour. She said yes. They suggest that “one of the core messages (is) sometimes the most important decision you can make is to just say YES.” Catherine grew up in a musical family. She studied classical piano, taught herself guitar on the sly, and picked up an accordion her brother brought home. Andrew came on the East Coast music scene as a singer-songwriter earning a Best Pop Recording for his debut album at the 2012 East Coast Music Awards. Their recording, The Bliss, is out and about on Rose Cousins’ Old Farm Pony Records. It’s an Atlantic Canadian aff air. There are tributes and guest appearances from a number of East Coast artists from Tom Powers to Jenn Grant. The heart of it is the two voices and the poetry. The images are striking and remain. “We are glowing embers in the dark / A billion tiny timeless glowing sparks / Long to burn but meant to fade away / A lifetime is the passing of a day.” Or “Live by the choices that you made / Don’t let the light inside you fade / Babe you can burn out when you’re old / Let time take your mind but not your soul.” And that’s just two of them. It’s beautiful. We are the fortunate ones, getting to hear these two. 2015 Vancouver Folk Music Festival 37 Page 38 La Gallera Social Club [VENEZUELA] Venezuela is known for many things – Hugo Chavez, oil, 21st century socialism and chocolate. Oh yes! Chocolate. Some say Venezuelan chocolate is the best in the world. The Venchi folks in Italy swear by it. Try the Venezuelan El Rey brand. Another tasty Venezuelan export is La Gallera Social Club. This is not a place in the physical sense, although the reference is to a chicken coop, but rather a space where the mind and feet and hips can dwell. It is also three core musicians, with help as required, who have produced a unique Venezuelan popular music. One of their most recent songs is, in fact, a celebration of chocolate, with a chorus that sums up a lot of the band’s purpose – to use the folkloric traditions of their homeland as the base to build a new Venezuelan popular music. The chorus also puts forward the Bolivarian unity of the peoples of Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Panama around a love of chocolate, but also around a love of grander themes – “the protest of the oppressed people with a touch of bright hopes.” Miguel Angel Romero, bass, keyboard and vocals and Alexis Jose Romero, guitar and vocals, started the Gallera ball rolling. They are joined by Peter Joseph Junior Reinders on drums and Rodrigo González-Miqueles on keyboard, accordion and fl ute. The music is feisty and festive with lots of infl uences from one of Latin America’s most diverse musical cultures. Indigenous, Spanish and African are all present and accounted for. So are some exotic electronic additions. It is a long way from the early nueva cancion of Venezuelan songwriter Ali Primera and the generation of the sixties, seventies and eighties. The band is from Maracaibo in Zulia state. Their goal is to “recover, enhance and rescue everything which has been left aside and forgotten.” It’s a tall order, but with three recordings, a very active touring career and a growing audience in North America, South America and Europe, they are on their way to getting it done. Mary Gauthier [TENNESSEE] The very thought of sharing an opinion with The Wall Street Journal is a bit terrifying but when they laud Mary Gauthier as “one of Americana’s most admired artists across the US and… around the world” it’s hard not to agree. Mary Gauthier has been here before and she’ll more than likely be here again. Why? Because she is simply one of the best chroniclers of the human condition in any artistic discipline and she tells tales that need to be heard. They are not all easy tales to listen to. Mary didn’t come up easy. Adopted, a teen runaway, heroin addict, she was redeemed not by music but by cooking – she was a very successful chef and restauranteur. Then came sobriety and then songwriting. She was well into her 30s when she wrote her fi rst song. She chronicles all this, or rather some of it, in her songs. Many of them are like noir fi lms – you hang on the edge wondering what will happen to the characters, hoping they are all right, knowing that the chances are they aren’t. You can track these stories over half a dozen albums from Filth and Fire to Drag Queens and Limousines to The Foundling, a double CD about her adoption. There’s too many to list here but each one is worth listening to. Triumphs and defeats are plenty in her songs. Oscar Wilde wrote that “outcasts always mourn.” It’s on his tomb. But sometimes they also celebrate and to some degree Mary Gauthier does both. Her latest collection of songs is Trouble and Love. It was recorded as sparely as you can get without simply doing it in your bedroom. You’ll hear lots of the songs at the festival. She describes them: “This record is about losing an attachment I actually made…” but it is also about realizing that “I’ve got a strength that I never had before.” That’s the celebrate part. Come listen to tales of a survivor. Michele Gazich will play violin and viola with Mary. Page 39 Jenn Grant [NOVA SCOTIA] Jenn Grant has been a presence on the Canadian music scene for a good decade now – one of the ‘new’ generation of East Coast musical wunderkinds. In 2012 Jenn Grant, Prince Edward Island-born, Halifax-based, awardwinning singer-songwriter, did what thousands do; she went to Spain and walked the medieval pilgrim’s trail to Santiago de Compostela. Part of the reason was to deal with/process the death of her mother, who was a profound infl uence on her as an artist. She also went to Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, one of the world’s wonders for those who love life. During the two experiences, a bunch of songs took shape – none of them in Spanish or Catalan or identifi ably from there. Even Spanish Moon, under which “they were too kind in the hospitality suite,” is more Jenn Grant and North American than anything else, as is Barcelona, although it is set there. It would be romantic to think that the songs were written in a café off the Ramblas or in the Barrio Gotico, where Picasso caroused as a youth, but they weren’t. The songs on the recording that emerged from her trip, Compostela, were written in a trailer next to her home in Nova Scotia. There she went every day after her return and debriefed herself of the accumulation of thoughts and feelings. Never second guess the muse! The songs, whether inspired by Barcelona, her family, her life or, like American Man, or the bluesy Canadian Maple Grove, made up, are fi nely wrought with images that stick in the mind. The musical settings owe a good deal to another family member – Jenn’s producer husband, Daniel Ledwell, who helped create the remarkable sounds that make the album the double Juno nominated success it is. Happily, he will be touring with Jenn so the live performance possibilities are something to look forward to. Ash Grunwald [AUSTRALIA] The itinerant bluesman is an iconic figure in music. Generally the setting is the Mississippi Delta and not the backcountry of Australia. That said, Ash Grunwald has wandered the back roads of Australia and documented it to boot, in a series called Road Dogs. It captures the thrill of the road – the iffy bars, iffier food and sometimes overenthusiastic audiences. It also captures the extraordinary feel for the blues that Ash Grunwald has acquired. Listen to him sing the Howlin’ Wolf classic Smokestack Lightning and you are likely to be wondering about how such a thing came to be. Apparently Mr. Grunwald was not stolen by Australians from a delta hospital at birth but was raised by an African father and Australian mother in Melbourne, a city of culture and diversity. His parents played him songs from both Africa and Australia and America. It was the blues songs that took. Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Junior Wells – the legendary players who took the blues from Southern folklore to the big city and plugged them in as well. Ash (short for Ashley) fell in love and is still smitten. He can play acoustic by himself or with a few friends or with a full band. He also writes his own songs. One of Ash’s originals is based on a true story of his encounter with a shark and his rescue by a pod of dolphins. Now THAT is truly an Australian blues. River, a song he co-wrote, is a political “call to those who are fed up with being played the fool.” Over almost a decade and a half Ash Grunwald has built a career in his home country. He’s won about every award to be won and explored a variety of sounds. His recordings are now in two-digit territory. Lately he has been fashioning an international career. This is not his fi rst visit to Vancouver; he played a gig at the Fox Cabaret last February. For most, however, this is one of the artists who is going to make this year’s festival memorable. Page 40 Advertisement Page 41 I'M WITH HER Sara Watkins [CALIFORNIA] Sarah Jarosz [TEXAS] Aoife O’Donovan [NEW YORK] A couple of years back, Sara Watkins came to this festival with her countrified sound and great original songs, and made many fans. Now she’s back with some friends. The collaboration between these three talented women began, appropriately enough, at another festival – that’s what festivals can do. At the Telluride Bluegrass Festival last year these three, who had run into each other before, did a bit of singing and playing together and found that it was good! Six months or so later they gave their debut performance as a trio at the Edinburgh Celtic Connections Festival. It too was good. In fact you can search out their fi rst performance ever on YouTube and BBC Radio. It’s beautiful – great voices, great playing, great songs. Fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin. Bluegrass? Yes. Old timey? Yes. More? Yes! That old term supergroup might not be inappropriate here. Sara comes from California and was a founder of Nickel Creek back in 1989. She was a prodigy. She has had a successful career since then with various ensembles and situations. She writes great songs too. Sarah – don’t be confused – is from Texas and another prodigy. Barely in her 20s she has three records to her credit and a degree from the New England Conservatory of Music; oh yeah, and a host of Grammy nominations. She is adept – virtuosic in fact – on octave mandolin, banjo, guitar and mandolin. She writes great songs too. Aoife, pronounced EE-f ə, (it’s Irish and means radiant and joyful) comes from Boston. She too picked up a degree at the New England Conservatory and then co-founded Crooked Still, one of the best ‘new timey’ string bands around. They were here a couple of years back too. Her voice became that band’s trade mark. She writes great songs too. So… three exceptionally talented women with diverse musical abilities, a love for traditionally based American music, phenomenal vocal abilities and an ear for great songs by them or others. Hold on to your hats! Page 42 The Jerry Cans [NUNAVUT] A The jerry can is a 20-litre can designed to hold extra gasoline. Invented in the thirties in Germany – hence “jerry” – it is now omnipresent in places where distances are great and gas stations are few, like Nunavut. Jerry cans are useful vessels for the fuel that keeps you going and, therefore, a solid metaphor for the artistic fuel created by this Iqaluit-based ensemble. The heart of The Jerry Cans is one of those unlikely and idiosyncratic pairings that can make great music. In this case it was the meeting between Iqaluit-raised, white CBC producer, songwriter, singer and guitarist Andrew Morrison and Nancy Mike, now a nurse, Inuk accordionist and vocalist. Listening to the Inuktitut singing of Morrison you might wonder how and why he sounds so authentic, given most non-Inuk rarely learn much of the language. The credit for this is Nancy’s father. When Andrew asked for Nancy’s hand, he responded, “on one condition.” Andrew had to “learn to speak.” He did. The result is a collection of fi ne songs with distinct accompanists lying on a bed of music that features both Inuk and European sounds. Oh… and a new baby named Iqaluk. The other members of The Jerry Cans are from Nunavut and “the south,” if such a term fi ts the Halifax home of fi ddler Gina Burgess. “Imagine Inuk throat singing mixed with the fi re and energy of a Celtic band in a packed bar, and then add a hint of reggae, the gruff passion of Johnny Cash, powerful fi ddle parts and rough-hewn vocals in two disparate languages” is what they say about themselves. They’ve made two records and have attained stardom at home and growing audiences in their ventures south. The songs are a reaffi rmation of the culture of the Inuk and a universal message of mutual respect: “If we keep on singing together it will be alright / If we keep on dancing til the morning light / If we keep on loving the spark will shine bright.” The Jerry Cans are Andrew Morrison on vocals and guitar, Nancy Mike on vocals and accordion, Gina Burgess on fi ddle, Robert Aube on bass and Steve Rigby on drums. Angélique Kidjo [BENIN/NEW YORK] Miriam Makeba was the fi rst African woman to attain superstar status, winning a Grammy back in 1965. Fifty years later, that torch, in every respect, has been passed to Angelique Kidjo, who carries it proudly. Angelique is from Benin, a country with deep cultural roots. Picasso used the imagination of Benin’s bronze sculptors to kickstart Cubism. Some of that cultural heritage has been absorbed by Ms. Kidjo. A whole lot more she got from many sources – some African, some from further afield. There are really two Angelique Kidjos. One is the political figure who has been honoured for her humanitarian work for the United Nations and various other organizations. The other is the artist. Hailed as the preeminent African singer, and not just woman singer, Angelique Kidjo has fashioned a personal blend of infl uences that embrace a cavalcade of African diasporic forms from Congolese rumba to Caribbean zouk and reggae to jazz, soul and rock. She’s been performing since she was a child, fi rst at home, then nearby. In 1983 she moved to Paris, just in time for the African music revival then gathering speed. By the eighties she, like Josephine Baker, another visionary black woman before her, owned Paris. Island Record’s Chris Blackwell signed her and she has been an international star for over 20 years. She has used her prominence to campaign for everything good in the world from women’s rights to fi ghting climate change to abolishing polio; really, the list is too long. She has also found the time and inspiration to continue developing as an artist. Her latest recording, Eve, is named for her mother. On it she collaborates with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, Dr. John, the Kronos Quartet and a host of African friends and associates. The range of sounds is astounding. It won the World Music Grammy this year. Her acceptance speech: “Music is the weapon of peace… as artists we have a role to play… I believe in the power of music to transform this world.” What she said! Page 43 Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba [MALI] The ngoni is, along with the kora, a West African instrument once unknown, now part of our mental soundtrack. Bassekou Kouyate is responsible for a lot of this and is, simply, one of the very fi nest players. The ngoni has a wooden or calabash body with a skin, often goat, stretched over it and six strings. It goes back to at least the 14th century and is very much a part of Malian musical culture. Bassekou Kouyate has taken the sound of the ngoni beyond the tradition. In a very real sense he has reinvented it to create a new hybrid music form that embraces the long history of the instrument and Malian culture as well as the “wah wah” and a rock and roll approach. To do this he has assembled Ngoni Ba. Ba in the Bambara language means strong and that very much describes the band. Amy Sacko, wife of Bassekou, is a magnifi cent singer in the way that perhaps only Malian singers are. She is the niece of the legendary singer, Fanta Sacko. Add to Bassekou two more ngonis and percussion and you have the band. The British daily The Independent called them “the best rock and roll band in the world.” The songs are diverse looks at Africa and through those, looks at the world. Musow Fanga (Power of Women) celebrates the women of the world. “Greeting to women all over the world… Being a woman is not a meaningless phrase… Being a woman is important… I am talking to mothers who bring up their children….” Abe Sumaya (It Will Die Out) laments the recent civil confl ict in Mali and the shock of fi nding himself in a war zone: “I do not know where the enemies came from… Mali, where Islam and tolerance exist… Mali, where you are invited to share food….” And in Té Dunia Laban (Not Forever): “He who has gold or money only reigns for a time and not forever….” Music to delight in and move to, words to think about. Ngoni Ba is indeed a powerful force, and one for good. Pokey LaFarge [MISSOURI] Here for the first time a few years back, Pokey LaFarge and his friends amazed everybody who heard them, returned for a concert and repeated the feat, and here they are again. “Veni, vidi, vici” as the man said. While he looks like Jimmie Rodgers, there is more of Fats Waller and the tradition of Beale Street than the laments of the singing brakeman. Whatever the specifi cs, Pokey has amassed an encyclopedic mastery of 20th century American popular music styles, put them in an old-fashioned Mixmaster and put it on high. The result can be heard in Goodbye Barcelona, a song from Something in the Water, his latest recording. On it he starts with some faux fl amenco and a great opening line, "Last night I dreamt you were a glass of Rioja / Wine we drank on the fi rst night we met… you danced the Sardane, bare feet on the fl oor…" He gets it – the name of the wine and the traditional dance of Catalonia. The music transitions into a kind of Marty Robbins tribute and a surf guitar solo… It shouldn’t work but it does… in spades! In song after song he surveys the vast territory of human emotions and relations while exploring the possibilities of the American tradition. Pokey hails from St. Louis, a town on the Mississippi where black and white, north and south, east and west meet and greet. Look at some of the musical treasures that emerged from there – Josephine Baker, Chuck Berry, Fontella Bass, Hamiet Bluiett, Jim Byrnes – now of Vancouver. That’s just a few of the B’s. Go a little further and you fi nd Scott Joplin, Oliver Nelson, Pee Wee Russell… enough! Enough to show that St. Louis artists played a fundamental role in shaping American music. And enough to show that whatever is in the water, it is still powerful and has worked its magic on Pokey LaFarge. Page 44 Sam Lee and Friends [UK T hat there’s not enough folk music at folk festivals is an old song sung by those whose concept of folk music runs to The Child Ballads or D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy or things that Cecil Sharp picked up while bicycling through the 19th century English countryside. If you share that view, Sam Lee is the answer to your prayers. But beware the old curse “May you get what you wish for.” This is no attempt to replicate a Lancashire farmer or Yorkshire miner. He uses the tradition as a ladder to stand on while he reaches for the stars. And Mr. Lee grabs a few, creating brilliant versions of songs with an originality that compares well with Pentangle or Martin Carthy – great reinvigorators of a previous generation. When you look at who Lee is, it is a bit more understandable how he came to both his repertoire and his iconoclasm. An art school student, he helped put himself through school working as a forager and wilderness expert and burlesque dancer. Who knows what he might have ended up doing if he had not run into a Traveller (the British term for a Roma)? Travellers in Britain are known as singers and repositories of traditional song and Stanley Robertson was one. He taught Sam the songs and, once again, a young artist found himself in the old tales. He took them somewhere they hadn’t been before. Some say that the songs should be sung unaccompanied. Sam says they need Flora Curzon (vocals), Jon Whitten (dulcimer, piano, vocals, ukulele), and Joshua Green (percussion). Sam himself is on shruti box, jew’s harp and vocals. Together, they bring a world of music to the songs and do a remarkable job as they recreate, more than interpret, vintage ballads from Johnny of the Brine to Lovely Molly. John Renbourn, one of the great musical revolutionaries who took British folk songs to a new audience in the sixties, has left us this year. Thanks to someone, somewhere, for sending us Sam Lee. The tradition continues! The Lowest Pair [WASHINGTON] T he combination of banjo, guitar and two voices has, like the legend of John Henry, proven that human eff ort and creativity can beat the vast inventory of electronic technology that is very much in vogue. It’s nice to hear a good old-fashioned folk duo with a great repertoire and a minimalist approach. Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee (she’s Kendl and he’s Palmer) are based just south of here in Olympia, Washington. They sound like they should be from somewhere much further south and east – West Virginia? Tennessee? Wherever they got the sound and “weltanschauung” – the German word for the internalized and comprehensive world view – it took. They are both adept on banjo and guitar and hearing a duo of banjo players is a rare delight. The songs they have written are very much in the Appalachian ballad tradition – sad songs of unrequited love make up a good number. Happily there are no murder ballads. They do a more than credible version of Oh Susanna that reclaims it from the cloying minstrelsy and returns it to a song of heartbreak and loss. They do the same for Darling Corey. The line between traditional songs and originals is a fi ne one with these two. The ability to reinvent oneself is an honourable American tradition going back at least to Mark Twain. It’s a tradition the Lowest Pair are part of. The name is a gift from another reinvented American artist, John Hartford. “Give us this day / Hors d’oeuvres in bed…” is one great line. It gives a sense that although they, like Hartford, embraced the tradition they also use it to express who they are. Kendl, who hails from Arkansas, apparently sprouts alfalfa seeds in jars in the back of the tour van – a not very Appalachian custom – and has some punk rock in her past. Palmer spent interminable winters growing up in Minnesota listening to Hartford and Townes Van Zandt. Then he inherited two banjos. What else could they do? In this case the lowest pair wins the game Page 45 Lucius [NEW YORK] Lucius is luscious. One song sounds like what Phil Spector would have done if he had got into folk music instead of weirdness. Another is tougher – more like CBGB/OMFUG in the late seventies. Lucius is based in Brooklyn, so maybe…. The band is Jess Wolfe (lead vocals and synth), Holly Laessig (lead vocals and keys), Dan Molad (drums), Peter Lalish (guitar) and Andrew Burri (guitar, drums), and everyone sings. They have been attracting a lot of attention lately. Heck… they’ve done a Mercedes commercial! While the two women who front the band look and dress like they could be twins, they aren’t. One is from Cleveland, the other from L.A. They met at the Berklee School of Music. To get into Berklee you have to be good. They graduated too! They are good. So are the others who have joined them They sing good, write good, arrange good. They play good. They have taken their time. They put the band together a decade ago. They put out their fi rst recording in 2009 and their second, Wildewoman, in late 2013. They started planning their careers together at a party while in school. “We were drunkenly talking about inspirations and infl uences, and they were very similar — Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, David Bowie, the Beatles. And we were like, ‘We should rearrange the White Album and just do our own female version.’ We started with Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” For their fi rst recording they moved into an old Victorian mansion with a vintage recording studio and lots of old keyboards, including a Steinway piano. “So we lived there for two years, and we wrote most of the songs on that piano. We had all of our friends come and play on the record… nine musicians, one kitchen… two bathrooms, really dirty.” Things have gotten better. The quirky takes on life and the equally quirky music have caught on. The latest CD name – Wildewoman? It’s about them, as girls, “being kind of wild and taking your own path, and how we’ve carried over into womanhood, doing that.” Bongeziwe Mabandla [SOUTH AFRICA] Bongeziwe calls it African traditional urban folk. Like folk music in a lot of places, his audience is not as broad as he would like it to be. “I started playing in coff ee shops. People my age (he is 27) and artistic people are drawn to my music. I hope to get a bigger audience but I love my old audience like the aunties and uncles.” Bongeziwe comes from the Eastern Cape. He speaks Xhosa as well as English. He, too, is an ‘artistic’ person. “I fi nished art school at AFDA, (the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance) and I did a bit of acting on SA television on Generations,” he says, “but something was telling me, this music thing is worthwhile. There’s something there. I knew that I had to nurture what I had inside… to take the time to develop and improve it.” He did… indeed he did. He lived in Johannesburg and struggled to make ends meet. He opened for other artists, performing wherever he could. He used the time to develop an individual style and a body of work that is fundamentally diff erent from other South African songwriters. He is a poet setting his poetry to music. Sometimes the music is his own guitar. On record it can be produced with lots of instruments and background singers. What is at the centre, however, is his vision of his country and the lives of the people in it. In The Reason he writes: "Cried the mother of poverty / Thinking about the sister of worry / The days of the wretched / Now, Now She questions herself. / Where, Where, Where… is the reason? / Father Kobi tries / He bought a concoction of amnesia. / Years and years of consciousness. Now he questions himself. Where, Where, Where… is the reason?” Another, What Have You Done To Me?, is a broken-hearted love song that resonates in every culture: “If ever should our paths cross / Let us stop, gaze into each other’s eyes / and remind ourselves of those days.” His fi rst record is out. He is touring the world. Turns out, this music thing is worthwhile. Page 51 That there’s not enough folk music at folk festivals is an old song sung by those whose concept of folk music runs to The Child Ballads or D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy or things that Cecil Sharp picked up while bicycling through the 19th century English countryside. If you share that view, Sam Lee is the answer to your prayers. But beware the old curse “May you get what you wish for.” This is no attempt to replicate a Lancashire farmer or Yorkshire miner. He uses the tradition as a ladder to stand on while he reaches for the stars. And Mr. Lee grabs a few, creating brilliant versions of songs with an originality that compares well with Pentangle or Martin Carthy – great reinvigorators of a previous generation. When you look at who Lee is, it is a bit more understandable how he came to both his repertoire and his iconoclasm. An art school student, he helped put himself through school working as a forager and wilderness expert and burlesque dancer. Who knows what he might have ended up doing if he had not run into a Traveller (the British term for a Roma)? Travellers in Britain are known as singers and repositories of traditional song and Stanley Robertson was one. He taught Sam the songs and, once again, a young artist found himself in the old tales. He took them somewhere they hadn’t been before. Some say that the songs should be sung unaccompanied. Sam says they need Flora Curzon (vocals), Jon Whitten (dulcimer, piano, vocals, ukulele), and Joshua Green (percussion). Sam himself is on shruti box, jew’s harp and vocals. Together, they bring a world of music to the songs and do a remarkable job as they recreate, more than interpret, vintage ballads from Johnny of the Brine to Lovely Molly. John Renbourn, one of the great musical revolutionaries who took British folk songs to a new audience in the sixties, has left us this year. Thanks to someone, somewhere, for sending us Sam Lee. The tradition continues! The combination of banjo, guitar and two voices has, like the legend of John Henry, proven that human eff ort and creativity can beat the vast inventory of electronic technology that is very much in vogue. It’s nice to hear a good old-fashioned folk duo with a great repertoire and a minimalist approach. Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee (she’s Kendl and he’s Palmer) are based just south of here in Olympia, Washington. They sound like they should be from somewhere much further south and east – West Virginia? Tennessee? Wherever they got the sound and “weltanschauung” – the German word for the internalized and comprehensive world view – it took. They are both adept on banjo and guitar and hearing a duo of banjo players is a rare delight. The songs they have written are very much in the Appalachian ballad tradition – sad songs of unrequited love make up a good number. Happily there are no murder ballads. They do a more than credible version of Oh Susanna that reclaims it from the cloying minstrelsy and returns it to a song of heartbreak and loss. They do the same for Darling Corey. The line between traditional songs and originals is a fi ne one with these two. The ability to reinvent oneself is an honourable American tradition going back at least to Mark Twain. It’s a tradition the Lowest Pair are part of. The name is a gift from another reinvented American artist, John Hartford. “Give us this day / Hors d’oeuvres in bed…” is one great line. It gives a sense that although they, like Hartford, embraced the tradition they also use it to express who they are. Kendl, who hails from Arkansas, apparently sprouts alfalfa seeds in jars in the back of the tour van – a not very Appalachian custom – and has some punk rock in her past. Palmer spent interminable winters growing up in Minnesota listening to Hartford and Townes Van Zandt. Then he inherited two banjos. What else could they do? In this case the lowest pair wins the game. Sam Lee and Friends [UK] The Lowest Pair [WASHINGTON] Lucius [NEW YORK] Bongeziwe Mabandla [SOUTH AFRICA] and their second, Wildewoman, in late 2013. They started planning their careers together at a party while in school. “We were drunkenly talking about inspirations and infl uences, and they were very similar — Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, David Bowie, the Beatles. And we were like, ‘We should rearrange the White Album and just do our own female version.’ We started with Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” For their fi rst recording they moved into an old Victorian mansion with a vintage recording studio and lots of old keyboards, including a Steinway piano. “So we lived there for two years, and we wrote most of the songs on that piano. We had all of our friends come and play on the record… nine musicians, one kitchen… two bathrooms, really dirty.” Things have gotten better. The quirky takes on life and the equally quirky music have caught on. The latest CD name – Wildewoman? It’s about them, as girls, “being kind of wild and taking your own path, and how we’ve carried over into womanhood, doing that.” African songwriters. He is a poet setting his poetry to music. Sometimes the music is his own guitar. On record it can be produced with lots of instruments and background singers. What is at the centre, however, is his vision of his country and the lives of the people in it. In The Reason he writes: "Cried the mother of poverty / Thinking about the sister of worry / The days of the wretched / Now, Now She questions herself. / Where, Where, Where… is the reason? / Father Kobi tries / He bought a concoction of amnesia. / Years and years of consciousness. Now he questions himself. Where, Where, Where… is the reason?” Another, What Have You Done To Me?, is a broken-hearted love song that resonates in every culture: “If ever should our paths cross / Let us stop, gaze into each other’s eyes / and remind ourselves of those days.” His fi rst record is out. He is touring the world. Turns out, this music thing is worthwhile. 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 45 Page 50 Mama Kin [AUSTRALIA] Danielle Caruana (AKA Mama Kin) grew up in a musical family and is one of three siblings playing at this year’s Festival. One brother, Nicky Bomba, is the leader of Bustamento and Melbourne Ska Orchestra, while the other brother, Michael Caruana plays with all three groups. Their parents came from the island of Malta where Danielle's grandfather was a magician and her mother was one of his assistants. She honours her mother with the title of her second full-length recording, Magician’s Daughter. And she honours her grandfather with her own brand of magic, which starts with her voice – she channels Matuto [NEW YORK] Brooklyn features large in its diversity at this festival, from very Old Timey to very new to very culturally diverse. Brooklyn is the home base of accordion virtuoso Rob Curto and his band Matuto. A while back Rob Curto came through town to perform at Coquitlam’s Festival du bois. He was impressive. It’s not that often in these parts that you get to hear a really good Brazilian forro accordion player. Well he’s come back, this time with the band he co-founded with guitarist Clay Ross. Matuto had quite a debut performance. They fi rst went on stage in Recife in Northern Brazil, home of their sound, in front of 10,000 folk. They passed the test. They survived. They describe what they do as Brazilian bluegrass (the word matuto means redneck, country bumpkin) but it’s more than that. Forro, an infectious danceable popular music from Brazil’s North East, and the fi rst love of Curto and Ross, is well represented in the band’s repertoire. Both of them spent a lot of time in Brazil. great soul singing sisters from Carla Thomas to Etta James to Amy Winehouse. How did all that feeling get to a young woman in Freemantle, Australia, a small town near Perth on Australia’s west coast? The magic continues with what the voice sings. Page 52 Rory McLeod [UK] Rory is an old friend of the festival, having made his debut performance here almost 30 years ago. In a wind instruments workshop that featured Northumbrian small pipes, a saxophone, Quebecois harmonica virtuoso, and Egyptian Roma on Egyptian oboes, Rory brought order, of a sort, to the stage and the rest was pure brilliance. Rory does that – brings order out of chaos to produce great art. A oneman band himself, as well as former fi re eater and clown, he uses tap shoes, voice, harmonica, guitar, trombone, spoons, fi nger cymbals, and various percussion instruments to tell stories. He describes himself as a “modern travelling troubadour” and it fi ts. Troubadours did not just entertain. Like griots, they were preservers of the people’s history, carriers of news and social critics. They enlightened the folk. Rory has been doing that since he got his fi rst gig in a Mexican travelling circus around 1980. He won a harmonica competition in Texas in 1981 and was “street busker of the year” at the Edinburgh Festival in 1985, the year his fi rst record came out. Kicking Up the Sawdust featured some great songs and heralded a talent that went far beyond your regular Scottish harmonic virtuoso/Mexican circus busker. It heralded one of the best chroniclers of the human condition anywhere. On it he told the story of Kemal Altun, a Turkish refugee who jumped to his death from a German police station to escape deportation and torture in Turkey. He said, “When children starve in peacetime it should be called war.” On a later recording he told the story of a class-conscious policeman. Later still he defended himself, protesting, “I’m not disturbing the peace. I’m disturbing the war.” The fl ow of love songs has never stopped – because that is what Rory writes – love songs to a person, a political point of view or to a planet. Rory chronicles his own life with its loves and losses and make them universal just as he takes universal themes and makes them deeply and personally his own. Melbourne Ska Orchestra [AUSTRALIA] It is not often that two bands led by the same person appear at the same festival. But it happens. Nicky Bomba, the intelligence behind Bustamento, is also the intellectual author of the Melbourne Ska Orchestra. Ska? Nah. This is much more than simple pre-reggae Jamaican popular music. Take a tune like When Dean Went to Mexico. It has some neoMorricone spaghetti western faux Mex mariachi that adds a Trinidadian steel drum a while later and maybe a klezmer lick and yes, some ska and heaven alone knows what else. This is true world music – it draws from just about everywhere on the globe. The theme from the sixties television series Get Smart? Yup. The 1927 Broadway hit The Best Things in Life Are Free? Ditto. But it is unlikely the composers would recognize their child after what these folks have done with it. Most of the original songs bear the name of Bomba along with various other orchestra members. The songs are often ballads in the sense that they are story songs. When Dean Went to Mexico, mentioned above, is about a man who goes to Mexico with someone who he appears to have had an aff air with that is now over. Dean has an epiphany and calls his true love back somewhere to propose. She accepts. “But fi rst,” she said, “meet me in Cairo.” It’s a story, but who said it was a straight narrative? The tales are as eccentric as the sounds. He’s a Tripper is a convoluted tribute to Lee Perry and James Brown told in semi-limerick style. Both in music and words this is genre-bending creativity performed by more of a mass movement than a simple band. We understand about two dozen of them have escaped from the former penal colony they call home and are headed this way Page 53 Old Man Luedecke [NOVA SCOTIA] A gentleman with a banjo holding an audience captive as he sings and plays and encourages them to sing along – why, Pete must be looking down and smiling. The similarities stop around there. Old Man Luedecke mainly sings his own compositions. He has a broad view that is refl ected in his writing. There are literary references. Tender Is the Night (Fitzgerald from Keats) is a title he appropriates for a song of a musician on a plane coming home to something undetermined. He sings about impecunious situations such as a hungry man and the A&W. He introduces Song for Ian Tyson, the iconic Canadian songwriter and cowboy, with a Jimmie Rodgers riff , a yodel, and a lament for the end of an era. Then he dips into a diff erent tradition for Jonah and the Whale, a modern retelling set closer to home. The songs are great. The banjo playing is great and the singing is just what the songs and banjo need. Based in Chester, Nova Scotia, Chris Luedecke is a product of the 21st century folk scene. It’s appropriate that he toured with Kim Barlow and Christine Fellows as a member of The Pan-Canadian New Folk Scene (Barlow living in the Yukon at that point and Fellows in Winnipeg.) He came on the scene with his fi rst record in 2003. His last three records have been nominated for Junos and two of them won in the Traditional Folk category. In the best 21st century folk sense, Luedecke looks both forward and backward just like the Roman god Janus, or an owl. He sees the past and sounds like it but he is also very much a contemporary songwriter looking forward. It’s a blend that works well. “Good music is honest to its time… I want the songs I write to be catchy, but not at the cost of being true… I try to write about my life in a way that I’d like to read about somebody else’s life.” The Once [NEWFOUNDLAND] T he Once were at this festival once, a few years back. There are various theories about the term “the once” in the Dictionary of Newfoundland English. “Right away” is one of them. It doesn’t exactly fi t this trio of Newfoundland musicians as they have evolved over the last decade. They met while working in theatre, discovered they liked traditional music, creating new music and working together. They made a record. People liked it. They made more records. They won awards for them. They toured and, in the way it is supposed to happen, audiences and the biz alike got it and the band prospered. Then at Vancouver’s CelticFest the band was heard by Terry McBride of Nettwerk Records and their latest record, Departures, is on that august independent label with its prominence and all the doors that opens. Now Geraldine Hollett, Andrew Dale and Phil Churchill are back from a world tour where the songs on Departures were well received as was the band’s wonderful blending of voices. The band started with a repertoire that included traditional songs, songs by folks they liked, and a few originals. Today the set list is mainly their own creations with a few choice covers thrown in. On Departures they pay homage to their Newfoundland roots as well as to songwriting. They perform an a cappella version of Sonny’s Dream written by Ron Hynes, the man who put original songwriting in Newfoundland on the popular music map in the seventies. The Once give it an almost hymn-like quality. It speaks to their knowledge of what makes a song great as well as their ability to make someone else’s song their own. They also honour ‘The King’ with their own take on Mr. Presley’s Can’t Help Falling In Love, trimming the fat from it. Mainly the songs are theirs, drawn from life. Phil Churchill’s song about his father’s death with "It’s rained for the last 20 days… not even one ray from the sun…" that will be familiar to Vancouverites, is a standout. Slowly, The Once has transitioned into one of the most accomplished and interesting contemporary folk music ensembles in the country. Page 54 Advertisements Page 55 Lindi Ortega [ONTARIO] I t’s a long road a winding… When she was nominated in 2012 for a Juno as New Artist of the Year it must have been ironic for her. Nice to get it but… new? With three full-length recordings and 15 years of songwriting and performing behind her? She was 17 when, after picking up the guitar that hung on the wall of the family home, she wrote Faded Dress, which she says was "the fi rst in a long line of heartbreak songs.” It was about her fi rst boyfriend dumping her the day before the prom. "I wrote about the dress hanging in the closet, that never got worn. It was sad, but I thought it would be better the next year. But nobody asked me." Fools! Lindi grew up in Toronto. Her parents are of Irish and Mexican origin. She was an organic part of the city’s organic indie scene for a decade before she got her break, moved to Nashville, got a whole lot of breaks and is now doing very well, thank you. She hasn’t forgotten any of the hard times, however, and they make up much of the inspiration for her songwriting. The underdog is the central character in country music, which is why it is true and why it is popular. Lindi has been celebrating underdogs since the dress incident. Success has not changed that. The title song of her latest recording, Tin Star, is a song of solidarity with her fellow artists who were where she was not long ago. Her about-to-be-released Faded Gloryville is about those who have been brought to “its salons, fl ophouses and cheap motels by debt, by vanity, heartbreak, failure, fear or misfortune.” In Loved and Died Alone she proves she is more than a simple country crooner. Her songs tell important stories. Lindi Ortega can sing like few others. That, combined with a profound sense of empathy in her writing, makes her a signifi cant presence in music today. Parsonsfield [CONNECTICUT] L istening to Parsonsfi eld’s latest recording Afterparty is like attending a seminar on great American songwriting. There’s Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me by Mississippi John Hurt. “When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea / Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids fl irt with me.” There’s Strolling Down The Highway by Bert Jansch who wasn’t American, but wrote like one. They do the blue-eyed soul classic Huey Lewis’ The Power of Love, Hang Me by T-Bone Burnett and Oscar Isaac (featured in the Coen Brothers’ fi lm about the Greenwich Village folk scene) with a New Orleans brass band treatment that is a wonder. Blind Willie McTell’s Lay Some Flowers on My Grave is as sad a song as anybody wrote: “My mother she is gone / left me in this world alone.” There is one tasty original composition too – Anita, Your Lovin’ – questioning why the object of the singer’s aff ections is in Providence while he ain’t. So what you’ve got here is a band with an authentically original sound and brilliant taste in songs worth covering that belies a deep knowledge of traditional and contemporary American popular music. One recalls the question asked in an American cinematic cultural classic, “Who are these guys?” They are Chris Freeman on banjo and vocals; Antonio Alcorn on mandolin; Max Shakun on vocals, pump organ and guitar; Harrison Goodale on bass; and Parsonsfi eld, Maine’s gift to Parsonsfi eld, Erik Hischmann on drums. From Connecticut, they started off as Poor Old Shine and changed their name to Parsonsfi eld to honour the town where they met their drummer in a recording studio and had a musical epiphany that changed their sound. “We owe a lot to what happened there,” says Chris Freeman. “It pulled us from being a more traditional string band into something that felt much more uniquely ourselves.” That process of self discovery has produced some great music. The term Americana is often overused but in this case it is an accurate description of the unity of vision that emerges from the melange of sources mined by this band. Perch Creek [AUSTRALIA] O riginally The Perch Creek Family Jug Band, they shortened it for business reasons, but Perch Creek really is a family band. Originally from the Gold Coast and Brisbane, they are now based in Melbourne, the home of Australia’s most diverse music scene. Australians have long had a passionate aff air with American roots music – i.e. folk and popular music forms. In the case of Perch Creek this includes old timey string band, blues, early jazz, country and jug band. Christi, Lear, Eileen and Camilla Hodgkins, plus James Chandler, play an instrument store’s worth of objects – harmonica, trombone, saw, drums, washboard, guitar, banjouke, keys, banjo and double bass. They all sing and several can, if need be, tap dance. They use this collection of sonic possibilities to do big things. The fi rst is to cover classics from both the white and black tradition of what, these days, is called Americana. Minnie The Moocher, Rolling in My Sweet Baby’s Arms, Goodnight Irene and Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me are just a few Perch Creek have adopted and adapted. Fifty years after the Kweskin Jug Band, these siblings and friend have visited the same well, found the water as sweet as ever, and have drunk deeply of it. They bring to the songs an unabashed and obvious joy of performing the songs. That’s important. It was especially important when they began their careers busking on the streets. Enthusiasm is contagious and helps fi ll the guitar case. This, it appears, is only part of what the band is about. Their new recording, Jumping on the High Wire, appears to be a collection of songs inked by band members. Like many interpreters of the tradition, Perch Creek has taken a step in a diff erent direction – writing songs that refl ect who they are through their own words and musical ideas. It shows a diff erent personality of this collective. Still young, like a good wine, this is a band to enjoy now and look forward to more from in the future. Grace Petrie [UK] G race Petrie is a friend of folks who have graced the stages at Jericho Park before. In fact she was part of the Anti-Capitalist Road Show Celebrating Subversion tour with Leon Rosselson, Peggy Seeger, Roy Bailey, Frankie Armstrong, Robb Johnson, Ian Saville and other troublemakers who have used their music to try to save the world. She recently opened shows for Billy Bragg. Grace is the youth wing. Her introduction to Maggie Thatcher’s Dream mentions that she was “not born for the majority of Thatcher’s reign” but she has “inherited the world she shaped” and is writing songs about that world. She is an equal opportunity subversive. In You Pay Peanuts she attacks the “peanuts” wages paid to young workers in her native England. In I Do Not Have the Power to Cause a Flood, Grace takes an internationalist look at homophobia and laments her lack of Old Testament power to drown Vladimir Putin for imprisoning the Pussy Riot band and send one to Uganda for President Yoweri Museveni’s anti-gay policies and every homophobe everywhere. It is a universal anthem of liberation and revenge and it’s a delightful ditty. Born in Leicester, England, now in Sheffi eld, Grace is a relatively recent arrival on the scene. Five years ago she wrote Farewell to Welfare, which announced a new member of the team of artists fi ghting against the brutal “austerity” measures of the Labour and Conservative governments. She is precocious. She has, in a few short years, released three recordings of her original songs and become a major force in the UK arts scene. “Proud to be part of the gay community,” Petrie was on the “Independent on Sunday’s Pink List of Infl uential LGBT fi gures.” Grace Petrie is the answer to every smug journalist who asks, “What happened to the protest songs of the sixties?” They’re not listening to young, passionate voices like Grace’s, that’s what. Grace accompanies herself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. She will be joined by Caitlin Field on acoustic guitar, bodhran and vocals. Page 57 Phosphorescent [GEORGIA/NY] Mathew Houck is the leader of Phosphorescent. He will be in Vancouver with Jo Schornikow (keys), Rustine Bragaw (bass), David Torch (percussion), Ricky Ray Jackson (pedal steel/guitar) and Christopher Marine (drums). They will deliver an assemblage of sounds that are not easily defi nable except as “contemporary songwriting.” Art song, perhaps? Defi ning it is not really the point, however. Matthew was born in Alabama. He’s even written a song called It’s Hard to Be Humble When You’re From Alabama perhaps a follow up to Sweet Home Alabama? “Hear me, Alabama, I was never meant to carry no shame / Hear me, Alabama, I was never meant to carry no shame/ Ah but hear me, Alabama, I can hear you when you’re calling my name.” He moved to Georgia, though, and began performing and recording under the nom de guerre Phosphorescent in 2001. Mostly he performs songs he writes himself, although he has recorded a tribute album of Willie Nelson songs. He’s hard to defi ne. The latest recording, Muchacho, opens with Sun, Arise!, an invocation that has a hymnal quality that is pretty far in spirit from Alabama, Georgia or Willie. On the other hand it was written in Mexico after a massive personal crisis. Another breakup song from an earlier album is Joe Tex, These Taming Blues. It is a surreal excursion that has little evidence of a relationship to the deceased soul singer. It’s a breakup song but then it goes somewhere else: "I mean we came upon a bunch of rabies and there is nothing all us little animals can do / all fi ve kinds of reins / all nine kinds of thundering and / 18 white horses who will not ever come to me!" There’s all this with a great horn section and country style steel guitar. So… What we have here is an original talent with a very deep sense of American music but with an equally distinct and authentic take on the world and on music. It works. Phosphorescent has been praised by critics and hailed by audiences at the same time – no mean feat. Truly… this is music that shines. Les Poules à Colin [QUÉBEC] I t was always a question. What was going to become of those kids dragged around to gigs and festivals, forced to sleep while their parents played folk music. Would they militantly turn their backs on their parents’ music or embrace it. In the case of the members of Les Poules à Colin it is the latter. Like children of many artists who were part of the folk music ‘boom’ of the sixties, seventies and eighties, the youngsters who form Les Poules are part of continuing the tradition and part of taking it elsewhere. Claude Méthé came to this festival as a young member of Le Rêve du Diable in 1980. His daughter, Béatrix (fi ddle and vocals) arrives this year with fellow progeny of the Quebec traditional music fraternité. Sarah Marchand (piano and vocals), Éléonore Pitre (guitar), Colin Savoie-Levac (mandolin/guitar/banjo/feet) and Marie Savoie-Levac (bass) make up the rest of the band. But don’t expect the music of the parents. These young artists have respect for the old but are very much part of the new. One item of note: this is a band that is 80% women. That was not the case a generation ago. In fact the group’s name is a laugh at this. It translates as “Colin’s chicks.” Another item of note: most of the tunes and songs the band performs are written by band members. There are four traditional numbers and eight contemporary compositions out of the 12 tracks on the band’s latest CD, Ste-Waves. The inspiration for the non-traditional pieces is as diverse as breakfast at the Méthé household, General Tao chicken, friends of the band, the studio where they recorded and, the title track, an imaginary town the band continues to look for. This is music infl uenced by, and based on, traditional music but incorporates lots more. It is a wonderful tribute to what has emerged from the Quebec folk scene and has been perceived as such on both sides of the border. They won the Young Trad Vermont award and the Grand Prix Desjardins de Lanaudière. Festival audiences have heard the past. Welcome the future. Page 58 Tsleil-Waututh Sacred Trust Invites your participation! twnsacredtrust.ca #concertforthecoast July 23–25 Town Centre Park, Kwikwetlem/Coquitlam allnationsfest.com free • shuttles from lougheed skytrain + VancouVer More UpcoMing events Aug 12-Sept 12, 2015 Nancy Bleck Photo Exhibit of Tsleil-Waututh (Gala Reception Sept 11) Seymour Art Gallery September 27, 2015 4th Annual Salish Sea Gathering Free celebration with artists & speakers MainStage, canoes, and swimmers ending their Fraserfest/Salish Sea relay. Whey-ah-Wichen/Cates Park April 22, 2016 Earth Day Festival Queen Elizabeth Theatre & Plaza Doug & The SlugS george leach The Funk hunTerS lee Maracle IneZ gWen PoInT kelIYa oSTWelVe BIll henDerSon (chIllIWack) DJ heaDSPIn SISTer SaYS SeTh >+< FIreWorkS FooD TruckS SalMon BBQ canoeIng lacroSSe Pechakucha lee Maracle coaST SalISh arTS conFerence enVIronMenTal rounDTaBle arTISan MarkeT coMIcBook FaIr + More Purchase our landmark Assessment of the Trans Mountain Pipeline & Tanker Expansion Proposal Help Stop tHe Kinder Morgan expanSion! Support the Tsleil-Waututh legal strategy. twnsacredtrust.ca Page 59 Rising Appalachia [NORTH CAROLINA] Appalachia runs from southern New York State to Northern Mississippi. It has been the source of some of the United States’ best-loved music and the scene of some of its fi ercest class struggles. Sometimes the music and the struggle have fused. Florence Reece’s Which Side Are You On? is one. “They say in Harlan County / There are no neutrals there / You’ll either join the union / Or scab for J.H. Blair.” Or Holly Near’s Mountain Song: “I have dreamed on this mountain / Since fi rst I was my mother's daughter / And you can't just take my dreams away – not with me watching.” The two women who call themselves Rising Appalachia are in this tradition – reclaiming, restoring and reviving it. Leah and Chloe Smith started what has become Rising Appalachia about 10 years ago as a recording meant as a gift for friends and family. Then one thing led to another. They grew up with Appalachian string band music and have added most of the other kinds of music found in the region and in the world of pop music – gospel, folk, soul, jazz, hip hop and more. Some songs strain the brain looking for the Appalachian connection. Others are right in the pocket, especially when the sisters get out the banjo and fi ddle. Their latest recording, Wider Circles, features an anthematic chanted title song that calls for unity and promises solidarity: “We are moving in wider circles / We are opening our circle… I’ll be your compass / I’ll be your light house /… I’ll march with you my brother / To the mountain top.” Their songs are both simple and profound. They are also beautiful music. Rising Appalachia tries to walk the politically conscious walk as well as talking the talk. They are touring by rail. They call it the “Slow Music Movement approach to touring” inspired by the Italian Slow Food movement. They describe this as a movement that “encourages musicians to try out ‘non-industry standard’ ways of bringing music into the world by linking to local communities” and generally leaving a very soft footprint on the earth while making as much impact on the world as possible. Page 59 The Sadies [ONTARIO] Music festivals in general, and folk music festivals specifically, are musical cornucopias that both celebrate past achievements and propose what the future might sound like. The Ontario-based quartet, The Sadies, are a combination of those two concepts. They sound quite retro. They describe themselves as having “a signature blend of country, psychedelic, rock and surf” and they do. You can play “name the infl uence” while listening to their music – Buff alo Springfi eld or Eagles? There is a certain amount of “SoCal” in what they are inspired by. That’s the past. Having already been respected as top-fl ight musicians, they have paid increasing attention to becoming equally good songwriters. They are in this for the long haul, having been together since 1994. Their extended family is The Good Brothers, Canadian country music icons. They have toured, co-written and recorded and been the backup band for Neko Case, one of the country’s best known and loved indie singersongwriters. They have a side project, The Unintended, with Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor and helped Garth Hudson, legendary organist of The Band, with his Garth Hudson Presents: A Canadian Celebration of The Band where they backed Neil Young and Mary Margaret O’Hara. They have worked a bunch with Randy Bachman. So... let’s just say that what they haven’t done and who they haven’t worked with in Canadian interesting music is a shorter list than what and who they have. This has led to innumerable shows and a collection of recordings that is now in the double digits. Their latest, Internal Sounds, has been hailed as their fi nest, ending with a We Are Circling, a chant more than a song, with a guest vocal from Buff y Sainte-Marie celebrating “unity... community... family.” It’s not what you would expect from a band better known for their rock approach. It seems both safe and appropriate to say that this is a band who, entering their third decade, are still, fi nding themselves and developing in new, unexpected and refreshing directions. The Sadies are Dallas Good on vocals and guitar, Travis Good on vocals, guitar and fi ddle, Mike Belitsky on drums and Sean Dean on bass. Page 60 Said the Whale [BRITISH COLUMBIA] B en Worcester, Tyler Bancroft, Nathan Shaw, Spencer Schoening and Jaycelyn Brown – Said The Whale – are one of the reasons why Vancouver has the reputation for iconoclastic contemporary alternative music that it has. Ben and Tyler started the band in 2007. They write the songs. Said The Whale is one of those curious ensembles that have managed to combine experimental approaches to music with industry and commercial success. They received a Juno in 2011 as New Group of the Year, had songs on what used to be called “The Hit Parade,” and more of these kinds of accolades. At the same time they have forged fiercely forward in their songwriting. Tyler describes his approach to songwriting for his recent oeuvre “this time I went into the writing process with the mindset of ‘Fuck everything… I’m just going to write what makes me happy.’” It worked. A bunch of those songs are on the band’s most recent recording, Hawaii. One wonderful number is I Love You, addressed, it appears, to siblings – a brother and a sister. It chronicles the writer’s reaction to their arrival: “When I learned I had a brother I made up a dance for joy… When I learned I had a sister I pretended to hate her….” But now: “You’re kinda sad but I love you / You’re kinda rough but I love you… I never see you but I love you… You are my blood so I love you.” It’s a kind of anthem for just about everyone’s relationships. Narrows is a poetic celebration of fishing and the thoughtfulness fishing can bring on: “And with all of my hard luck to face / I cast my thoughts out onto the lake….” The writing is catchy, varied and sublime. The music is all over the alternative pop map referencing just about everything from The Beatles to post punk while managing to come up with a catchy approach that fits the lyrics. The whale is saying interesting things these days. Page 61 Scarlett Jane [ONTARIO] I ’ve got a little secret right here / Tangerine and lilac lilies / Dusty Roads and brilliant city lights / Riding on the open highway/ taking in the endless starry night... we can try and dream the dark away... / They can’t take us down...” Sung on top of a jaunty little tune, it is a genuine instant Canadian road song classic full of images of the country that would do the Group of Seven proud while sending out a message of, and invitation to, breaking free. That’s part of who Scarlett Jane is. There are also songs of loss and disappointment. Another car-based number is Oh Darling from Scarlett Jane’s debut recording. "I’m driving away / without you this time / I keep switching lanes / I can’t make up my mind / I missed you the day that we met / I’ve been around/ enough times to know / that good people come / and great people go...” Well this festival has been around enough times to know that when you hear songwriting like that, sung by a couple of really good voices and backed up by a couple of guitars... you bring’em to the park. Scarlett Jane is Andrea Ramolo and Cindy Doire. They are Canadian in more than their imagery – they sing eff ortlessly in both English and French. They live in Toronto and are recent arrivals on the scene, showing up on the music radar about three years ago. The obvious talent and great vocal chemistry has taken them a long way in a short time. They were nominated for Canadian Folk Awards for Best Emerging Artist and Best Vocal group. Their seemingly ‘overnight’ success is based on more than talent. Each has been around for a while as solo artists. Andrea has two solo records and a long touring history. Cindy is from Timmins, a Franco-Ontario community in the north of the province. She has wondered as she wandered, busking in Spain and recording in Nashville. She has three solo recordings. Together, they have ‘it.’ Scarlett Jane is being hailed as one of the Canadian artists to watch – and to listen to! Shtreiml & Ismail Fencioglu [QUÉBEC] M ontreal has made more than one contribution to Jewish culture of one sort or another. Bagels (St-Viateur!), Schwartz’s (medium fat, not lean!) and you can fi ll in your own after those two. Shtreiml is arguably another. A shtreiml is the fur hat worn by ultra-orthodox Jews, and omnipresent in Chassidic communities in Montreal. The band, curiously, is a far-fromorthodox ensemble that is both a platform for the world-class harmonica playing of Jason Rosenblatt and the site of innovative collaborations among some of Montreal’s most adept world music artists, including Rachel Lemisch (trombone), Joel Kerr (bass) and Thierry Arsenault (drums). They have toured and recorded and generally joined the cream of the klezmerinfl uenced world fusion bands that are carrying the music of the old world into new areas of improvised and arranged delight. Recently Shtreiml has collaborated with Ismail Fencioglu. Ismail is a virtuoso oud player and singer from Turkey. The oud is at the root of the guitar and its various relatives. The word lute is based on a corruption of the Arab “al ud.” Turkish music has its roots in the Ottoman Empire and so does a lot of Jewish music. The Ottomans welcomed the Jews expelled by Catholic Spain and the meeting of Turkish and Jewish music is an old one. But Eastern Hora, the album title of the Shtreiml/ Fencioglu collaboration, is not old. The artists describe what they are doing as “Jewish roots and Turkish blues” but this only covers some of it. The songs and tunes are original creations. They draw on Jewish and Ottoman traditions but sauce them liberally with a mixture of rock sensibility, blues harp chops, some jazzy solos and… well, just about everything the folks who came over brought with them and found here. This is very much, like bagels, and Schwartz’s, a dish that represents Montreal’s “The Main,” the immigrant neighbourhood where a new culture was born of many old ones. By the way, it is pronounced Sh-Try-Mill and Ee-Smile Fen-Ji-O-loo Page 62 Son Little [PENNSYLVANIA] A aron Livingston was born in Los Angeles to “a preacher and a teacher.” If that isn’t enough to instill a passion for words, nothing is. And writing has been Son Little’s passion as long as he can remember. "Before I really learned music, I was serious about writing. Didn’t matter what it was. Just playing with words.” It took a long time to fi nd a form and for that form to fi nd an audience. Son Little was a man with unrealized promise – studying, working, using “recreational substances” and focused on “girls, girls, girls,” as his offi cial bio relates. Moving to Philadelphia he met and worked with the legendary Roots hip hop/soul band. It took a while but that connection put him on the track to realizing some of his potential. “It was in his blood, he remembered. Coltrane. Hendrix. Santana. Tribe. And this time he vowed to never let it go.” The result is one of the most exciting artists in a movement of artists reclaiming the tradition of soul but performing it in a 21st century fashion and using it to address 21st century issues. Cross My Heart is an example and as relevant as the evening news in its remembrance of dead friends and black youths the singer has never met, including Trayvon Martin: “tom and bobby / they gone / they don’t live here long / but i’m still knocking / and clawing / wishing gonna get me none / all or nothing / get on / bang the guns bang these drums / come in hungry / you gone / left us with none but crumbs…” This is the work of a poet who speaks from both experience and observation of the streets of black urban America. He has found the way to do what his parents did, using his words and his music to preach and teach. It has won him more than a few friends and admirers. At least one is familiar to festival folks. Mavis Staples has been working with Son and describes him: “He writes from his heart; he's a great singer who sings from his heart, and he reached my heart.” ’Nuff said. He will be accompanied in Vancouver by a rhythm section of bass and drums. Söndörgö [HUNGARY] I n many ways Hungary preceded and anticipated the world music phenomenon. Part of this had to do with great ethnomusicologists who were collecting traditional music in the many nations that made up the Austro-Hungarian Empire a hundred years ago. Bela Bartok was one of the most noted, both for his collecting and for his composing based on what he collected. Söndörgő honour him by including a snippet of one of his fi eld recordings on their most recent album. In the 1970s, young musicians began exploring the possibilities of following in Bartok’s tradition of using folk songs and tunes to create new work, but they were also infl uenced by the folk rock phenomenon and jazz, so rather than coming up with classical music, they came up with what came to be called world music, even though it was often quite nationally and regionally specifi c. Groups like Vizonto, Kolinda and Musikas brought that music to the shores of Jericho Beach. In that tradition comes the just-about-family band of Söndörgő. Aron, Benjamin, David Son Little [PENNSYLVANIA] and Salamon Eredics along with Attila Buzas are a Hungarian group by passport. They claim South Slav, Austrian, Ukrainian and Jewish blood. The Eredics’ fi rst names defi nitely have Jewish roots. The music has even more diverse roots. Their most recent recording, Tamburocket, features tunes collected by Bartok in what is now Serbia, but the tunes were both Croatian and Serbian. The band has added Macedonian, Bulgarian and Turkish music and a Chinese snake-charmer’s pipe. Yes, this is world music in every sense. What do they play? A variety of tamburas, a double-stringed instrument played with a pick; derbuka, a drum; kaval, a fl ute; clarinet, saxophone, accordion, the aforementioned Chinese pipe – the hulusi – and a few other things. This is a group that can sing, pick and blow with the best of them. It is great to know that the spirit of Bartok and the tradition of the great groups of the seventies are both alive and pickin’. Page 63 The Strumbellas [ONTARIO] The Strumbellas are on a roll. Lindsay, Ontario’s hardest working band had a great 2014. Their second fulllength recording, We Still Move on Dance Floors, won the Juno award for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year, the Canadian Folk Music Contemporary Album of the Year, the Ottawa Folk Festival’s Rising Star Award, the CBC Music Rising Star Award and ended the year with a long list nomination for the Polaris Music Prize! They should have bought a lottery ticket. The attraction? Well, it isn’t because they write up-tempo dance songs. We detect some irony in the record’s title. On Sailing they come up with some downright disturbing verses: “We can run, we can run through the woods but they’ll fi nd us / We can hide, we can hide, we can hide like I’ve done my whole life / We can watch as they burn all the books in the fi re / We can dance to the stars in the sky in the darkness of nights.” Is the last line the happy ending? Who are “they”? While the lyrics may be dark, the musical beds they lie on are anything but. Perhaps the secret is realism in the writing and a country roots folk rock sound that belies what the singer is singing. Whatever it is, it works. Music that makes you think while you tap your foot is hard to do, although The Strumbellas have decent company in most major Canadian cities these days. The Strumbellas are devoted to creating rock with smarts, alternating with country/bluegrass affi liated songs – also with smarts. It’s the smarts that count. It goes back to the sixties when the folkies plugged in and the rockers woke up, but seems to be undergoing a revival. Based in Toronto, The Strumbellas are very much a part of this. Simon Ward is the band’s songwriter, with a quirky sense of inspiration, as well as handling vocals and acoustic guitar. Dave Ritter also sings, plays piano and percussion. Jeremy Drury is on drums and percussion; Isabel Ritchie is on violin and vocals, Jon Hembrey on electric guitar and Darryl James on bass. Tanga [BRITISH COLUMBIA] Machito! Mario Bauza! Tito Puente! Music to the ears of anyone who knows their Afro-Cuban music at all. These are three of the references used by Tanga, a Vancouver band, with their addresses in Vancouver but their ears and dreams focused on another city on another ocean – Havana, Cuba. In Havana the music of Andalucian peasants and African shamans met and cohabited. Their progeny worked the bars and hotels of the tourist city in the early years of the 20th century and then drifted to the cultural capital of the world in the thirties, forties, and fi fties – New York City. In 1948 Dizzy Gillespie hired Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo in creating a new form of popular music – call it salsa. Tanga is following the direction they laid out but blazing their own path. The band was founded by trumpeter Malcolm Aiken. He doesn’t call what Tanga does, salsa – he has another group, Mazacote, that plays salsa. Tanga, according to Malcolm is a “world fusion collective.” OK. Whatever it is, it is hot, sweet, and eminently groovy with lots of jazz, rock – even a wah wah! – and enough Cuban infl uence to pass any paternity test. If you had to name check any predecessor, think early Irakere. To deliver the package Malcolm has taken advantage of the deep inventory of Latin singers and players available in Vancouver. Some are expatriate Cubans and other Latin Americans; others are local jazzers while some come from the world music scene. We noted a jazzy double conch shell solo at a recent live performance! Something not often heard in these parts. The group is full of inventive, improvising virtuosi. They have put out two records. The last one was partially recorded in Cuba with some very special guests. Overall, though, this is a Vancouver project. The tunes are local as, at a live gig, are the players. Think of it as a testament to the migration of music and folks, willing or not, that produced Afro-Cuban music and its descendants and has found a nice home in Vancouver. Tanga is Malcolm Aiken on trumpets, Adam Popowitz on guitar, Ian Cox on keyboards, Matt Reid on bass, Chris Couto on percussion and marimba, Sangito Bigelow on congas and marimba, Issah Contractor on drums, Danay Sinclair on vocals and C’nez Lone on vocals. Page 64 Richard Thompson [UK] Just shy of fi fty years ago a bunch of young musicians in London got together and formed a band to play mainly American-style folk rock. Soon they would revolutionize the performance of British folk songs and create their own music that would infl uence hundreds of other bands. The group called themselves Fairport Convention after the house they rehearsed in. The guitar player was a justturned-18-year-old Richard Thompson. He was already writing songs and singing in his distinctive voice. He would soon be recognized as a stellar and innovative guitarist. Today he is doing much the same: writing songs, singing them and playing great guitar. He came by the guitar honestly. His father, a Scot, was an amateur jazz guitarist and a fan of Django Reinhardt, who he had heard play. Dad also had a collection of Scottish traditional records. Like most teenagers, Richard’s fi rst love was neither jazz nor traditional but rock and roll. He formed his fi rst band while still in school. The rest is easy to look up. By the time he was 20, Richard was a force to contend with on the British music scene with a style that was all his own. At 21 he was out of the band and on his own and at the beginning of a decade’s worth of superb music with then-wife Linda Thompson. By his mid-thirties he was again on his own as a singer-songwriter, sometimes with a band, sometimes not and producing a series of songs that has never stopped. You can tell a songwriter by who covers their songs. Richard began with Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan in Fairport. Bob returned the favour not long ago with a version of Richard’s 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. So have dozens of artists from The Blind Boys of Alabama to R.E.M. Richard Thompson is both a vital historical fi gure in the development of popular music and a vibrant contemporary artist who bears no resemblance to a museum piece. Appreciate the former but pay closer attention to the latter. This is greatness! Page 65 Trampled by Turtles [MINNESOTA] Trampled by Turtles is an odd image to think about – quirky, eccentric and somehow appealing. Not a bad metaphor for the eponymously-named ensemble. They hail from Duluth, Minnesota, on Lake Superior and have been identifi ed as fans of and infl uenced by Bob Dylan and Neil Young. There may be some geographic identity here – Neil is from Winnipeg, 383 miles north and Bob is from Hibbing, a mere 75 miles away. They have also been identifi ed with other artists from much further away, not least bluegrass hero Ralph Stanley and Texas songwriter Townes Van Zandt. Musically, Trampled by Turtles is more a bluegrass band than anything else with mandolin, banjo, fi ddle, bass and guitar and some nice harmonies. That’s on stage. On record they go in various directions using the possibilities not available on stage. It is in the writing that the other infl uences and inspirations begin to emerge as well as the originality that has attracted audiences. They started with pretty straightforward songs of working class life but have evolved in a more opaque direction. Western World from their most recent recording, Wild Animals, is decidedly not bluegrass in the way that Ralph or Bill Monroe wrote it. “We were in love in a wild desert memory / Now why does love get broken and heavy in the western world / The past is alive and I can't shake it / All you need to survive is to learn how to fake it in the western world.” The title track is enigmatic: “There's another world, it's made for us / Trapped in bodies, they're made to rust / It's one that I can break right through / I am ready, how about you?” What is this an invitation to? This kind of writing, coupled with the band’s instrumental chops and dynamic performance abilities, have won them a lot of fans over more than a decade, eight records, and hundreds and hundreds of shows. Trampled by Turtles is Dave Simonett on guitar, lead vocals and harmonica; Tim Saxhaug on bass and backing vocals; Dave Carroll on banjo and backing vocals; Erik Berry on mandolin and backing vocals; and Ryan Young on fi ddle and backing vocals. Ivan Tucakov and Tambura Rasa [BRITISH COLUMBIA] It’s both a pun and a description. The Latin phrase “tabula rasa” translates to "blank slate" in English. The “tambura” is a Balkan stringed instrument. The Bulgarian tambura has eight steel strings in four doubled courses. The Macedonian version has four steel strings in two doubled courses. In either case it is a popular instrument that has become identifi ed with Balkan music. Ivan Tucakov does not play the tambura. He plays the guitar. The symbolism of the missing instrument and the blank slate is that while the music Mr. Tucakov plays is founded in his childhood in Serbia and Turkey, what Tambura Rasa plays goes far beyond. They use the music of the old Ottoman world as the slate and then cover it with infl uences that span the globe from east to west and north to south. Vancouver is a good place to do this. First, there are a bunch of musicians who either hail from various parts of the world or who have adopted the music of various parts of the world. This off ers Tambura Rasa the possibility of bringing in guests to explore various musical traditions and themes. Secondly there are gigs in Vancouver and environs where the kind of global fusion that Tambura Rasa purveys is in demand. A bhangra festival? They can do that. “Arabian Nights” in Prince George? Yes. So a neoAndalucían creation can rub shoulders with a cover of Pink Floyd’s Shine on You Crazy Diamond, something Cuban and.... There is a lot here and it works, taking the listener on a global musical excursion. With seven recordings to their credit, Tambura Rasa has amassed a deep catalogue of original music that explores dozens of musical genres and traditions. This is world music that really does cover the world. The core of Tambura Rasa is Ivan Tucakov on guitar, Colin Maskell on sax/fl ute, Robin Layne on percussion, Kerry Galloway on bass, Randall Stoll on percussion/drums and Cameron Wilson on violin. Page 66 Marlon Williams [AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND] Marlon Williams is from New Zealand, although he is now based on the other island, in Melbourne. He has just recorded and released his fi rst studio recording, following a live debut. It’s a curious record in some ways. Some songs are very produced, bringing in his bandmates from The Unfaithful Ways while others are as spare and dry as the Australian outback. Marlon is a balladeer. He tells stories, though not always linear. On Dark Child he constructs a parent’s grief in a kind of twisted lullaby. "My little blond haired blue eyed boy / One day you'll grow up and be distressed / One day you'll grow up and reject everything / I've set out for you." The Ballad of Minnie Dean is based on a true and tragic tale acquired from growing up in the port town of Lyttleton, just out of Christchurch. Heaven For You, Prison For Me is a broken relationship number that should fi nd its way to a Nashville Page 67 Hawksley Workman [BRITISH COLUMBIA] Hawksley Workman is a veteran of the indie music scene – a thousand shows, 15 countries and about as many recordings. He knows how the stages of Toronto’s Massey Hall and Paris’s The Olympia feel under his feet. He plays just about everything. He’s had a fi lm-acting career and has had his songs in various fi lm and TV projects. He is, in short, an accomplished artist who has never capitulated to fads, trends, or “smart career moves.” He has succeeded on his terms. It’s a rare thing. His most recent recorded batch of songs, Old Cheetah, came after a fi ve-year hiatus from solo recording. He has been busy drumming with Mounties, a group he founded, and has had a successful one-man cabaret show, The God That Comes. The business at hand, though, is the new songs and he is a consummate songwriter. Hawksley Workman is not from the big city. He’s from Huntsville in Muskoka, north of Toronto – cottage country. Some of the new songs may be about folks he knew back there. He came to Toronto to make music in the nineties. The indie scene and Queen St. West were in full flower. He became something of an eccentric celebrity for his unorthodox promotional strategies. He picked up a Juno and has been doing interesting things ever since. The latest songs are sometimes confessional and sometimes observant. The confessionals include Teenage Cats, perhaps a celebration of his youth: "We were laying and playing in our hearts we were slaying. The crowd was shouting and falling apart. We were born knowing our power…" On the observant front there is I Just So Happen to Believe: “You’re sick of all their silence / You’re clutching the bouquet / You’re wondering again what is the right thing you should say / Oh the angle of ascension/ And the closeness of the sun / As you keep pondering the question. Why no one found you fun." These songs are small essays in dislocation, crisis and, occasionally, triumph. They sound like life. Hawksley will be joined in Vancouver by Todd Lumley on piano, Derrick Brady on bass and Brad Kilpatrick on drums. Japser Sloan Yip [BRITISH COLUMBIA] Vancouver’s Jasper Sloan Yip started off with a DIY approach to performing. He built a stage in his parents’ backyard for his debut performance. That was only eight years ago! It was a good beginning. Then he took off for a yearlong odyssey that took him to three continents and 15 countries where he wrote the songs that became part of his fi rst recording, released in 2010 on his 23rd birthday. It got some campus radio play and festival gigs. Fast-forward another three years and the next recording, this time as leader of a folk rock sextet. Foxtrot won a $10,000 Best of BC award, a video grant and some great reviews. The band is now working on number three. What’s the secret? Well, Jasper isn’t hard to look at, he can sing pretty good, and the band sounds like they know how to rock and roll. But that is never enough. Really, Jasper Sloan Yip is about the writing, as is often the case. Not surprisingly for a young man still in his twenties, Jasper writes about the challenges of being young. “I make up the bed after another night spent in dreamless sleep, kicking the sheets. Why must there be such a discrepancy between what there is and what I thought there’d be?” Another song: “Lover I’m sorry, it can’t be helped… Lover look back on horses we stole. We’ve others to steal with others, who knows what the future holds?” The songs are refl ections on what happens. They are not fantasies of rolling down the highway, partying ’til dawn or joyous seductions. They are about being clumsy and tentative and disappointed. “So tear yourself apart and call the pieces art.” A great line and why Jasper Sloan Yip has captured attention and looks to be on the way to capturing more. Page 68 Advertisements Page 69-71 PROTEST MUSIC MARCHES ON I continue to keep my nose on the joy trail, and if something is missing, I try to create it. What appealed to me in folk music were the songs that have lasted for generations. But I wasn’t trying to be one of those guys. I wanted and want to give people something original, the core of a universal idea, simplifi ed into a three-minute song, as powerful as a 400- page book. Bu y Sainte-Marie www.beatmerchant.com 12240 2nd AVE @ BAYVIEW STEVESTON VILLAGE RICHMOND 604.204.044 Clockwise from bottom left: Beans on Toast, Joan Baez, Angélique Kidjo, Pete Seeger, Grace Petrie, Mary Gauthier. Centre: Buff y Sainte-Marie. coffeehouse, later buying them back for 25 grand. Like Baez – now 70-something years of age and visiting Vancouver frequently – Saint-Marie tours the world sharing her messages. Her recently-released album, Power in the Blood, kicks off with a re-working of It's my Way, the title track from her 1964 recording debut. “It's my mantra, I guess, or a celebration of the lifelong struggle for self identity. Power can be the feudal system and the war racket, or it can mean the power in your own DNA, your own brains and what you do in your own life. The root issue is always the same: corporate greed. One good thing is that a lot more people are now seeing the big racket for what it is.” Baez, backstage after her November concert in Vancouver, adjusted, even softened her earlier opinion. “My ex told our granddaughter’s class of 10-year-olds that unless they found new options and ways to live, the world may be uninhabitable by the time they are 40. And guess what? Knowing that didn’t kill them. No one died. And a few decided to fi ght climate change as a result." “People ask me all the time if music can transform people and change the world. And I say, 'Yes, if musicians are willing to take risks.' My job is to fi nd what refl ects today, and, of course, choose music that I can sing. And although I don’t always understand what the songs mean right away, young people are doing wonderful things. I’m touched by the music of a new generation.” Roddy Campbell – celebrating 15 years of publishing Penguin Eggs, a Canadian-based folk, roots and world music magazine – says: “Topical songs don't reach the same mass audiences they once did, due to the gutless state of commercial media – or even the state-sponsored CBC and BBC – reluctant to play anything deemed controversial. Don't even mention television. Yet the internet and YouTube, etc., are making great headway in spreading the word. They [the songs] are out there and have always been. Like anything of value, to fi nd these songs requires time and commitment. “I've found that rather than make a name for themselves only as political commentators, songwriters now add one, maybe two topical songs to an album and to their repertoire. For example: Richard Thompson's vitriolic Mother Knows Best, on Rumour And Sigh, or Rory McLeod slamming religious hypocrisy in God Loves Me and What Would Jesus Do? from his album, Mouth To Mouth.” VFMF co-founder Gary Cristall, who calls the so-called '60s Golden Era of Protest Music,' “a manufactured mythology,” agrees that the heart of protest music carries on, beating strongly, no need for life support. And the 'Olde Folksinger,' Bob Bossin, likens their creation and performance to an ongoing dance upon which the spotlight sometimes shines. The increasingly obscene inequality of wealth in the world spurred Bossin to re-write verses of Les Rice's classic Depression-era Banks of Marble to close a Stringband reunion at the VFMF two years ago. That is, of course, an oft-used option, picking protest from the overfl owing folk songbook, an articulate and powerful legacy which endures and can be dipped into and repurposed when needed. Still, the world orbits on, and folk music, which refl ects it, raw and unvarnished, also hasn't waited for anyone. Rory McLeod says, “I want my songs to keep memory alive; I suppose I’m trying to tell history from working peoples' point of view. Politics to me is people; it covers everything from the way you touch your partner/lover in bed, to how you look after your old folks, or your family, to the workshop fl oor, housing, health care, trespass laws, our rights to organize as a community, etc.” Also outspoken is the young Grace Petrie. Categorized by the The Telegraph as a “whining folk singer,” (a badge she wears with pride), her music more accurately personifi es personal and political courage and resilience. Another UK-based singer-songwriter, Beans on Toast (Jay McAllister) rages against everything from war and over-commercialization to factory chickens. From the far north and deep south, 2015 VFMF artists will place your fi ngers and minds on the world's pulse by sharing insights, opinions, and experiences, and speaking out for most of the rest of us. Artists like Angola's Paulo Flores sing about what they see happening around them – the struggles, the injustices, the causes. The Jerry Cans, who hail from Iqaluit, challenge misconceptions while energetically blending alt-country, reggae, and throat-singing, often in their native Inuktitut language. From Tennessee, Mary Gautier, one of our planet's most gifted and prolifi c songwriters, reaches into decades of unfl inching introspection and storytelling to reveal personal, and universal, truths. Rising Appalachia – led by sisters Leah and Chloe Smith – use music to spark awareness, action, and change, promising to “build community and tackle social injustice through melody, making the stage reach out with octopus arms to gather a great family.” Africa's iconic Angélique Kidjo provides one of myriad global glimpses and truth-telling. Accepting a Grammy (Best World Music Album, Eve) earlier this year, she said: “For me, music is a weapon of peace, and today more than ever, as artists we have a role to play in the stability of this world.” Artistic Director Linda Tanaka has gathered 60 acts from 15 or so countries, keeping alive the VFMF tradition of featuring “artists with something to say,” and creatively gathering them together in once-in-a-lifetime work-shopping opportunities to collaborate, share, speak out, and celebrate. Back to Pete Seeger, the inspiration for the VFMF logo, and so much more. He helped transform the obscure spiritual I’ll Overcome Someday by inserting 'We' into the title and adding verses to the most popular protest song in history, likely being sung somewhere right now in the world. He taught it to Martin Luther King, Jr., the then-emerging civil Bruce Mason is a banjo-playing freelance communications consultant whose writing regularly appears in Common Ground and Penguin Eggs magazines. Email brucemason@shaw.ca. rights leader who, days later, couldn’t get it out of his head, remarking, “That song, We Shall Overcome, really sticks with you, doesn’t it?” Summing up his nine decades, Pete said, before passing on in 2014, “The most important thing I’ve done is share great music seldom played on the radio. I’ve never sung anywhere without giving the audiences a chance to join in – as a kid, a lefty, a man touring the world, as an oldster. I guess it’s a religion with me. Participation. That’s what’s going to save the human race.” Where have all the protest songs gone? They're right here, really, where they've always been. Yours to explore, discover, re-discover, take inspiration from, sing, and share. Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Freedom Singers, Pete Seeger, and Theodore Bikel photographed on July 26, 1963, by John Byrne Cooke at the Newport Folk Festival, singing We Shall Overcome with a standing audience of 13,000 joining in. meantime. Maybe that’s the best that can happen right “Joan’s right,” says Buff y Sainte-Marie. “But personally I continue to keep my nose on the joy trail, and if something is missing, I try to create it. What appealed to me in folk music were the songs that have lasted for generations. But I wasn’t trying to be one of those guys. I wanted and want to give people something original, the core of a universal idea, simplifi ed into a three-minute song, as powerful as a 400-page Sainte-Marie succeeded admirably with the, sadly, still relevant Universal Soldier, which she reports working on “like a student hoping for an A+, wanting people to assume individual responsibility for war, without creating an enema-like experience.” Buff y famously sold the rights to the anti-war masterpiece for a dollar on a napkin in a Greenwich Village coff eehouse, later buying them back for 25 grand. of commercial media – or even the state-sponsored CBC and BBC – reluctant to play anything deemed controversial. Don't even mention television. Yet the internet and YouTube, etc., are making great headway in spreading the word. They [the songs] are out there and have always been. Like anything of value, to fi nd these songs requires time and commitment. “I've found that rather than make a name for themselves only as political commentators, songwriters now add one, maybe two topical songs to an album and to their repertoire. For example: Richard Thompson's vitriolic Mother Knows Best, on Rumour And Sigh, or Rory McLeod slamming religious hypocrisy in God Loves Me and What Would Jesus Do? from his album, Mouth To Mouth.” VFMF co-founder Gary Cristall, who calls the so-called '60s Golden Era of Protest Music,' “a manufactured mythology,” agrees that the heart of protest music carries on, beating strongly, no need for life Rory McLeod, says: “I want my songs to keep memory alive; I suppose I’m trying to tell history from working peoples’ point of view. Politics to me is people; it covers everything from the way you touch your partner/lover in bed, to how you look after your old folks, or your family, to the workshop floor, housing, health care, trespass laws, our rights to organize as a community, etc.” Page 72 Advertisements Page 73-75 WEST AFRICAN STRING THEORY by Douglas Heselgrave F rom time immemorial people have gathered together at the end of a long day to listen to music and share stories. It doesn’t matter whether they’re told in an open fi eld, at a temple, or sung by the banks of an ancient river to the accompaniment of strings; sharing our experiences, myths and aspirations has brought us closer together, helped dissolve diff erences and affi rm identity since people fi rst gathered to set down roots and form communities. In truth, good stories last longer than dynasties, empires and governments. The Ramayana, The Iliad and Beowulf have outlived the societies that nurtured them, and the greatest songs we hear today will carry on past the people who sing them. Over the past thirty eight years, Vancouver Folk Music Festival audiences have had the opportunity to listen to just about every kind of story that people have wanted to tell, and if there is a common thread running through the event’s overwhelming musical diversity, it is that the songs that most often resonate with us the longest – whether from India, South America, ancient Britain or elsewhere – are the ones with simple accompaniment from a stringed instrument. continued over . . . Looking back, we’ve heard the late, great John Renbourn share old ballads about maids deep in love in drop D tuning, Billy Bragg electrically reminding us that there is power in a union, at other times the delicately plucked strings of a Indian santoor underneath the shimmering vocals of an Urdu Ghazal have transported audiences to imagine doomed romances in distant ancient lands. There must be something in the quality of openness that the blending of voices and strings create, which encourages listeners into a frame of mind that is soothing, expansive and suggestive. String instruments form the essential bedrock of so many diff erent musical traditions, and for some people there has never been a more uplifting and mesmerising combination of strings and voice than those that the African artists who have long been a mainstay of the festival bring to share. Two groups appearing this year, Bassekou Kouyaté and Ngoni Ba and Sousou and Maher Cissoko have built their sound around two traditional instruments, the kora and ngoni that refl ect the continent’s ancient storytelling traditions. In traditional West African societies, musicians called ‘griots’ or ‘jalis’ were the historians, genealogists and storytellers who passed on their skills and store of collective oral knowledge to their descendants. In the past, these griots or jalis spread and commented on daily events and this newest generation of contemporary griots has taken up the mantle to bring new energy to this age-old tradition. As benefi ciaries of globalism and the internet, and the ubiquitous exposure to western pop, rock and hip hop music, it is exciting to hear them reconsider the roots of their own musical traditions as they explore the possibilities presented by ancient instruments like the kora and ngoni to create new and contemporary storylines. Vancouver audiences have had the opportunity to hear many great kora players since Jali Musa Jawara fi rst performed at the festival in the summer of 1988. At that time, the kora was still a very new instrument to consider for most audiences outside of Africa and people didn’t know what to expect when they heard it. Perhaps that’s why many of the fi rst kora players who toured internationally focused their repertoires towards gentle, traditional acoustic songs, refl ecting what western audiences were able to appreciate at that time. If you’ve never heard one, the kora is a string instrument that resembles a classical harp and is traditionally played in Gambia, Senegal, Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, which were once part of the ancient Malian empire. When simple melodies are plucked on the instrument, the kora does sound very similar to a western harp, but because of the way it’s usually played, the melodies it creates are more suggestive of Spanish fl amenco or American delta blues than classical music. Over the years, many western musicians including Taj Mahal, Herbie Hancock and the Kronos Quartet have incorporated koras into their music as have many trance and electronica artists who have been drawn to the instrument’s broad sonic possibilities. Like the guitar and piano, the kora is an instrument that suggests almost endless variations and approaches, so it’s understandable that a lot of people still really don’t know what it can do. This year at the festival, the beautifully simple and unadorned music that Sousso and Maher Cissoko play will highlight the creative interaction between stories and strings in traditional West African music and give audiences the opportunity to hear collaborations between the kora and western musical instruments such as the bass and guitar. A modern ngoni is a more portable and less technically demanding string instrument to play than the kora, yet it shares a history that is just as rich and varied even though it hasn’t received nearly the same level of attention outside of Africa. Like the kora, the ngoni is played throughout the countries that were once part of the ancient Malian empire, and is still commonly heard in both traditional and contemporary pop music. It has long been the instrument of choice for griots when they play traditional songs or ‘fasas’ – as Mandingospeaking people call them – at gatherings or celebrations. Even though the ngoni has existed since ‘the beginning of all things’ according to the Malian oral tradition, like everything else, they have not been immune to the passage of time or pressure from the modern world. Modern recording artists like Bassekou Kouyaté have gone to great lengths to create places for the ngoni in contemporary music by modifying the instrument so that it can handle the demands of modern international performances. In the past, ngonis were large and unwieldy – a situation which limited the places or situations in which they could be played. Contemporary ngonis are more compact and built in a variety of shapes that can be tuned to diff erent pitches to replicate the variety of stringed instruments commonly found in rock and jazz groups. Kouyaté, who runs a popular music academy in Mali has single-handedly invented bass, alto and tenor ngonis for his students to play, which helps create a vital and relevant future for an instrument that had become marginalized. When you fi rst hear the ngoni, the melodies may seem more propulsive, poly-rhythmic and richly textured then those commonly played on the kora, and to untrained ears can sound almost identical to riff s from a guitar. A common mistake that people make when considering the ngoni or other traditional instruments is that they expect the music that is played on them to somehow refl ect a slower, gentler world. In truth, some of the best modern ngoni music is complex, challenging and downright psychedelic in nature and would go down well with the jam band crowd. This has caused some musical purists to complain that the ngoni has recently become little more than a ‘guitar in disguise.’ It’s a spurious complaint as the ngoni – like all musical instruments – has always been in a constant state of evolution. Music is, by nature, a ‘two way street’ that transcends politics and cultural considerations in favour of beautiful rhythms and melodies. Historically, the ngoni was one of the fi rst instruments built and played by the West African slaves who were sold and brought over to work on American plantations. Over generations, musicians from diff erent southern communities experimented with the instrument as it continued to change and adapt under the infl uence of its new surroundings until it slowly evolved into the modern banjo that is so central to country and bluegrass music Whatever cultural forces are at work, it is exhilarating to hear about the resurgence of interest in traditional string instruments taking place in parts of Africa. It’s heartening to learn that in recent years, the ngoni has replaced the electric guitar as the most popular instrument in Mali and a whole new generation of young artists in Western Africa is learning to play the kora. This shift in preferences off ers new vistas for African music in general as it creates authentic opportunities for musicians from the continent to tell vital, contemporary stories in a traditional context. This is a welcome development for the future evolution of a truly unique African artistry that boldly challenges the pressure musicians are under to conform to the demands of an increasingly homogenized global market. In the seventies, eighties and nineties, many African performers like King Sunny Ade, Salif Keita and Youssou N’Dour gained international attention with music that referenced reggae, funk, disco and hip hop, proof that musicians from the continent could both participate and infl uence contemporary pop music. With that achieved, artists like Bassekou Kouyaté and the Cissokos are doing something slightly different. They are creating music that is neither held in by the demands of the international pop market, nor are they simply recreating traditional music from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer past. In the same way that Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones looked back at old ballad, country and blues forms and put them in the service of their songs, artists like Maher and Sousso Cissoko and Basekou Kouyaté are bringing their culture’s music full circle to create something new. Instead of adapting their music into western pop idioms, they are reconsidering and revitalizing traditional musical forms in a way that is anything but antique or folkloric to express their feelings about the world they see around them. And, like a teenaged Bob Dylan did almost sixty years ago when he fi rst picked up an acoustic guitar and bashed out an old Woody Guthrie tune, these artists are dipping into their culture’s wells of songs, adapting them and creating new storylines to refl ect their contemporary experience. With songs as old as time and as current as this morning’s news, today’s generation of West African musicians are creating new and meaningful places for themselves in one of the world’s oldest string and storytelling traditions. In the end, it all comes down to the music, and when we listen to Bassekou Kouyaté and the Cissokos this weekend, we are giving ourselves permission to let the world around us fall away to be guided by the power of the kora, ngoni and human voice into a world of possibility and imagination. Douglas Heselgrave is a Vancouver based writer and editor. His work regularly appears at Paste, Nodepression and other fi ne online journals. You can find him at www.restlessandreal.blogspot.ca Did you know that many of Canada’s leading companies and their foundations match contributions made by their employees and retirees to charitable organizations? If you donate to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, or would like to, check and see if your employer has a matching program and double your gift to the Festival. Thanks!! Get Your Boss To Give Us Money Here’s How! Did you know that many of Canada’s leading companies and their foundations match contributions made by their employees and retirees to charitable organizations? If you donate to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, or would like to, check and see if your employer has a matching program and double your gift to the Festival. Thanks!! Get Your Boss To Give Us Money Here’s How! Page 76 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 2015 FRIENDS OF PETE The folks listed here are special people! They have each made a generous contribution to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival Society since the last Festival. Sustaining Members make monthly contributions, some give lump sums – it’s all good. Each and every contribution makes us stronger and healthier and our future brighter. Thank you each and every one! ten Abbot Stephen Aberle Susan Adams Robert Adelman Genia Ainsworth Staci & Burt Alber Valerie Alberts Graham Allen Catherine Alpaugh Trish Angle Bill & Ruth Armstrong Judy Assoon Joshua Baker Michelle Baudais Steven Beck Vanessa Bell Brenda Benham Miriam Benny Birger Bergersen Jennifer Anne Blaine Kathryn Booth Nevine Booth Jan Bornhauser Véronique Boulanger Daniel Bowditch Deborah Brakeley Joel Bronstein Nadine Bruce Anne Budgell Fred Bunnell Tami Jean Burgess Henry Burton Natasha Cadieux Thomas Lee Campbell Roxanne Cave Janie Cawley Jenny Chapman Louise Chernin Valdine Ciwko Theresa-Ann Clark Kate Cli ord Ian Cohen John Connor Karen Cooper Lynn Copeland Suzy Coulter Patti Crow FRIENDS OF PETE The folks listed here are special people! They have each made a generous contribution to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival Society since the last Festival. Sustaining Members make monthly contributions, some give lump sums – it’s all good. Each and every contribution makes us stronger and healthier and our future brighter. Thank you each and every one! Kathryn Cuming Michel Daigneault Susan Ackland Daniel Maas Monica Dare Ann Daskal Shannon Daub Bruce Alexander Daughtry Angel Davis Pat Davitt Margaret Delgatty Working Design David Dexter Pauline Douglas Bill Dovhey David Downey Mike Dumler Sheila Dunnachie Mia Edbrooke Steve Edge Dennis Enomoto Iolanda Esposito Debbie Fairhurst Elizabeth Fairhurst Lucy Falkner Catherine Fallis Jane Fernyhough Donna Finch Paul Finch Je Finger Mark Finlay Abegael Fisher-Lang Sharon Flight Sydney Foran Megan Forsyth Michael Fournier Estelle Freedman Roger Gale Martin & Carole Gerson Ron Gibbs Bonnie Gibson Patricia Gibson Christiaens Gill Jenny Glickman-Rynde Isabel Gordon Jessica Gossen Surya Govender John Gracey Nancy Graham Tom Grant Howard Green John Endo Greenaway Susan Gregory Mu Hackett Brian Hall-Stevenson Theresa Harding Judy Harper Joan Harris Reed Harris June Harrison Pamela & Eric Harrison Victoria Harrison Larry Allen (LA) Heberlein Kelsey Heikoop Philip Hemming Sherry Hensel Ann Hepper Ruth Herman Carol Herter Jane Heyman Joyce Hinton P&E Holubo Bill Hooker Tim Howard Tariq Hussain Heather Hyde Joanne Ingledew Arlene Jackson Lorena Jara Diaz Susan Jardine Ann Jarrell Gary Jarvis Carol Jerde Lesley Joy Wittrock Julie Diane Kadota Gwen Kallio Alison Kannegieter Nick Kannegieter Paul Kannegieter Samantha Kannegieter Judith Kaplan Leslie Kemp Margaret Kendall Sara Kendall Simon Kendall Murray Kennedy-McNeill John Kidder Katherine King Jennifer Kirkey Emma Kivisild Kris Klaasen Gabriella Klein Seth Klein Anne Marie Konas Yarrow Koontz Patricia Kramer Maureen Jack La Croix Peter Ladner Shannon Lambie Chris Lang David Lank Karen Lapointe Lucie Lareau Lynette Larsen Barbara Laslett Michael Laslett Lynn Ledgerwood Helen Lemon-Moore Bram Lermer Dave Lidstone Veronica Light Anne-Marie Long Richard Lopez Shirley Lum Michael MacDonald Joe MacEachern Mary MacLellan Alice Macpherson Ruby Maekawa Carolyn Main David Mamorek Mary Henry Margaret Purcell Sonia Marino David Marnoch Aviva Martin Honey Maser Emma Mason Ian Mass June Maynard Nyla McCarthy Melissa McDowell You want your name on this list! It’s a good list! Why don’t you get your name on this very select list by making a fi nancial contribution to the festival? Visit the Donations Tent where fest volunteers and Board members will greet you and be very nice to you. Strapped for cash this second? Phone the offi ce, or visit us online to donate through the CanadaHelps.org button. All contributions of $20 or more are eligible for tax receipts. Jim McGill Ian McKay & Family Scott McKee Steven McKinney Allison Mcphedran Fred Michael Greg Miller Jenelle Molyneux Dave Moody Katherine Mooney Wendy Moore Larry Morningstar Lynette Morrison Lisa Morrow Gail Moyle Jennifer Nash Carolyn Neapole Christina Needham Kathryn Neilson Amy Newman Fred Newman Lor Newstead Samuel Newton Linda Nicholls Chris Nielsen Ginette Nielsen Karen O’Brien Ezeadi Patrick Onukwulu Lowell Orcutt Marisa Orth-Pallavicci Malcolm Page Virginia Pateman Trent Payton Mary Peirce Biagi Caroline Penn Michelle Philippe Janice Pickard Charlene Pirro Mario Pirro Tami Popp Superior Propane Walter Quan David Querido Kelly Quinn Geo rey Rempel Loretta Richardson Corinne Riedyk Bobby Righi Dianne Ritchie Janine Robben Bonnie Roberts-Taylor Rebecca Robertson Rachel Rocco Brenda Rogers Judy Roman Calvin & Christine Roskelly Carol Rossett Geir, Kari, Iselen Rosvik Laurie Rotecki Adonna Rudolph Rosemarie Rupps Catherine Russell Jason Ryant Sherri Sadler Rosemary Salgo Cheryl Sanderson Annie Sarazin Judy Sauteno Samantha Scholefi eld Elaine Schretlen Jack Schuller Jean Schwartz Ophira Schwarzfeld Nicholas Scott Sue Scott Brian Sentance Elena Serrano Peggy Shafer E.M. (Bunny) Shannon Karin Shard Caissie Sheelagh Rochelle Shimerl Karen Shuster Peter Sickert Elin Sigurdson Lindy Sisson Jennifer Slater US DONORS Did you know that you can receive tax benefi ts for supporting the Vancouver Folk Music Festival? If you are one of our many friends from south of the border, and interested in making a gift of over $1,000 dollars to The Festival, please contact Rachel Rocco 604.424.9964 for more details about the tax benefi ts you can receive. 21 years ago a group of people stepped up to the plate with generous donations to help keep us afl oat. We want those folks to know we remember and appreciate their show of support. And you know something? Many of you are still here for us today. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Bobby Righi Dianne Ritchie Janine Robben Bonnie Roberts-Taylor Rebecca Robertson Rachel Rocco Brenda Rogers Judy Roman Calvin & Christine Roskelly Carol Rossett Geir, Kari, Iselen Rosvik Laurie Rotecki Adonna Rudolph Rosemarie Rupps Catherine Russell Jason Ryant Sherri Sadler Rosemary Salgo Cheryl Sanderson Annie Sarazin Judy Sauteno Samantha Scholefi eld Elaine Schretlen Jack Schuller Jean Schwartz Ophira Schwarzfeld Nicholas Scott Sue Scott Brian Sentance Elena Serrano Peggy Shafer E.M. (Bunny) Shannon Karin Shard Caissie Sheelagh Rochelle Shimerl Karen Shuster Peter Sickert Elin Sigurdson Lindy Sisson Jennifer Slater Colin MIlls Ted Slater Jane Slemon Andrea Smith Jessie Smith John Smith Merle Smith Brita Sorenson Beth Southwell Douglas Sprenger Jane Srivastava Craig Stacey Megan Stannard Serena Staple Shannon Steele Richard Stein Naomi Steinberg Daniel Stenning J. Edward Stenson Lisa Stevenson Zool Suleman Mary Sullivan Susan Summers Bernard Tague Mayumi Takasaki Linda Tanaka Gray Tang Jesse Tarbotton Sally Thorne Mark Tibando Bruce Tiberiis Penelope Tilby Andrea Turner Lucy Turnham Risako Urakabe Linda Uyehara-Ho man Elijah van der Giessen Anneke Van Vliet Julia Vaughan Vincent Vialogos Cheryl Vickers Let the good folks at the City of Vancouver’s Board of Parks and Recreation know you appreciate coming to the Festival at Jericho Beach Park each year! Why not write to them to express your gratitude? Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation 2099 Beach Avenue Vancouver, BC V6G 1Z4 pbcomments@vancouver.ca SAY THANKS Alina Villa Rosalie Walls Elizabeth Walsh Joanne Ward Elinor Warkentin Gordon Watson Marnie Watson Greg Weir Ben West Ken Westdorp Margaret Whale Rebecca Whyman Courtney Kalin Whyte Erlene Wollard Jane Wolverton Susan Woodhouse Doyle Wyre Christine Zaenker Allan Zdunic 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 77 Page 79 Little Folks Village Friday 2pm-5pm Saturday & Sunday 10am-5pm located by Stage 1 Visit the Little Folks Village and have lots of fun! Create crafts and works of art from recycled materials, learn how to make paper, make a cup or a sculpture from a lump of clay, construct handmade paper, have your face painted, listen to stories, create a song and play the assembled on site. Our volunteers and participating groups have parades and lots of great activities planned for the whole family. Enjoy! Please note: we do not provide a child-minding service. Little ones must be accompanied by an adult in the Village. Bike Igloo Chill out in this summer-time igloo built out of recycled bicycle wheels. Our Community Bikes/ Pedal Society has built a unique and amazing fort for kids to hang out in, play in, dream in - and decorate. Come see this amazing structure for yourself! Clay Play Potter Richard Tanaka shows and teaches the basics of working with clay. Drop by and learn techniques like rolling, pinching, and coiling clay. Why not create your own cup, bowl or very artistic sculpture? This is fun for all ages. Saturday & Sunday 10am-Noon Full Color Business Cards, Bookmarks, Tickets, Postcards, Rackcards, Greeting Cards, Posters, Brochures, Flyers, Catalogues, Booklets, Presentation Folders, Table Tents and much more! Congratulations on the 38th Annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival! www.eastvangraphics.ca From Your Friends at 1317 Commercial Drive 604 - 251 - 6964 www.highlifeworld.com Cross-border travel without the bag searches. LPs CDs DVDs Tickets Sophie’s Cosmic ~ Cafe 2095 West 4th ~ 604 732 6810 Working together for all British Columbians unifor467 Planned Giving: Think about us. How can those who are passionate about the Festival help continue its success for another 35 years and beyond? A most powerful but simple way is to leave the Vancouver Folk Music Festival Society a legacy. Stop by the Donations: For Pete’s Sake! tent over the weekend to fi nd out just how easy it can be to include us in your estate planning. Paper Making Discover the absolute magic of making handmade paper. UBC’s Pulp and Paper Centre will be on site to teach the process of recycling your daily newspaper into pulp fi bres, and creating new paper. Join in! A Proud Sponsor of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival Recycled Crafts Pop in and try your hand at one of the many craft-making opportunities planned throughout the day. Get your creative juices fl owing assembling paper, buttons, egg cartons and yarn into a dragon or other masterpieces. There’s lots to paint and play and do – so stop in often. Redbird Juggling – Stilt Walking Join Redbird, aka Peter Graham-Gaudreau, as he entertains and conducts mini workshops on juggling and stilt walking throughout the weekend. Check for posted times in the Village. Redbird – Let’s Make a Song And then – get ready to rawk with Ruffl e Redbird and his interactive improv show, Let’s Make a Song! Redbird gets you rolling with awesome examples of how hit songs are made. Then he takes your ideas, and together you create a cool new tune. Then, join Redbird to sing and perform it for everyone! Check for posted times. more over Eric Scott Face Painting Transform your own face or let one of our talented volunteers change you into a super hero, a fi erce animal, a funny clown – or whatever your heart desires. 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 79 Page 80 Keys to the Streets You have seen them around the city, piano’s in the street for anyone who wants to play and share their passion of music with everyone else. Now we have one at our for young folks to play on or maybe sing a duet with mom or dad. Keys to the Streets, started as a CityStudio student idea in the spring of 2013, returns to the streets to bring delight and surprise to Vancouver’s public spaces by providing vibrantly painted pianos for everyone to play. The pianos off er a space for improvisational gatherings, spontaneous connections and celebrations of music. All Keys to the Streets pianos are painted by local artists and placed in an outdoor public space where community stewards look them after for the summer months. These pianos aim to create a space that makes Vancouver a more vibrant, engaged, and interactive city and help to address the issue of social isolation in Vancouver by providing a space that allows and encourages connections between many demographics, all levels of musical skill, and those that simply listen. Nylon Zoo Crawl inside the Nylon Zoo Eco Dome and join in songs and stories with Angela Brown. Hear the interactive story about restoration, replanting and believing in the power of a seed. And when you’re fi nished, you get to help plant a garden! Special thanks to UBC Pulp and Paper Centre, Our Community Bikes/Pedal Society, Keys to the Streets, Publik Secrets, Richard Tanaka, Green Barn Pottery Supply, Peter Graham-Gaudreau and Angela Brown for their contribution to the Little Folks Village. Madskillz Roving Performers The fabulous Christa returns with her team of equally magnifi cent roaming performers, including the always-popular hoopers and spinners. They will entertain and run mini-classes throughout the weekend. Page 81 Nature Committee Festival weekend is a great time to learn environmentally-friendly habits and raise enough awareness about nature and our environment to last all year long! Located nearby the Little Folks Village, right beside the pond, our Nature Committee educates festival-goers about the natural world, and the importance of eco-systems and marine protected areas. Enjoy hands-on instruments made from recycled objects! Drawing inspiration from the whimsical instruments created by inventors such as Harry Partch and the Baschet Brothers, this musical playground enchants the ear with never-before heard sonic arrangements while providing educational insights into the physics of sound! Come play on giant xylophones made out of bicycle parts, an organ fueled by bike pumps, drums and other music-making pieces. Publik Secrets Musical Playground 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 81 Page 82 Food and Beverages AUSSIE PIE GUY Delish savory & veggie pies in a fl aky pastry crust. One bite of these little “beauties” and you’ll think you’re “down undah.” BIG ROCK BEER GARDEN Treat yourself with a refreshing cold Big Rock ale or lager, or savour a glass from Barefoot Wine. B & B CONCESSIONS Sample from a variety of yummy savory or dessert crepes. You know what they say, a crepe a day is very tasty! Canada El Salvador Action Network Society (CELSAN) Delicious pupusas & tamales will tempt your taste buds. Wash it down with fruit juices from Latin America. Cheyenne Coffee Conveniently located near the food circle and Main Stage, fresh-brewed java and other great beverages will soothe you - or energize your dance moves! Cup a Corn Tender-steamed sweet corn kernels in a cup in beautiful fl avors of wasabi ginger, Thai, peanut satay, Indian, cinnamon dessert and “classic.” Come give it a try! Dim Sum Express Stir-fried savory noodles and plump shrimp or pork dumplings will make your taste buds go “Yum Yum for Dim Sum.” Earnest Ice Cream Hand-crafted ice cream that is a wildly popular Vancouver favourite. Defi nitely a fest “must-have”! Kettle Popcorn (Etc. Concessions) Munch delish fl avoured and seasoned kettle popcorn along to the music at any festival stage. One, two, crunch, munch! G’s Donairs Opa! Greek salad, falafel, pita with tzatziki, hummus and delicious donairs! But sorry – no breaking plates in the park! I’s Lemonade Fresh-squeezed lemonade will provide crisp, thirst-quenching relief while enjoying the festival’s music. Insomniac’s Coffee Co. Fresh-brewed coff ee, awesome lattes and other sumptuous hot beverages can be found right over the bridge adjacent to the pond. Ever so worth the walk! It's All About Grill Tasty meat skewers: garlic chicken, rib-eye beef, spicy pork, and baconwrapped sausage. Fun to eat, and oh-so good. Jamaica Mi Juicy Luscious and spicy jerk chicken, Jamaican patties and fl avourful fruit smoothies (try the mango!). JJ’s Hot Cobs The festival would not be complete without at least one trip for steam-cooked, juicy corncobs slathered in melted butter and fl avored with one of the many savory salts! The Kaboom Box A favourite downtown food truck comes to the park. Andy & his gang make really “kick ass” food. Try their Oyster Po’Boy! It’s in high demand! Left Coast Naturals Innovative and creative snack foods: cocoanuts, mixed chips and organic almonds. A favourite of the festival audiences, staff , volunteers and performers alike! Mad Jack’s Chunky Fries Thick, fresh cut fries and yam fries double-fried to crispy perfection. Hear Jack yell “chunky fries, chunky fries.” This improves the fl avor! Mediterranean BBQ Pablo and his gang prepare sensational grilled chicken and merguez sausage and other delights. They’ve been a festival favourite for over 10 years. What would we do without them? Mexi Pops Frozen fruit is certainly a very healthy way to cool off . Sample from a tempting array of mango, pineapple topping with shredded coconut, other fruits, and some freshly made Hornby Island baking. Go on, give yourself a treat! Mogu Foods Japanese street food that’s like a party in your mouth! Chicken karaage nuggets, savory sandwiches of pork katsu, chicken teriyaki, prawn katsu, and kabocha squash. New Taste Wraps Chicken, beef and falafel pitas with fresh, crisp veggies, located adjacent to the beer garden. A perfect match with your beverage! Nomad’s Kitchen Delectable, nutritious and fl avourful food has always been the standard for David and his team. From Algerian grille chicken, grilled salmon and curries, to homemade chai and fair trade coff ees, it is a comfort food haven. Salt Spring Coffee Festival sponsor Salt Spring Coffee serves an array of delicious fair-trade coff ee beverages for your deep and profound enjoyment. Sweet Thea Bakery European-trained pastry chef and chocolatier Thea (pronounced Tay-uh) makes amazing cakes, pies, cookies, macarons, and other baked delectables. Calling all sweet tooths! Taser Sandwiches Grilled golden with gourmet fi llings for a festival taste treat! Delicious with both hot and cold bevvies. Taste of Thailand Enjoy a plate of Thai cuisine: pad thai, chicken curries, spring rolls and much more! Tin LIzzy Have some delicious perogies and keilbasa in the Food Area, or visit their new fresh-cut fries tent next to the Beer Garden. It's all lip-smackin' goooood. Varinicey Pakoras Namaste! Christopher makes amazing pakoras, samosas & vegetable curry. Do try the comforting chai tea and the refreshing mango lassi beverages, too. Whales Tails Fry Bread A long-standing and important part of the Festival experience! Crispy fried dough with a choice of toppings. Be part of the tradition! Yak & Yeti Bistro Discover the unique fl avours of Nepalese & Himalayan cuisines. Awaken your taste buds!!! BE OUR ZERO HERO IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Help us be a zero waste event COMPOST LANDFILL RECYCLABLES MIXED (CLEAN) PAPER REFUNDABLES Organics Only Garbage Only Clean Paper Only Empty Containers Only Empty Containers Only Biodegradable Products Institute COMPOSTING COUNCIL COMPOSTABLE US NON-COMPOSTABLE FIVE WAYS TO BE A ZERO HERO Compost all Festival food and foodware purchased at the Festival. Compostable cups, cutlery, stir sticks, and straws are used everywhere at the festival. This includes the Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) cups supplied by Big Rock Brewery in the Beer Garden. Please be sure to compost them by removing the lids and placing your cups in the cup sucker tubes attached to the Zero Waste Stations. Recycle all your bottles and cans at the Zero Waste Stations. Avoid contaminating our compostable bins with non-Festival foodware waste! Carry your own water bottle. Bottled water is not sold on site but there are water stations all over the site. Ride your bike, walk, carpool, or take public transportation to the Festival! FEELING LUCKY? GRAB YOUR TROLL DOLL AND GET YOUR 50/50 TICKETS! 3 for $5 or 10 for $10 Look out for 50/50 sellers throughout the park all weekend, or go to the Donations: For Pete's Sake! Tent to purchase. A daily winner will be drawn on the Evening Main Stage: Friday between 7 & 7:30pm Saturday between 7 & 7:30pm Sunday between 6:30 & 7:00pm Each day is a diff erent pot. You must be in attendance to claim your prize at the Donations: For Pete’s Sake! Tent within 30 minutes of draw announcement each night. 50/50 DRAW Friday July 17: BC Gaming license # 76388 Saturday July 18: BC Gaming license # 76382 Sunday July 19: BC Gaming license # 76383 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 83 Page 84 The Artisan Market is a showcase of the work of some of the finest artisans and artists around, and a fabulous place to shop for the beautiful, the useful, the one-of-a-kind. There is a treasure awaiting you for someone you love, or as a special treat you've been looking to give to yourself! This year the Artisan Market is in a new location! Check the map on page 95. BAM WOODWORKS Keep your family close and your keepsakes closer. BAM Woodworks, a family run artisan studio, makes hand-crafted jewellery boxes and keepsake holders for your family’s treasures. From their collection of reclaimed exotic wood pieces including arbutus, purple heart a ELENA DESIGNS Wearable art, handcrafted fashion from the runways of Milan to your West Coast wrists and necks! Off ering laser cut leather jewellery, each of Elena’s designs intricately combines leather engraving and cutouts. ETERNITY NATURALS Engage your senses and indulge in decadence. Eternity Naturals bodycare provides a variety of skin care products for your head and your toes - and healing solutions for everywhere in between. GINA’S HANDCRAFTED LOTIONS Products made from locally-farmed, wild-crafted 100% natural ingredients including sunscreen lotions in pretty glass jars. Luxurious and practical! HELENA MARGARETA Knitted linen shawls, hand dyed scarves, alpaca hats and the Brillianto 20 Way Shawl; Helena’s love of all things fi ber shows in her unique collection. HENNA SUN Boasting both traditional bridal designs and free-spirited folk fl are, Henna Sun’s 100% natural, dye-free henna (Mehndi) tattoos will leave you in a celebratory and festive mood. IAN SPARRE GLASS INC. Leaving nothing to waste, Ian utilizes any and all textiles he can get his hands on to create unique and personalized fabric from scraps, then renders those into wearable pieces of art. With an eye for underground fashion and the pursuit of sustainability, Ian creates a variety of clothing, bags and accessories. INFINITY STUDIO DESIGNS Representing an eclectic treasury of hand-crafted jewellery, fi nd a range of west coast native and contemporary designs in gold, silver and copper. KAT CADEGAN JEWELLERY Infl uenced by the natural landscape of her Revelstoke home and by her world travels, Kat has a unique vision of organic grandeur for her jewellery collection. Handmade, using high quality sterling silver and bronze, her skilled craftsmanship allows for a dichotomy of rich textures and whimsy. LAWRENCE LOWE A graduate of Emily Carr, Lawrence is taking his well known ink drawings of False Creek off paper, transforming them into musical works of art on deer skin Aboriginal drums. Want to learn about relief printmaking? Find Lawrence! NAKED SAGE Drawing from the natural beauty of the earth, especially the West Coast colour palette, Naked Sage off ers a variety of handcrafted jewellery using re-purposed leather jackets, copper wire, and local wood. Each unique piece is made with love. PANORAMA HAMMOCKS Panorama Hammocks is founded on the idea that everyone deserves a personal place to be reminded of how blissful life can be. Each hammock is uniquely designed and proudly handcrafted in Vancouver. RAVENS IN MOTION A collection of authentic coastal, handcrafted wood, bird mobiles and ornaments are waiting to share their stories with you. Native designed cards and prints will bring the coastal beauty into your home. ROBERT CERINS DESIGNS INC. Move over eyes, fi ne art is now here for the ears. Robert’s detailed, hand-painted earrings depict both the literal and energetic landscape that surrounds us. Wear his vibrant colours to express your inner voice! SACRED LIGHT DESIGN CO. Inspired by the harmonic proportions of nature, all of Sacred Light Design Co’s pieces are designed to mirror the elegant geometry of our world. Find lanterns, mandalas, altar pieces and jewellery in simple natural materials, yet complex in design. SOUL PATH SHOES Seeking true ergonomic comfort from custom footwear? Soul Path Shoes have your tootsies covered with highquality natural materials, a one-of-a-kind fi t, and genuine artistic fl are. You won’t walk away with just a sole, you’ll skip down the path with Soul. A TRACE OF GREY DESIGNS Bridging the gap between stark opposites: black and white, a Trace of Grey Designs never steps away from a challenge. They create custom, hand-made, modern leather accessories to adorn your shoulders with bags and guitar straps, and keep your clothes in place with belts and cuff s. WINDOW ARCADES TERRARIUM DESIGN Beautiful mini hanging gardens bring the healing elements of nature indoors. Combining hand-blown glass, exotic tillandsia (air plants) that fl ourish without soil, and healing stones to resonate the Chakras, these terrariums appeal to the visual and inner senses. WOODPECKER’S TOYS Aspiring knights unite with handmade wooden toys and costumes. Whether you are mastering your agile swordsmanship or improving your memory capacity, these toys will inspire creative play. Even the most dedicated knights need playtime. YUKLAANAS Taking great pride in authentic native art and crafts, Yuklaanas is a First Nations family-owned artisan. They create traditional First Nations games and art kits using deer skin, sinew, and bone beads. YUTAL JEWELRY FUSION Fusing diverse inspiration from European Art Deco to Moroccan hammered metal results in a variety of unique jewelry using gold, silver and semi-precious stones, created by professional goldsmiths. ZULA JEWELRY + DESIGN Scavenging through nature’s bounty of treasures, Urszula creates nature-inspired metal wear - original handmade jewelry in silver, copper, bronze, and gold. A recipient of the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, her jewelry collections hope to inspire the fashion and nature lover in all of us. he Folk Bazaar, located ocean-front in Jericho Beach Park, has quickly become an integral part of the Festival experience. Like a true bazaar, you’ll fi nd a diverse collection of treasures to peruse – maybe even see into your future or heal your past. Vendors here typically import their goods, but some sell their own handcrafted works. Clothing, accessories (including jewellery, hats, bags, belts, guitar straps, and even magic wands!), houseware items, toys and, well, pretty much anything else you can think of can be found among the over 160 booths in this market. Open to both festival-goers and the general public. Accessible from the beach or from just outside the West Gate. Folk Bazaar Hours of Operation Friday, July 17 2pm – 10pm Saturday, July 18 10am – 10pm Sunday, July 19 10am – 10pm Raz Dong Ar� san Saturday, July 18 Sunday, July 19 Page 86-87 CJSF 90.1 FM Meet the folks behind Simon Fraser University’s volunteer-driven, non-profi t campus-community radio station! Sing a song, tell a story, or record a station ID at CJSF's Folk Festival open mic. COMMUNITY FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD What does the ultimate sustainable community look like for the Community for a Sustainable World? It's individuals who are able to fully support and provide for themselves in a way that creates generational learning, fosters relationships, and facilitates growth while limiting environmental degradation. Festival-goers will learn about opportunities to get involved in sustainable projects in their communities. DOGWOOD INITIATIVE Dogwood Initiative is a pro-democracy, non-partisan group who believes that BC citizens should have a say in the decisions that aff ect our land, air and water. Focusing their attention on their ‘Let BC Vote’ campaign, Dogwood will be discussing environmental issues that aff ect the coastline and how these factors intertwine with the upcoming Federal Election. ELECTRORECYCLE Think you're quick, eh? Test out your speedy work in ElectroRecycle’s Recycling Dual, a timed trial aimed at diverting electrical products from the landfi ll. ElectroRecycle is BC’s not-forprofi t recycling program for small appliances and power tools, the fi rst of its kind in Canada, providing convenient recycling options that promote pollution reduction and energy savings. HOPE IN SHADOWS Hope in Shadows is a community-engagement project that empowers the Downtown Eastside community through artistic expression and employment. Now in its 13th year, Hope in Shadows will be hosting their fi rst ‘Community Choice Awards,’ requesting the help of festival patrons to vote for their favourite calendar photos from the past 12 years to be part of their ‘Best of’ retrospective edition. There's a chance to win an exclusive prize pack. KIDNEY FOUNDATION OF CANADA The Kidney Foundation of Canada, BC & Yukon Branch is a national volunteer organization committed to reducing the burden of kidney disease through research and education, funding and support, and access to quality healthcare. Bring your kids and friends over for a friendly bubble blowing contest! MUSIC HEALS Using the nonverbal, creative, structural, and emotional qualities of music, Music Heals raises awareness of music therapy’s benefi ts for people of all walks and stages of life. Their current initiative #MusicMakesMe invites festival patrons to share the impact that music has had on their life, how it makes them feel, and what silly/creative things it makes them do - like perhaps getting a (temporary) tattoo at their booth! AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Drop by the Amnesty International tent and join their campaign to stop torture around the world. Amnesty International is a global movement of people dedicated to the promotion and protection of human rights, including defending Indigenous rights in the face of government denials. They’ll also have information on their Human Rights Leadership for Youth summer day camps, and solidarity and action events happening this fall. ANCIENT FOREST ALLIANCE The Ancient Forest Alliance is an environmental organization working to protect BC’s endangered old-growth forests and to ensure sustainable second-growth forestry in the province. Stop by and get advice and maps for oldgrowth forest hiking trails for your post-VFMF activities. BC HEALTH COALITION BC Health Coalition is a community of individuals and organizations that advocates for evidence-based improvements to our public healthcare system, and for this system to be publically accountable and controlled. In view of the upcoming federal election, they will provide festival patrons the opportunity to document the importance of public health care in their lives through their Vote for Public Health Care campaign. BC POVERTY REDUCTION COALITION (PRAC) PRAC is committed to the fi ght against poverty in BC. Seeking and developing solutions to the reduction of poverty, this coalition is campaigning for the BC government to introduce a comprehensive poverty reduction plan with achievable and sustainable targets and timelines. CANADIAN PARKS AND WILDERNESS SOCIETY, BC CHAPTER (CPAWS) Have you ever wondered how long the glass sponge reefs have existed off the coast of BC? Do you question if your favourite sashimi is sustainably fi shed? CPAWS can answer these questions and give you a whale mascot to snuggle up to for a fun photo op. CFRO 100.5FM Celebrating 40 years of non-commercial, cooperatively-owned, listener-supported, community radio this year, Vancouver Co-operative Radio remains a voice for the voiceless that continues to provide a space for under-represented and marginalized communities. Broadcasting 24-hours-a-day in the areas of arts, public aff airs, and music (including great folk, roots, and world music shows), Co-op Radio continues to play a vital role in our community. Stop by their table to congratulate them, and wish them "Happy 40th!" CITR 101.9FM Now a fully-fl edged annual tradition, CiTR will be broadcasting live from the festival on Saturday, July 18 from 8am to 2pm. Stop by their temporary festival "studio" at the back of the audience area of Stage 3 to say "hi." Station hosts will be talking up the fest, playing music by festival artists, and doing live interviews. Come see a bit of what goes on behind the mic and Learn more about UBC campus radio, and congratulate them on their new permanent studio digs. MUSQUEAM FIRST NATION The Musqueam people have been present in what is now greater Vancouver for thousands of years. Learn more about the Musqueam culture through their interactive language teaching materials and ancient artifacts. PROJECT SOMOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGE Project Somos continues to build an eco-sustainable village in Chivarabal, Guatemala that serves as an orphan prevention program giving support to widowed and single mothers living in poverty. It provides a stable living environment for vocational training, life skills development, and selfconfi dence building. Visit their booth with your kids to help build your own version of an eco-sustainable village with building blocks. ROGUE FOLK CLUB Follow the sounds of the ukulele to check out the Rogue Folk Club’s upcoming events, jams and concerts. Promoting folk music as cultural experience, the Rogue Folk Club endeavors to spread folk music to an ever-expanding audience. SIERRA CLUB BC Like the seven First Nations, the Sierra Club BC is pulling communities together to protect our coast. Visit their booth to represent your community on their oversized map. Their ‘Pull Together’ campaign aims to support First Nations' legal challenges regarding environmental issues. THE CENTRE FOR SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS (CSFS) AT UBC FARM This centre is a unique research facility that aims to understand and fundamentally transform local and global food systems towards a more sustainable, food secure future ultimately improving personal, community, and environmental health. Let CSFS introduce you to conservation farming concepts, and your kids to small scale farming and irrigation equipment. TSLEIL-WAUTUTH NATION Visit the Tsleil-Waututh Nation booth for your formal invitation to the All National Festival. Experience Coast Salish Indigenous art and design and learn about silk-screening on hemp fabric. WEST COAST ENVIRONMENTAL LAW West Coast Environmental Law is BC's legal champion for the environment. As a result of the Federal Government's environmental regulation rollbacks in 2012, WCEL is focused on the scientifi c impact of the deregulations and advocating for just and sustainable environmental laws. They invite you to ‘step right up’ and take your chance at their ‘environmental wheel of fortune’. WILDERNESS COMMITTEE As Canada’s largest membershipbased, citizen-funded wilderness protection group, Wilderness Committee’s mission is to protect Canada’s life-giving biological diversity through strategic research and grassroots public education. Pop-in to learn about carbon footprints, jobs created, and energy produced by adding renewable sources of energy, transit options, and sustainable food systems to our community and lifestyles. WORLD ANIMAL PROTECTION World Animal Protection exists to tackle animal cruelty across the globe. They work directly with animals, people, and local organizations to ensure animals are treated with respect and compassion. They look forward to sharing their work with disaster relief and their response team in Nepal following the recent earthquake, as well as their educational campaign for cagefree eggs. *Participating booths are subject to changes and additions. We're proud to be part of a community of people and organizations working to make the world a better, healthier, greener, safer, and more just place to live. In the Community Village you can learn more about what some not-for-profi ts, charities, community groups, service, advocacy and educational organizations are doing to make that better world a possibility. NEW this year: visit Community Village booths in various locations around the site! Every summer we gather at Jericho Beach Park for the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Once the site of an ancient village called “Eeyulmough,” which a local Musqueam elder has interpreted as "good camping ground," it was bounded by two creeks. The one on the east was described as, “little good spring water,” the one on the west, “good spring water.” With fresh water streams, access to the ocean, fl at geography and plentiful food, it was an excellent site for a village, which would have had a few great houses. Evidence of many previous campsites and middens on the surrounding shoreline have been found. Henry Charles, a Musqueam speaker, native historian and storyteller, will be leading history walks around the park on Saturday at 1:00pm and 3:00pm, and Sunday at 1:00 pm. Meet at the Main (East) Gate at the southeast corner of the park for an hour walk. Festival volunteer, Celia Brauer, will facilitate the walks – drawing your attention to the water, native plants, and sea life in and surrounding the park. Jericho Musqueam Walks Saturday: 1:00pm & 3:00pm Sunday: 1:00pm Starting at the Main (East) Gate 102.7 The Peak 102.7 The Peak, home of Vancouver’s World Class Rock, will be onsite at the festival throughout the weekend. Drop in and say “hello” to The Peak Street Team at the edge of the Artisan Market between Stage 2 and the bridge, and enter for your chance to win a pair of tickets to 1 of 3 exclusive Meet and Greets with festival artists: Matthew Barber and Jill Barber (Friday), Hawksley Workman (Saturday), and Said the Whale on Sunday. And keep your eyes and ears open for a special “pop up” concert at The Peak Tent with Matthew Barber and Jill Barber! Connect with The Peak through social media: @thePEAK and facebook.com/thepeak 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 87 Page 88 VOLUNTEERS Accessibility Kay Burgess Maggi Cheetham Avital Jarus-Hakak Tal Jarus-Hakak Ravit Aldar Margaret Allison Tracey Axelsson Alli Bridges Marie Brown Lisa Casagrande Keegan Chen Kimberly Decaire Sandy Dowling Eric Fielder Parisa Ghanouni Alina Gonzalez Colin Hassin Lenora Hayman Junie Howie Christa Hoy Yahel Jarus-Hakak Angel Lee Nathalie Leveille Verna Morse David Muskeyn Laurisse Noel Andre Paris Ray Perry Rosemary Perry Ellie Pilling Stephen Pringle Amelie Rodenbach Emily Rowed Sneha Shankar Daryle Sherman Marcia Smith Austin Smoroden Debra Snider Erika Steels Elyse Stokley Joanne Thompson Kathryn Vanderlinden Fiona York Barbara Yost Allan Zdunic CONSULTANTS Merle Smith Bernie Tague NEIGHBOUR LIAISON Marcia Doherty SECURITY Cynthia Brooke Hayf Abichahine Michael Ages Jennifer Audley Anita Bedo Heather Burgess Jennifer Castro Joelene Clarke Christie Cooper Nicole Germain Adair Harper Weldon Haywood Tony Jin Peggy Lee Liza Lindgren SheLa Nefertiti Morrison AJ Murray Hadar Namir River Tucker Leslie Wynne Nikola Yager Administration Kathy Day Marietta Kozak Christine Bacani Yee Chan Kendall Farrell Riel Hahn Aaron Halldorson Jacqueline Hanna Eli Koshi Michelle McGoldrick Anita Miettunen Stephen Price Jacqueline Receveur Katherine Ruff en Hazel Stevenson Romana Zeman Artist Check in Kathryn Booth Katie Koncan Jenn Upham Greg Bricknell Catherine Brunet Ellen Clapin Maria Escolan Alina Gherghinoiu Glen Hawkins Meghan Hunter Gavin Kennedy Danielle Kerrigan Jessica Lio Brian Matthews Katelyn McCreary Supriya Ryan Caitlin Stanley Megan Vaughan Johanna Ward Cassidy Waring Art & Community Villages Anna Chkrebtii Greg Miller Tessa Mul Naomi Armstrong Daphne Brown Angelica Dixon Sasha Farquhar Alex Grove Brittany Harris Kirsten Holkestad May Li Brad Newton Patricia Sarazin Annie Sarazin Karen Scott Lisa Treutler Meaghan Waller Rachel Waller Backstage Lounge Patricia Kramer Juli Clancy Jacob Czerpak Tegan Forbes Ashleigh Gibbs Megan Gower France Harvey Sara Hoshooley Catherine Inkpen Peter Kidder Layne Kriwoken Mary Laird Sean Lewkiw Cara Lindsay Marlis McCargar Hayley Moores Isabelle Pecqueur Selwyn Rawstron Todd Rioux Mark Ryant “Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often ignore or fi ght each other. It’s a sign that we don’t need a lot of money to be happy – in fact the opposite. We need ourselves, and each other.” -Jean Vanier We are back here once more, together, on the golden shores of Jericho Beach, where once a year, for 38 years, a community is built and celebrated. A community that we know as the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. A community of friends, of family, of welcoming smiles, and joyous music. A community of people from all walks of life and from all corners of the globe who have come together to share their common love of life and their hope for a better world. This is a community in the truest sense of the word. A place to accept and be accepted. A place of discovery, of music, of nature, of the generosity of the human spirit. A place where we all work together as one to create a shared dream. A place made possible by the communal drive and commitment of over 1500 volunteers, who, along with the Board, Staff , musicians, artists, craftspeople and the public come together every July to create and celebrate the ideal of a world made better through working together, and fi nding the strength in all our diff erences. It has been my pride and pleasure to have been a piece of this incredible community of people for over 20 years, and a privilege to have been the Volunteer Coordinator for the last three of those years. I can’t think of a better place to be, nor a grander group of people to share my time with. On behalf of myself, The Vancouver Folk Music Festival Board and staff , the 100s of musicians and artists, and the tens of thousands of guests who join us each year, I wish to thank, with the most heartfelt sincerity and deepest of emotions, each and every one of the amazing volunteers who help make this community possible. Who share their passion, skills and time to allow the Festival to be a leader in Music, Art, Environmental Stewardship, Accessibility, and of course, Community building. Thank you for all that you do to make this magical event happen. I think the best way to do this work is with friends. And friends of friends. And family. And people who you love, and people who are fun to be with – like-minded people who love the planet and the joy of being alive. –Bette Midler Brade Stanton, Volunteer Coordinator Geraldine Sangalang Arian Scott Grania Svedic Ilan Wright Beer Garden Gabriel McCay Jason Ryant Kurtis Stewart Leo Aitken-Mundhenk Lisa Allyn Nicole Ballance Melanie Bauer Alexa Bennet Fox JoJo Binning Zander Brais Christa Brown Maggie Bryce Camia Cabrera Karen Ciebien Dani Cooper Zachary Cornfi eld Conor Douglas Dexter Fergie Nadav Goelman Sarah Gourlay Lotem Halevy Heather Heit Tegan Heywood Katie Holmes Kevin Hope Murray Jack Erin Jackes Nicole Jarvis Karla Kloepper Shannon Lambie Etie Leyland Cecily MacGregorGauntts Yvette Mathieu Kathleen McHale Angela McLaughlin Ciara Moran Hilary Muth Juliet Neun Thao Nguyen Vanessa Nieuwenhuis Leah Nusgart Brandon Oehlsen Charles Oudie Ashley Pritchard Tomas Rapaport Matrika Schrock Caresse Selk Georgia-Blue Tyrrell Tori Uhl Samya Vellani Dexter Vosper Matt Whiteman Linnette Wiebe Renee Wild Kim Wilson Bikes Tom Campbell Julie Ship Bronwyn Churcher Erik deLange Kevin Friesen Maya Goldstein Chris Lang Andrew Latimer Rebecca Llewellyn Josha MacNab Larissa Parker Neil Parker Gili Rosenberg Sam Talbot Robin Tivy A MESSAGE OF THANKS 2015 Volunteers Names in bold indicate committee coordinators David Niddrie John Greenaway David Niddrie Bev Davies David Niddrie Alyssa Burtt Colin Mills Colin Mills David Niddrie Cloe Aigner VFMF 2014 IN PHOTOS 2015 Vancouver Fol k Music Festi val 89 Page 90 Box Office ADMIN Gail Cryer Hollie Griffin Ann Barber Terra Brett Christina Brown Kathi Cross David Firman Rochelle Garfinkel Carolyn Hateley Daphne Hnatiuk Anna Kramer Lynette Larsen Wendy Morrisson Douglas Palenshus Donald Panton Joyce Shih Betsy Spaulding Claire Stechishin Lorenz Von Fersen Loma Wing Graham Wong Mia Zhang PRE-SALES Miriam Caplan Andree Faucher Linda Giesbrecht Deanna Hansen Beng Khoo Ray Lai Charlene Wee Anna Whelan SITE Astarte Sands Marc White Adam Anarius Lilliana Babic Sally Chen Caroline Christiaens Kate Ellison Aimée Grimes Shannon Halligan Claudia Hopkins Angela Lane Jane Lee Elaine Lim Shayne Mattern Sophia Miller-Vedam Eline Reiff Kishone Roy Sam Steele Pascal Tremblay Brittney Vujcich Joshua Wilson CD Tent Jack Schuller Don Betts Megan Beveridge Yanna Brien Sarah Duncan Joann Hamelin Katie Hollett Ange Ibbott Jenna Sadko Lucas Schuller Gurjot Sidhu Kristina Smith Yissel Zaiter Community Mya Davidson Fred Roman Fred Roman Elmira Aghsaei Cameron Alman Melanie Buffel Brian Collard Stacey Coombe Prudence Dong Kirsty Dunlop Ivan Fonseca Ben Geldreich Alma Giborski Neil Gokani Meghna Haldar Ben Hechter Yoonhee Jahng Tobias Klenze Aimee Leech Violet Liao Robyn Livingstone Harpal Manhas Barbara McLeod Hannah Morley Mary Murphy Soyoun Namkung Julia Pepler Anna Ryu Emma Sawatzky Bassam Shukri Marina Sigouin Nicky Simond Waldek Trafidlo Anna Vander Munnik Alex Yallouz Fangwen Zhao Concessions Robert Alder Ginna Berg Kanika Chera Craig Davidson Dominic Duff AJ Gill Robin Gore Helen Gowans May Kuo Murray Lashmar Jan Luechachandej Sigit Murdawa Ana Nicholson Dave Olsen Krsna Soriano Zeisha Bahry Mary Downe Deb Jang Elinor Warkentin Rachel Weez Donations Bessie Cheung Donna Finch Shelley Austin Kayta Bianco Bea Bonnet Angel Davis Michael Diack Paul Finch Ginette Nielsen Pamela Schutz Environment Kelly Legare Paul Tolan Kate Rossiter Myia Antone Caitlin Atkinson Elijah Atkinson Rosa Balleny Hannah Barbero Nadine Bartels Lori Bell Serena Bertola Nick Biden Leana Bolliger-Damonte Maria Buddingh Emily Busam Maki Cairns Ben Chapman-Kish Daniel Child Michel Daigneault Sandeep Dosanjh Sabina Dosmagambe - tova Pauline Duprat Cathy Faulconer Lucas Fernandes Erin Fitz Kristina Fleming Jodi Fortune Maurice Gauthier André Gauthier Helene Gauthier Mia Givon Jiawen Gong Taylor Green Warren Harshenin Sam Herle Kengo Ito Jack Jin Taylor Johansen Jordan Johner Claire Jonker Maggie Kan Shivam Kishore Izumi Kuribayashi Emma Laviolette Sinead Loxton Cassandra Mah Katrin Maliatski Isis Marquis-Griffin Heather McKenzie Tamana Mehmi David Mivasair Miriam Mivasair Ambar Molina Luke Moran Benjamin Munt Cindy Nickel Moca Nimmervoll Sophie Noel Nina Omonsky Avery Palmer Jordan Palmer Kerry Peterman Kaylee Peterman Rolfe Philip Liam Ragan Roya Ravanbakhsh Kally Robinson Jerry Rolls Leora Schertzer Allyssa Shipley Krista Sidloski Nick Smith Bahar Soltanmohammadi Laura Super Ethan Symons-Ferraro Zia Van Blankenstein Kerry Verchere Casey Wallace Sophie Wang Boyan Wei Festival Booth David Haist Katherine Rau Grace Miura-Wong Netta Arseneau Laurie Bogner Nicole Cukier Lucia Dekleer Emilie Dore Maggie Firebaugh Emma Forgie Stephanie Gooch Avery Klein Nina Kumar Tracy Ly Cary Morris Debbie Rolls Karen Shimokura Jenni Slinn Amanda Underwood Samara Wiseman Festival Transportation Tamara Flick-Parker Annelies Haussler Jim McGill Charlene Pirro Mario Pirro Andrea Araszewski Carol Brodie Kathryn Burris Kim Buttedahl Jon Chezenko Robin Dass Zena Deluce Rita Douglas Patrick Downey Autumn Ennenberg Bill Faulkner Alicia Guizar Brian Hague Jonathan Harris Terry Horkoff Kelly Keitel Joe Krapiec Laurin Kyle Boyle David Lambert Shannon Lanaway Joey Lees Lisa Lees Pamela Leminski Kerry Liggett Steve Lloyd Janet Lopehandia Michael Lubin Stephanie MacDonald Roxanne McCutcheon Barb McInnis Genevieve Moise Larry Morningstar Don Morrison Tom Nesbit Erik Price Anneke Rees Dan Richardson Susan Ridington Peter Sammarco Jon Satok James Smylie Anne Talbot-Kelly Neil Taschuk John Thomson Donna Tribe Frank Vannevel Eric Wilson Ken Wilton 50/50 Amanda Kelly Jennifer Carter Sarah Day Chloe Dobie Mel Donnett Paul Donnett Leon Dunn Yalic Dunn Jo Grave Amaya Kent Kelsi Lix Jazz Martin-Burri Isabelle Maurice-Ham - mond Brittany Morris Jelayna Murdoch Julika Pape Anna Parayno Luna Park Paloma Pendharkar Erin Service Marina Tsougrianis Fay Young Horace Yu First Aid Dave Myles Kelly Beardall Theresa Clark Signy Coatsworth Phyllis d’Entremont Bruce Alexander Daughtry Lana Galac Alex Hansen Barb Harvey Bobby Homayoon Meg Ida Connor Jamieson Ayla Klein-Stimpson Lisa Kuechler Zoe Laviolette Zoe Manarangi BakePaterson Gary Miller Jennifer Miller Paula O’Sullivan Caroline Penn Louise Peterson Eric Rae Nona Rowat Mark Sutherland Anna Trowbridge Sheila Turris Joanne Wong Folk Bazaar Amy Block Ali Etrati Nel Finberg Maureen Goodwill Omid Habibullah Tony Hicks Jenny Johnston Kate Leahy Naz Madani Sunshine Moradi Iris Paluly Birgit Schinke Diane Simpson Gisela Zhu Azin Zibaram Gate Sarah Sample Ed Schwartz Dani Abate Kat Anderson Catherine Brady Christina Braybrooke Jace Campbell Gerrit Devries Jennifer Ding Allison Esau Aleiya Evison Curtis Fleming Kate Freed Caitlin Garland Peggy-Sue Gilbert Sohail Grewal Charlotte Hammond Bryn Inglis Tim Inglis Emma Jackson Fiona Jackson Beau Kimpton Gary Lange Shirley Lange Chloe Li Marcus Lindstrom Bruno Macedo Leonard Martin Theresa Matthews Rita McAllen Sonya Neilson Shimsher Pannun Sindy Park Ju Park Matthew Pi Michele Provenzano Camille Quinton Adrian Rigby Soraya Romao Eric Schwartz Ophira Schwarzfeld Andrea Sherrington Jamie Soldaat Quinn Temmel Sadie Tennant Risako Urakabe Grayson Valente Stephanie Wall Sandra Wood Philp Woodnutt Danielle Wray Gatekeepers Rose Rizzuto Pauline Douglas Flavie Dufrenne Suzanne Fournier Shelley Lobel Angela Matthews Art Moses Brooklyn Obrecht Betty Lou Phillips Janet Smith Sharron Wilson Debara Wood Green Room Marisa Bruch Corey Ouellet Bennett Arsenault Alice Fredine Sharon Go Eugene Kung Sarah Lando Keegan McColl Laura Parker-Jervis Andrew Phillips Jennifer Sin Megan Thom Christelle Win-Lime Greeters Pearl Ayem Magalee Blumenkrans Linda Chen Mati Cormier-Stumpf Mia Fajeau Hannah Gilgoff Jenny Hu Cyrus Jordan Brad Klees Rosie Mae Laird Elena Mindlin Daphne Minneci Taya Norman Zoe Roberts Bethany Schmidt Hotel Hospitality Julia Hewko Gisèle Barnabé Kat Brackley Mark Dowding Catherine Fallis Micha Gutmanis Mary Lynn Hawksworth Lu Lu Miki Nelson Tracy Volb Heba Yousuf Information Booth Christina Price Valerie Alberts Elspeth Banerd Chelsea Brown Jordana Corenblum Karen De Haan Britta Eschete Erik Freed Steven Hilton Rosea Lake Yana Loif Jo-Ann Melman Merrilee Miller Laura Morrison Lois Peterson Sherri Sadler Owen Schutz Dong Sil Heather Strange Brandy Trudeau April Underwood Instrument Storage Emile Scott Joel Bronstein Jeffrey Brouwer Sean Delaney Edna Leyland Pony Peterson Sean Potter Enzo Rodgers Artur Stofel Barry Warne Inventory Susan Browne Caelin Finnigan Aarisha Haider Pouria Karimi Tari Joe Markovitch Sheyna Shinjo Kathleen Somerville Kelly Wakeford Kitchen Anya Keefe - Head Chef Courtenay Welter - Sous Chef Paul Friedman Cindy Tucker Priyanka Anand Rachel Anderson Caitlin Atkinson Clare Atkinson Rachel Bach Elvina Balcyte Diana Bale Jessica Barak Scott Blessley Brianne Burwood Alice Chan Yin Chang Terra Chaplin Eudora Cheng Ksusha Cherep Amandine Clairo Devan Cooper Tatiane Cortez Joann Cottrell Shawn Crockett Laura Cushnie Arestia Dehmassi Lisa Dekleer Christine Derek Flynn Dixon Murdock Cassy Docheff Linda Dufour Jessica Dunbar Jonathan Elmer Andres Estrada Castro Amy Farahbakhsh Clinton Fernandes Litia Fleming Keith Freeman Serenity Friesen Laurence Gagnon Alice Gardiner Moondance Georges Jennifer Grants Shawn Groff David Hackett Robin Hansen Theresa Harding Stacey Harris Mark Harvey Denise Haugh Kyle Howe Stanley Hsu Marie Jang Rachel Johnson Brent Kane Karin Keefe Matthew Kemshaw Jungsuk Kim Yana Kim Michael Kirk Lisa Kozicky Sara Kozicky Elle Kroeger Millicent Kumar Sabrina l;au Rob Laeser Peter Lambert Shin Jung Lee Daniel Leibovitz Cathy Letendre Kelsey Livingstone Jennifer Luu Christine MacDonald Eriguchi Manami Lori Martin Talia Martz-Oberlander Pia Massie Naomi Matthyssen Tammy Matthyssen Christie McRae Ryan McRae Jill Mitchell Miyuki Moizumi Sarah Moraes Kevin Morrall Alec Ng Yuki Otsuka Sylvain Paradis Mary Paradis Nadine Pinnell Erfan Rezaie Jeevan Sandhu Freyja Sankey Marc Schutzbank Danny Shin Loretta Simeon Mack Skinner Jo Skinner Jacky Slade Hannah Smith Ivy Smith Julia Soderholm Kaitlynn Stenback Bryden Summers Ben Sylvester Sara Tanaka Gigi Taviss John Taylor Barbara Tili Leah Timmermann Lilah Toker Troy Trafidlo Craig Walker Michelle Williams Nigel Willox David Wong Vanessa Yu Labour Pool Huda Al-Saedy Suzannah Dundas Thomas Hallifax-Ball - inger Martin Haridge Lorenzo Ignacio Julie Kaplan Sam Lacey Xiangwen Li Mary Markwick Michael Nagy Teresa Nelson Braden Neufeld Marisa Pincus Branden Sanders Ryan Smith Yi Xiong Lanterns Marya Gadison Roy Schindell Sandra Allen Andrea Bassett Kelvin Bei Sarah Clement Sharon Flight Jeanine Fynn Aerin Hack Lin Ho-You Nicole Jang Annah Kassen Alison Klein Myra Lam Augustine Lee Samsara Marriott Laura McMurran Jane Mondin Mahtab Nazari Helen Rees Jacquie Rolston Janine Sebastian Shannon Squires Ben Versteeg Michael Versteeg Andre Wild Ondrej Zeman Laundry Laurie Brin Donna Morgan Little Folks Catherine McBride Samantha Woodley Olivia Clare Aynsley Ryan Bevelander Hilary Biden Kyla Brophy Karen Clare Anastasia Clement Thorne Elke Crosson Kat Davidson Holly Day Ciara Dixon Jenna Dur Shokooh Eslami Marina Favaro Jessie Giguere Kevin Imrie Chris Joe Joshua Kamin Jel Kocmaruk Sarah Kushner Paloma Kwiatkowski Cecil Lu Rachel Lund Rahim Moosa Nicole Morgan Jaime Morrison Alexandra Naudi Jade Nawata Setareh Nazari Sohail Nazari Dharana Needham Kaya Newman Emiko Newman Adrian Nickpour Mari Piggott Kat Potter Nicola Rammell Candra Rolfe Leigh Selden Kai Sharpe Linnea Teichroeb Mikalyn Trinca-Colonel Samantha Wong MADSKILLZ Christa Giles Alana Black Tara Ohta Michael O'Shaughnessy Christina Paradun Massage Delanye Azrael Nienke Van Hasselt Elise Blair Shelby Chapman Karen Fleming Stephanie Fournier Keith Fredrikson Lindsay Gray Magdalena Groemer Jacob Larmour Chel Loomis Leanna McLennan Laya Shriaberg Cindy Tsang Allyson Vollmer Mike Williams Me
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