Cambridge Now!

 

Lucky Cambridge! 

What a rich, community event! And it was free! The 16^th Annual Mill Race Festival of Traditional Folk Music brought out thousands of festival goers to the streets of downtown Galt over the Civic Holiday weekend to take in one of the best festivals of its kind in the North America. The weather, the talent, the organizing and all the smiling faces made for one of the finest festivals in a long time.

 

None of the acts at this festival are household names. True folk music is non-commercial music shared by amateur and professional musicians through the generations over time and carried throughout the world. It is sung in pubs and streets and kitchens and halls everywhere. It is the music sung by regular folks. And in the traditional variety of folk music, the songs and tunes come to us from the rich past when so much of the culture was expressed in the music.

 

Let’s start with the young, dynamic groups that represent the latest trends in traditional folk music. From England, Crucible. Their a capella vocalizations can raise the hair on the back of your neck and their rhythmic instrumental work gets your blood roiling. 

From Scotland, Rallion. Any head banging, heavy metal musician would envy the driving, chest thumping beat this group can pound out of their traditional instruments. Clapping and foot stomping was irresistible every time they played. They rock! From Toronto, Zubrivka. No other group I saw got more clapping along from an audience with huge grins on their faces than this one. Ukrainian music that was created for dancing after much vodka and a night of revelry is infectious anywhere in the world and Cambridge was no exception.

For some North American flavour, Ontario’s own Foxtail brought us some great Bluegrass pickin’ and grinnin’. I’ve paid attention to Bluegrass over the years and these folks are among the best I’ve heard. What Crucible and Rallion are to British traditional music today, Bluegrass was to American “old timey” or Appalachian traditional music in the 1940s. It’s an energized version of the old forms. When radio was bringing this music out of the hills and hollers of the southern U.S., some bands started adding the sparkle and energy we know today as Bluegrass. And Foxtail follows a 1940s Bluegrass tradition, that of playing with one microphone and having each player and singer move in and out for their solo parts. If you saw the Soggy Bottom Boys in the film, “O’ Brother Where Art Thou?” you’ll know what I mean.     

 

At the children’s stage on Water Street, I was an innocent bystander, minding my own business, when the performer called out, “You there - sir – can you help me out?” I looked around my general vicinity and there were no other “sirs.” Uh – oh.

 

“Who me?” I said.

 

“Yeah,” said Jake Differ, known just as “Jake,” the children’s performer at many festivals across Canada. “Can you help me out here? Come on up on stage with me. I won’t embarrass you or anything like that,” he said.

Uh-oh.

 

Before I knew it, children were laughing at the big, old man on stage who couldn’t keep up with Jake. I fumbled and bumbled my way through his instructions as he sang circles around me. Afterwards, I thanked him for not embarrassing me or anything…..Yeah, right. Oh well. It was all in a good cause.

 

Many cultures around the world have an a capella singing tradition and the British variety was well represented by Johnny Collins, Jim Mageean and Graeme Knights from England. These three men stand on a stage without instruments, with a huge repertoire of hundreds of songs with all the many thousands of lyrics, and simply sing. They know how to use their voices alone to captivate the listeners. They were equally comfortable on the main stage in front of throngs or in the Café 13 Galt room in front of a dozen folks. They are preserving traditional folk music and happy to share it anywhere.  

 

No folk festival is complete without an opportunity for the folks to participate in some music of their own. There were song circles held in the Galt Room at Café 13 and at The Galt Legion. Some of them were led by people from the various song circles in southern Ontario – Windsor, Oakville, Orillia and Kitchener’s own Old Chestnut Song Circle hosted by Jack Cole. Open sessions for traditional players and singers were held in The Golden Kiwi Pub and Grill and hosted by the many groups who also performed on the main stages, joining together in great jam sessions that raised the roof. I was there for an unforgettable song session in The Kiwi, the room stuffed to the hilt with singers who put their whole hearts into it and patrons who could not keep silent, joining in as the harmonies filled the room. It was like a choir in an old wooden church, going full-bore, inspiring and lifting the hearts of the faithful through sacred sound alone.

 

New this year was the venue at the Civic Square Stage under a tent in front of the new City Hall. The scene was a great tribute to what urban centres in Canada have to offer. A mult-level square holding a large tent, vendors on the street and a variety of seating outside the tent, all surrounded by a beautiful, stone, historic city hall, a museum, the Cambridge Arts Centre, and the new City Hall. As a venue for a community festival, it worked very well and some improvements under discussion will make it even better.

 

We all can thank the Founder and Artistic Director, Brad McEwen, for one of the best Mill Race Festivals ever. I am really looking forward to number 17 in 2009. 

 

“Crucible,” performing at the Mill Race