Folky

I attended my first folk festival at the end of June. Eben's parents invited me into another of their family traditions. They've been attending since 1984, and the festival itself has been happening for the last 28 years. I have to say, I was a bit skeptical that it would be my kind of scene, but I really loved it! It's called the Old Songs Festival and lasts from Friday to Sunday on a fair ground in Altamont in upstate New York.

This is one of Eben's favorite parts of Old Songs. It's called 'shape note singing' and it was a collection of the festival attendees gathered in an old sheep barn (the conductor stands in the middle) singing a 4 part harmony off sheet music where the notes were made of different shapes. Anyone that wanted to participate was welcome and it sounded unexpectedly amazing!

There was one main stage where the evening performances took place, but during the day, there were about 8 different stages with various performances occurring at the same time. Some of the stages had workshops where the artists taught about the roots of their music, instruments, and lyrics. Others were more hands on, where you could learn to play your own instrument in the old traditional ways of different regions. There was also some sort of traditional dance instruction happening all the time too. The music varied greatly from traditional Irish fiddle tunes, to American roots music, to Native American tribal songs, to folk chants from India and Pakistan to name a few.

This performance was a workshop on step dancing where each of the people demonstrated the differences in step dancing from Ireland, Cape Briton, Acadia and Appalachia. The dancing was one of my favorite workshops. The picture doesn't do any of them justice, but check out this video of April competing with her spoon playing husband and you'll see (although in person it was better) why I was so impressed!




This group, Galitcha, played traditional east Indian folk music. They were the most different of the groups there, and I really enjoyed their music, so much so that I bought their cd and have been waking up to it in my alarm clock.

And what kind of hippy fest would it be without politically charged social commentary?