Just a hootin’ and a hollerin’

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This article was published 12/07/2019 (2569 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BIRDS HILL PROVINCIAL PARK — Smiles, connections and nostalgia were the major themes running through the Winnipeg Folk Festival on Friday.

Isabelle Sawatzky’s look of concentration broke into an ear-to-ear grin when she successfully turned three colourful hoops into a set of wings behind her back.

The six-year-old from Altona was one of a handful of young participants in Shanley Spence’s hoop dance workshop in the family area at the Winnipeg Folk Festival on Friday afternoon. The open-air dance class was on Isabelle’s must-do list after watching some of Spence’s performances on YouTube, her mom said.

“Every year before we come to Folk Fest we go through all the performers and she loved this because she loves dancing,” Carissa Sawatzky said. “I might have to invest in some hoops.”

Spence, a Nihithaw and Anishinaabe woman from Winnipeg, started out fancy shawl dancing as soon as she could walk and took up hoop dancing when she was 12.

“This dance has brought so much to my life: a lot of healing and a lot of ways to release my own spirit and my own energy. It’s just so beautiful to be able to share it with such a diverse range of beautiful, loving people,” said Spence, who has become a regular performer at the Folk Festival.

When teaching others, Spence likes to start with the basics, which she describes as toe-tapping to the heartbeat of Mother Earth, before adding hoops to the movement.

In the shade of a grand old cottonwood in the middle of the festival, poet Ariel Gordon was also encouraging folkies to connect with nature through her project, Tree Talk.

“It’s a way to slow down and spend time with the tree, because we walk by trees like they’re furniture,” Gordon said.

Passersby were invited to write or draw something on a piece of paper, which was tied to the trunk of the cottonwood with string. At the end of the weekend, Gordon plans to collect all of the sentiments and turn them into one long poem. “This is such a fragmentary piece with all these voices… and they all kind of work as this whole, the same kind of way (the festival) works,” she said.

Friday’s daytime performances brought people together under blue skies and a hot sun; a welcome change after Thursday night’s storm warnings. The daytime stages featured an eclectic mix of genres that offered something for everyone; from jug bands to soothing vocalists to high energy dance music.

The dance pit next to Snowberry was as full as the stage on Friday afternoon.

Four big bands, with equally big sounds — Altin Gün, Mdou Moctar, Rebirth Brass Band and Steve Gunn — came together for the Niger, New Orleans and Netherlands workshop. The brass, percussion, guitar and psychedelic folk rock melded together easily.

Another highlight was FM Belfast’s set at the Íslenskir Tónar (Icelandic Sounds) workshop. The entire audience was clapping and jumping and variations of “That was amazing,” were overheard throughout the crowd after the show. The group’s high-energy modus operandi will be a perfect fit for their headline appearance at Big Bluestem tonight.

Main stage took on a similar feel Friday night when The Devil Makes Three, an Americana outfit from California, took the stage. The trio played a wide-ranging set that included notes of blues, rock, folk and a cover of War Pigs by Black Sabbath. The crowd responded fittingly with plenty of do-si-doing and hooting and hollering.

Pennsylvania’s Mt. Joy slowed things down, but managed to hold the crowd’s attention. Frontman Matt Quinn’s crystal clear vocals carried effortlessly and ushered in the sunset.

Friday night main stage tweeners included Roman Clarke, Christine Fellows, Samantha Crain and William Chrighton. Over at Big Blue, a stage dedicated to late-night dance parties, Living Hour, Car Seat Headrest and Alvvays performed.

Jason Mraz made his Folk Fest debut Friday night and attracted quite the crowd to main stage, including a group of dedicated fans near the front who waved giant cutouts of Mraz’s head. Looking classically casual in a trucker hat and plaid shirt, the longtime pop star kicked things off with some songs from his 2018 album Know, before taking things back to the early 2000s with The Remedy. His Grammy Award-winning song I’m Yours initiated an impassioned singalong from the audience. For an artist who has played major venues all over the world, Mraz presented a pared-down set that fit well in a folk festival setting.

Mraz was still playing and Friday night headliner K’naan, who played at the festival in 2006 and 2012, had yet to take the stage at press time.

 

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney