Let the music do the talking

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This article was published 17/02/2017 (3373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As Paul Plett will tell you, it’s only recently that folk music has come to be considered its own genre.

Before that, it was the “music of the people,” played to express and communicate. To learn more about what folk looks like today, the filmmaker travelled throughout parts of Canada to film his documentary, Northern Folk.

The Wolseley resident said the project has taken him years to put together, and he’s looking forward to presenting it at Winnipeg’s Real to Reel Film Festival, taking place Feb. 21 to 26 at the North Kildonan Mennonite Brethren Church (1315 Gateway Rd.).

“I’ve always loved music, I’ve always loved folk music,” Plett said. “I play, and I’m not at the level that any of these artists are at, but I’ve always had a love of music, and I guess I wanted to kind of explore.”

Plett interviewed folk artists throughout Manitoba and Ontario and hired crews to handle interviews in Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver. He passed along the interview template and entrusted a good portion of his film to other filmmakers.

“I interviewed a few people at Folk Fest, Fred Penner is in it… but also smaller artists, some who are kind of at the beginning stages of their career,” Plett said. “Others who are never going to have a career where they play music for a living but it’s such a pervasive, wide-ranging genre.

“All you really need — some artists might dispute this — but I would say all you need is a guitar and a song.”

Plett says it’s not a “rock doc.” Rather, it’s meant to be an expression of the music and he wants the work of the artists to speak for themselves. He says the hour-long feature feels like a conversation, and those who enjoy listening to programs like CBC or NPR or watching films that get them thinking will enjoy the project.

“I was interested in how folk music intertwines itself with our lives,” he said. “It’s a fairly accessible or earthy’ style, but that’s sort of my take on it.”

Plett said what drew him in to folk was its long history and storytelling style.

“I’m not a historian or academic but it’s the oldest form of music that exists,” Plett said.

“It would be the music that would have been sung around campfires, the first stories we would have told would have been folk tales and folk arts… In the last 100 years we’ve developed a genre but before that it was outside of any monetary gain.”

He said the format is interviews with the artists woven in with their music and performances.
“It’s the kind of thing you’d sit down with a glass of wine if you want to think about some stuff,” he said.

For a full schedule of Real to Reel, visit winnipegfilmfestival.com