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The Festival of American Fiddle TunesWhile May is dedicated to the annual Northwest Folklife Festival, for many, late June/early July is reserved for the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. This intense and amazing week-long celebration of traditional fiddle and folk music is a life-changing experience for many of the people who sign up for the week. This year, some highlights will be Cajun music superstars Steve Riley & The Mamou Playboys, the excellent French-Canadian folk band Genticorum, elder Louisiana Creole musician Nolton Semien, bluegrass monster fiddler Laurie Lewis, and of course the Festival’s artistic director Dirk Powell. But for me, the highlight of Fiddle Tunes is always the late-night jamming. Here, multiple generations of musicians gather in harmony to play tunes and to dance. At my first Fiddle Tunes, the main jamming space (Room 204) was so full that people were jamming inside an elevator as it went up and down.
Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, 1979: One Generation Tony Goldenberg, Molly Tenenbaum, Jere & Greg Canote, Alan Garren Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, 2007: 28 years later, Three Generations Next Gen Folk Events for July 2010
Friday, July 2: Cajun Honky-Tonk Dance Caleb Klauder Country Band w/Cajun masters Jesse Lége & Joel SavoyUnofficial Fiddle Tunes Prefunk! Seattle, Conor Byrne’s Pub in Ballard 9pm, $15 (they’re moving the tables out for dancing) www.hearthmusic.com/concerts.html Caleb Klauder’s rough, dusty voice is perfect for old-timey country music, and Jesse Lége is a way old-school Cajun accordionist who grew up speaking only French. Joel Savoy is the leader of today’s younger generation of Cajun musicians.
Sunday, July 4: Two MEGA Concerts at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes
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This year, the Festival will be held from July 3-10 at the lovely Fort Worden in Port Townsend, WA. The idea of the festival is to bring in master fiddlers from a wide variety of traditions (Old-Time, Bluegrass, Celtic, Northern, Mexican, Cajun, Creole, and more) as teaching faculty for a week of intimate concerts, workshops, and jam sessions. And it’s not just fiddle! The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes brings lots of banjo players, accordionists, guitarists, full bands, and the whole gamut. The Festival is now more successful than ever, but few people in Seattle realize that the Festival also offers public concerts. These concerts feature master musicians and are relatively cheap. So if you’ve never heard of the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, check out their concert page and plan a fun outing to the Peninsula. These artists are often impossible to catch outside of the Festival!
From what I can tell, Fiddle Tunes has become increasingly generational as younger musicians have laid claim to the event. For example, many of the late night jams are now led by younger musicians from all genres of traditional music. Perhaps the most “controversial” move by Fiddle Tunes has been to bring a younger generation of musicians into the faculty for the Festival. Some from the folk revival generation have grumbled about the lack of elder musicians being brought as faculty, and refer to the Festival’s old nickname as “Geezer Fest”. But I think that these complaints are symptoms of a larger issue: the boomer generation’s difficulties accepting aging. This is an issue we see in nearly every aspect of today’s culture, and especially in folk music. Though every one I know in this generation takes umbrage at the idea that they might now be elder musicians to two new generations, the truth is that the elder musicians who taught them likely didn’t think of themselves as elders either. It’s not like Tommy Jarrell thought of himself as an old man when the boomers started arriving at his house. In fact, at the time, the folk revival’s elder musicians were about the same age that most boomers are now. Art Stamper was 65 when he visited Fiddle Tunes in 1997, Paul Sutphin was 63 at the Festival in 1981, Dewey Balfa was 51 at the Festival in 1978, Joe Thompson was 62 in 1980, banjo player A.C. Overton was 63 in 1986, mandolinist Kenny Hall was 54 in 1977, and so on. Of course, there have always been geezers at Fiddle Tunes, like Canray Fontenot or Dennis McGee, and I’m NOT saying that the baby boomers are today’s geezers. I’m just saying that our perception of who is and is not an elder in the community is clearly defined by our generation. So as the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes begins to bring more and more respected folk revival fiddlers on as faculty and more young musicians as well, it’s just following the same path it always has: bringing together generations. Whether bringing baby boomers together with the Greatest Generation, or Gen X with Gen Y, Fiddle Tunes is a place where different generations of musicians have felt comfortable together and have shared a common goal of having fun making folk music. And as time goes on, this core value of Fiddle Tunes has only become more significant.
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Victory Music is a Washington State non-profit organization that retains all rights to published content. Columns and reviews published in the Victory Review reflect the opinions of the writers, not those of Victory Music. |