On feeling ambivalent at the Winnipeg Folk Festival
by Maggie A. Clark
Stencil lettering affixed to the box office tent greeted us with “welcome home.”
I’m no stranger to the notion of the Winnipeg Folk Festival as a “home” to those who attend it. After all, I have been to every Folk Fest since 1996 — such are the benefits of a petit bourgeois upbringing and a very generous mother. But it never made much sense to me. I’m fond of the festival, sure, but a home? I spend four days a year out there! My home has a comfortable bed and indoor plumbing and my friends don’t have to pay upwards of $100 a head to be there.
Most importantly, my home doesn’t have cops in it. It’s not an uncommon sight these days to see a few gendarmes patrolling the festival grounds in full protective regalia, scowling. Who is this to “protect,” and from what? The price of the tickets makes it such that there weren’t any unhoused people around for them to hassle or beat up. If their presence was intended to discourage the use of illicit substances, I have bad news for you about the Winnipeg Folk Festival.
Perhaps the pigs were ornamental, a signal that no expense would be spared for the much-anticipated 50th fest. Indeed, this most golden of anniversaries was commemorated by ramping up the usual self-mythologizing fanfare to a level best described as “autofellatio.” Performers, MCs, and promotional videos alike never ceased to remind us that the Folk Festival is a bastion of social justice and inclusion — nay, a model for world peace! — and that accordingly we should all applaud ourselves simply for being there. It isn’t enough, you see, to enjoy some tunes, drink a few beers, or have a friendly chat with the person next to you; we must be told, over and over, that we are good people because of it.
To an extent, I understand this impulse. A person I spoke to in line at the gate told me that they make the trip from British Columbia every year because the festival offers an escape from “the rat race,” and this is certainly true for some. Those of us with the disposable income or maternal generosity to afford a full festival pass can kick back and enjoy a weekend in the sun — or in the haze of wildfire smoke, as the case may be.
But for others, Folk Fest represents nothing but a continuation of that same rat race. As one food vendor employee told me, many of the workers had been pulling 10-to-11-hour shifts to feed the festivalgoers. Sadly, the vaunted “Folk Fest spirit” has proven unable to abolish the wage relation, no matter how much it suits us to pretend otherwise.
My point here is simply that Folk Fest is very much of the world, not apart from it. If it is indeed a “festival of love,” then it is equally a festival of chewing out the gate crew for changing their tarp ticket distribution practices; a festival of grumbling from a lawn chair when a workshop facilitated entirely by volunteer stagehands starts five minutes late; a festival of warmed-over liberal platitudes and Subaru ads.
Toward the end of his Thursday night Main Stage set, Fred Penner told the crowd that his defining memory from 50 years of Folk Fests was of seeing Pete Seeger fish an apple out of the garbage and eat it. Inspired by this, I immediately conducted my own version of the exercise. The first thing that popped into my mind was Geoff Berner’s “tweener” set at the 2008 Main Stage. During a performance of “Maginot Line,” he gestured to the Volkswagen sponsorship banner behind him and said, “And speaking of Mr. Hitler… Volkswagen!” I don’t think VW returned as a sponsor after that, and curiously neither has Berner as a performer. Whether this is because of scheduling conflicts, mutual disinterest, or the triumph of commerce over artistic expression, I cannot say.
So maybe the festival has always been a commercial, politically incoherent, and self-congratulatory affair, or maybe I’m a pompous cynic who could stand to lighten up a bit. You tell me. But one thing’s for certain: my heart’s just not in it anymore.
For as much as I still enjoy the daytime workshop jam sessions and for as formative as the lineups have been in shaping my musical taste, I doubt I will ever again recover the reverent awe I once felt. With every passing year, it seems, the feeling grows more and more distant.
So be it. Here’s to another 50.
Highlights: Los Bitchos, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, the “Field Trip” workshop (Ashwin Batish, Camper Van Beethoven, OMBIIGIZI).
Biggest whiff: Lake Street Dive. How on earth did these cornball blue-eyed soul merchants end up with top billing and the Sunday Main Stage closing slot? Was there blackmail involved?
Good quotes:
- “Keep watermeloning, mate. Keep watermeloning.” — Serra Petale (Los Bitchos) to an audience member brandishing a flagstaff with a cartoon watermelon on the end of it, as the parting words of her band’s Big Blue @ Night set.
- “Nobody wants used dogs, bro.” — Leonard Sumner, weighing in on the buy-vs.-adopt debate
- “[We found that] if we just played really fast ska, all the punks and skinheads would like us again.” — David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven) on opening for Dead Kennedys in the 1980s
