By Melissa Ingells, WKAR News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkar/local-wkar-981626.mp3
East Lansing, MI – The 10th annual Great Lakes Folk Festival is this weekend, sponsored by the MSU Museum. WKAR's Melissa Ingells spoke with the former host of WKAR's show "The Folk Tradition," Bob Blackman, about what's coming up at the festival.
BOB BLACKMAN: I think what's unique about the Great Lakes Folk Festival is that it really concentrates on traditional music, not singer/songwriters, not folk rock. These are people who are either genuine traditional musicians, who grew up playing music in their communities, or who at least are strongly influenced by that and are passing on those traditions, often with some bit of contemporary additions, as young musicians will do, but very, very rooted in traditional music. People who don't concentrate on writing their own songs or on having hit records.
And these days, unfortunately, a lot of other folk festivals, like the Newport Folk Festival, for example, are so singer/songwriter-based, they'll have people like Elvis Costello or Bob Dylan, whose music I like but it's not really folk music, it's not traditional folk music. And so this festival, the Great Lakes Folk Festival, is unusual in the way it concentrates on truly traditional folk music.
MELISSA INGELLS: It's one of those things that, it seems like you can go and no matter who you listen to this is the consistent comment that I hear is that people go to the festival not knowing sometimes who they're going see. And no matter who they listen to they end up just falling in love with.
But I have to ask you who your favorites are for this year, if you have a couple favorites.
BLACKMAN: Well, I'll start by saying that I like your comment because that's the advice that I always give to people. I might mention a few favorite performers of my own, but I love to just walk around the Festival and be surprised by types of music that I know nothing about, maybe not even looking at the schedule to know what it is. I'll just walk around and walk up to a stage, and allow myself to be surprised by whatever's up there.
As far as my favorites go this year, one of my favorites is Elizabeth LaPrelle, a young ballad singer from Rural Retreat, Virginia. She is, I believe, in her early twenties. She was at the Festival a few years ago and also played at the Ten Pound Fiddle. She sings a capella primarily, I think she's also now playing banjo a little bit, and sometimes her mother joins her on some harmonies. But primarily she's an a capella singer, an unaccompanied singer, and she does the old ballads and traditional folk songs. And she is spellbinding. And she is a wonderful example to me of the power that these old traditional songs can have.
When she was at the festival a few years ago, she was singing, again, solo, unaccompanied, standing by herself on a stage. There was a thunderstorm about to roll in. The winds were starting to kick up and you could just tell there was going to be a huge storm any minute. And Elizabeth was up there singing, and singing these old ballads in such a spellbinding way that no one budged out of their seats for the entire set. As soon as she was done, everybody ran for the parking ramp, and then the heavens just came down and it just poured all over us.
INGELLS: Right.
BLACKMAN: But I was so impressed that a solo, unaccompanied singer, and someone who was only about twenty years old, could hold the attention of hundreds and hundreds of people, even with the distraction of a storm coming any minute. It really proved to me that these old ballads, these old story songs, have such a power that they can still really hold our attention. And in this day and age it's easy to forget that. Our attention spans aren't what they used to be, so, I love seeing a young singer who takes these ancient ballads and does them so beautifully.
INGELLS: That's neat that she's preserving them, too, because there's probably not that many people doing that of that age group.
BLACKMAN: That's true. And one of the fun things about the Festival is that you have both older masters of a genre, musicians and singers who are in their sixties and seventies or even older, alongside musicians who are still in their teens or twenties who are carrying on those traditions. So, the Great Lakes Folk Festival is a nice way to both catch up with some of the legendary musicians, as well as seeing the next generation of people who are carrying those on.
As far as other favorites go, the Irish and French-Canadian groups are always a big favorite of mine and of many of our audience's, and this year we have an Irish group called T ada, that is excellent. I think they are an all-instrumental group, I don't think they do any singing, but they just know lots of the great old jigs and reels, and they play them with wonderful spirit. And we also have a wonderful French-Canadian band, R veillons, who were here a few years ago. And they, too, just bring so much energy and joy and spirit to the stage. I would expect once again that those two genres would be extremely popular with the audiences.
And the bluegrass band this year, Detour, is a Michigan-based band, but I think they're one of the best bluegrass bands around anywhere. They've got great instrumentalists and singers, they write some of their own material, they also do a bunch of bluegrass classics, and even though they're from around here, they really hold their own alongside any other band, so, I think they'll be a big hit this year as well.