Let me tell you about the music, specifically, at Northwest Folklife. They had everything from polished bands on the stage, to little kids with a hat out on the sidewalk, singing their hearts out or playing tiny cellos and violins, to hick country folk bands made up of grubby-looking folk with a puppy in the guitar case, to one-man-bands. The guy above was one of the latter, with wings attached to his rig.
In addition to his violin, he had a coconut-clapper, a tambourine, a cymbal, and all of those attached via leashes to his ankles so that each step would activate his percussion as he danced an played. Ingenious!
I enjoyed this Native American group who were playing drums and chanting for their dancer. It was beautiful.
We were just positioned to watch a group of jugglers at a performing patio when we heard, behind us, a marimba group start up. I had never heard marimbas that deep and resonant before, and the beat drew us like a siren.
It was a group of student players from about middle school through high school age, called Nya Muziwa, and their music (Zimbabwean) was energetic and almost hypnotic. Here's a clip (all my clips are too short, as my camera doesn't have enough memory for big files, plus they take too long to upload):
The nice thing about the music at Folklife is that people move. Everyone. Toes are tapping, people swaying, kids hopping. It doesn't matter what age you are.
This lady was twirling and swaying, lovely in her colorful outfit and peaceful of face. You watch a person like this and kind of hope you'll be a little bit like that when you're her age. I would love to hear the story of her life. You can see her on the left-hand side of this short clip of the group she was listening to, singing "Love, love, love, Chicky Love":
One thing we saw a lot of was accordions. Are they coming into vogue? I commented to my sister-in-law that it might be time for me to pull out our father-in-law's accordion from under the piano and warm it up! (Thank you, Daddy, for the accordion you gave me way back when. Maybe that will still pay off.)
Another instrument we saw a lot of was washboards. And the players were expert, playing them with a metal finger-protectors and a fork or spoon.
Then there were the washtub string bass players. The amazing thing was that these were all being played by young people. Apparently there are plenty of young people around Seattle who are not focused on developing the next heavy metal garage band--unless you count a washtub as heavy metal!
This chap was playing his jug. I couldn't see just what the jug had been used to hold, but it sounded great in the band.
Even the facial hair and expressions went with what I might expect with a hillbilly band, my experiences with hillbillies being sadly limited to TV depictions, you understand.
Except that for hilbillies, the face piercings, hair colors and clothes were sometimes a bit surprising.
Is it just me, or is this guy's nose a little bit difficult to look at?
Oh, and there were a number of guys in skirts at Folklife. Most of them were kilts down to the knee, but the one in this picture went with the longer version. Being rather fond of skirts myself, I can understand why they would enjoy them.
Finally, this one-man-band playing his digeridoo and his tin pans was intriguing. I'll leave you with a little clip of his music:
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