This summer, hundreds of thousands people are going to attend folk festivals. There are sixty, seventy…more, across the country. They range from the small to a half dozen big ones that draw 10 to 15 thousand people a day. Some define folk music in a very traditional manner. Others take a broader view, incorporating an encyclopedic array of musical styles. Throughout the year, hundreds of artists will give thousands of performances to hundreds of thousands while more- millions more, will listen to or watch folk music performances on their stereos, radio, television or their computer screens. It’s definitely a going concern — a significant part of popular music. Yet a hundred years ago it didn’t exist. Like the automobile, the airplane, telephone, computer and dozens of other things we have come to accept as part of our lives, folk music was invented, constructed in the twentieth century.
"As a worker in the people's music mines, I wondered how this had come to be. I started looking for the beginning of the story." — Gary Cristall
"The People's Music" is Gary Cristall's five-part series that tells a story of folk music in English Canada. Since there is no way that any one person can tell the definitive story, it's obvious that this is a documentary series, an interpretation of reality, full of odd facts, delightful coincidences and strange connections. One ongoing question concerns the definition of folk music — the concensus seems to be that a folk song tells a story, or, that it's about ordinary people living real lives.
See images of the musicians, records and memorabilia Gary discusses in the show.
A real Winnipeg favourite, this quartet brought its urban-rootsy, homespun sound to the Park Theatre. Their guitars, banjo, accordion, bass and drums are topped by the sweetest vocals and enhanced, strangely, by the theramin. Their sound captures the duality of the prairies in that it is at once contemporary and old-fashioned, dark and light, lonely yet cosy.