I've been attending the Eisteddfod Festival
(pronounced "eye-stead-fud") regularly since the 1970's
and have observed many changes over the years. One thing that
has remained constant has been the high quality of the featured
performers in the Friday through Sunday concerts. This year was
no exception. The music included appalachian string band, Scottish,
Portuguese, Irish , Egyptian, Cambodian, and many others. Many
performers have appeared in previous years, but every new Eisteddfod
brings new faces, voices, and sounds. One of my favorites at this
year's event was Robert B. Jones, an acoustic guitar player and
blues singer. On the fiddle side of things, was Tommy McCarthy,
one of my very favorite Irish players, from the Boston area, and
Benton Flippen, a fine southern style fiddler with his Smokey
Mountain Boys.
A real personal treat for for me was being asked by Maureen Haley
to play fiddle for the Irish step dance demonstration. It was
one of the few opportunities I found during the weekend, to actually
participate in the workings of the festival, since I was single
handedly manning the "Captain Fiddle Booth."
The festival itself takes place on the University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth campus, described in brochures as "beautiful."
It is built entirely of exposed concrete and glass. Sci-fi movie
fans will recognize it immediately as looking like an ultra modern
living complex of the future where the last vestiges of humanity
remain after the nuclear holocaust. The architects have saved
a bundle on maintenance expense, since nothing is painted, and
"natural" gray concrete color is the norm. They also
had fun with interior design, creating passage ways with dead
ends, lofts with no access, and a myriad of multi-leveled rooms
and spaces suitable for mountain goats. My wheel chair bound friend,
(who is very clever at getting around in most situations) narrowly
missed crashing in his chair while attempting difficult traverses
from one area of the student cafeteria to another.
The saving grace of the campus are the many smallish stands of
trees and natural vegetation which are allowed to proliferate
within their bounderies with the large areas of wide open lawn.
These areas proved very useful to myself and my musician friends
in the 1970's when we were making music while living on low incomes.
For several years during Eisteddfod we quietly pitched our tents
in the very middle of one particularly heavily wooded area about
200 feet from the campus police station. We didn't bother anyone,
and no one bothered us. We were up bright and early for the music
jams.
And now the bad news: Over the years the organizers have gradually
stripped away, one by one, all of the features that I felt made
the festival special enough that I would want to return year after
year. Participatory events have been greatly reduced. Gone are
the beginning workshops on how to play the fiddle, banjo, guitar,
or other folk instruments. Gone are most of the beginners folk
dance workshops and traditional New England contra dancing to
live music. Gone are the open mikes where my old band got the
opportunity to perform on stage to an appreciative audience just
like the "paid" performers. Gone are most of the spontaneous
live jam sessions where amateur musicans and singers of all abilities
would gather in nooks and crannies to make music together in the
true "folk" tradition.
The performance opportunity that the Eisteddfod festival used
to offer amateur players had a large influence on my own decision
to become a professional performer. Years later, this resulted
in my band being "hired" to perform at the festival.
We felt honored at being selected and were treated very well,
put up at a local hotel, and made to feel welcome. I wonder how
many other performers have also benefited from this now discontinued
feature of Eisteddfod?
One of the most unpleasant features of the present festival is
the tendency of certain vendors new to the folk festival "circuit,"
to loudly play cassettes of recorded music in order to attract
customers to their booths to buy them. I actually witnessed a
festival organizer berate a group of musicians (fiddle, recorder,
banjo) who were playing next to my booth, and tell them to limit
their playing in the crafts area because the sound was interfering
with a vender across the room that depended upon playing tapes
in a boombox in order to make sales. This is sad. That's one less
opportunity for spontaneous music making at Eisteddfod. Any of
us that are into folk music for the long haul, either performers,
or vendors, know that live music attracts buyers far better than
recorded music. In addition, the beginning players often become
a vendor's best customers, and future Eisteddfod performers!
My concern is that when I come to a "folk festival ,"
I want to sing, dance, and make music with other like minded folks.
I can go to a "concert" any day of the week in the Boston
area and hear world class music of any genre. As a festival goer,
I want to actively participate in the fun that the hired performers
have. I'll buy a ticket to attend a scheduled performance of a
hot fiddler or singer, but then I want to go off afterward with
a group of other aspiring musicians and make our own music together.
These opportunities have diminished so much, year by year, at
Eisteddfod, that many of my fellow folk musicans, amateur and
professional, tell me that they no longer attend the festival
because it isn't "as much fun as it used to be." So
they don't come, their friends and family don't come, and the
word spreads.
For example, I personally witnessed several accomplished folk
musicians I know, show up at the festival just before a particular
scheduled jam session. They joined the session, played until the
finish, and then got in their cars and left the festival site
a short time later. In the old Eisteddfod I remember, they might
have stayed around for the whole day or afternoon, created more
informal jam sessions, attended a concert, and purchased from
the vendors. Instead, they got in, got the "good stuff,"
and got out of town.
Another folk music professional I know, who has, in the past,
been previously hired by the festival to lead certain dance activities,
showed up just to see a certain concert performer, and then left
for home, after mentioning to me how much fun it used to be at
Eisteddfod when there was lots of dancing.
During the Saturday night concert while taking a snack break at
the entrance to the student center, I encountered some people
entering with instruments in hand. Seeing me and my fiddle case,
they asked where the "music" was. I pointed them in
the direction of the ongoing concert, but they informed me that
they had driven all the way from Arlington to actually play their
own instruments with other folks at the festival. We became acquainted
and played and sang together for an hour or more. To me, that
is what folk festivals are all about, bringing the folks together!
In my experience, that sort of thing doesn't detract from concert
attendence, but ends up strengthening it in the long run.
I do respect the right of the organizers to do as they see fit,
but in my view, a healthy festival atmosphere is created from
numerous opportunities for folks at all skill levels to actually
participate in the various folk traditions and not merely observe
and applaud the "masters" in action. How else can we
possibly expect to preserve and promote these traditions that
we hold so important? Once someone new to folk music actually
holds an instrument in their hands and attempts to play it, for
example, they begin to develop a real appreciation for all the
thousands of hours that top folk performers have put into their
craft during the course of their lives.
There were several good workshops which were open to participation,
but very little for the beginner. I know, because many of them
came to my booth seeking advice, and I would send them off on
a search for particular persons that I knew to be specialists
in particular folk traditions. I believe that every "dance
demonstration," should have a corresponding workshop for
anyone who wants to dance. Every "fiddle styles workshop,"
which is actually merely a mini-concert, should have a corresponding
beginners how-to-do-it instructional workshop on fiddling. And
so on. I guess I'm biased, but I remember so well the feeling
I had when I first picked up a fiddle or banjo, or tried to sing
harmony to a folk song. I don't know about you, but when I see
someone doing something that looks like fun, I want to try it
out myself!
I would ban (as several other festivals I attend have done) all
playing of recorded music on boomboxes. I would encourage more
live music making by festival participants, and more activities
for children.
Almost all traditional fiddle music has been historically connected
with dancing. I had a great time dancing to the music of Benton
Flippen this past summer at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes
in Washington state, and found myself yearning to do so again
at Eisteddfod. When there's no participatory dancing to speak
of, 50% of the potential folk audience is eliminated. And don't
forget that dancers also attend concerts, buy tapes, bring their
friends and family, and can become enthusiastic festival volunteers!
My final recommendation: If you want to attend concert perfomances
of folk music at its best, come to Eisteddfod. If you like to
also play folk music yourself or dance to it, the pickin's are
pretty slim.
This review by Ryan J Thomson copyright
©1996
As of 1997, the Eisteddfod festival is no more. The official word
is that the college would no longer fund the festival, and it
couldn't take place with out those funds. I wonder if the college
might have funded the festival afterall if the organizers had
figured out more ways of including students in the activities?