2008 Festival Highlights

2008 marked the 15th anniversary of the Ottawa Folk Festival. These were just a few of the highlights and "firsts"...

Donna The Buffalo

The Sadies

A major addition to this year's Ottawa Folk Festival is a new 8,000 square foot Dance Tent with a stage, sound, lights and a large "sprung" dance floor. Operating throughout the day and the evening, the Dance Tent will provide a whole new area for festival-goers who want to move to the music of great artists like The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Donna the Buffalo, Ball and Chain, Genticorum, Dirk Powell & Riley Baugus, Roxanne Potvin, Harlan Johnson, Brisa Latina, Roda de Samba, The Sadies, The Duhks, and Malian guitar sensation Vieux Farka Touré.

The Dance Tent will get festival-goers actively involved in social dancing from various traditions, supported by some of the top dance bands, dance callers and dance instructors in North America. The options for participating throughout the weekend will include Cajun, Québécois, South American, Flamenco and Contra styles... with some Belly Dancing added for good measure!

The Dance Tent offers some great new possibilities for "non-lawn-chair-based" music and dance experiences at the festival. As well, the tent will form an ideal setting for festival-goers wanting to try out various styles of yoga throughout the weekend, courtesy of instructors from the Windhorse Yoga studio.

Thanks to Val Robb, Michael Ball, Jody Benjamin, Bob Nesbitt, Richard Knechtel and the Ontario Ministry of Tourism for supporting the Dance Tent initiative.

A Participatory Visual Tribute to the Late Willie P. Bennett

"ParticiPaint" Project

A very interesting project idea was proposed by local visual artist, Arthur II ("Arthur Two") prior to the 2007 Ottawa Folk Festival. He suggested setting up a huge, blank canvas at Britannia Park that anyone attending the festival could paint on. The Site Construction volunteer crew designed and built a canvas measuring 8 feet high and 40 feet wide, and set it up at the park just in time for the festival. During the weekend, under Arthur's brilliant guidance, more than 400 delighted festival-goers – children and adults – painted shapes, colours and words on the canvas. By Sunday evening, as if by magic, a glorious mural had materialized.

The overwhelming success of this "ParticiPaint" project has inspired Arthur II to plan a similar project for this year's festival. His idea is to facilitate the creation of a participatory mural dedicated to Willie P. Bennett, the late, great folk/roots musician known internationally for his stellar songwriting and remarkable musical virtuosity. Willie had a long-standing connection with Ottawa musicians and audiences, and received the Ottawa Folk Festival's prestigious Helen Verger Award in 2005 for his outstanding contributions to the Canadian music scene.

Entitled "Music in Your Eyes" in honour of one of Willie's best-loved songs, this year's mural will give hundreds of festival-goers an opportunity to express their gratitude for the gift of Willie's music. The mural will then be sent to the Peterborough Folk Festival to be displayed in the city where Willie lived for many years.

James Hill

Ukulele parts

Children attending this year's Ottawa Folk Festival will have a wonderful chance to build, decorate, and get started playing a ukulele... and then take it home to continue learning and playing. This uke-building project is the result of a remarkable team effort.

The story began when a musician named Chalmers Doane became the Director of Music for the Halifax school system. Chalmers introduced substantial choral and instrumental music programs throughout the city, connecting kids and music-making with an unprecedented level of involvement and excitement.

Chalmers selected the ukulele as an instrument that was particularly appropriate as a vehicle for children learning music. In addition to arranging for every child in the Halifax school system to receive a uke, he developed teaching materials, composed cool uke tunes, designed easy-to-manufacture ukuleles, and travelled across Canada encouraging school boards and teachers to provide students with opportunities to play a uke. At one point, there were more than 50,000 children across Canada and in parts of the United States learning to play the ukulele thanks to Chalmers Doane.

One of the eventual beneficiaries of Chalmers' work is James Hill, originally from British Columbia and now living in Nova Scotia. Sill in his mid-20's, James has become one of the best ukulele players and composers in the world! As well, he and Chalmers recently created a new set of learning materials (books and CDs) designed to kick-start a massive resurgence of uke learning and playing across the land.

Chalmers Doane and James Hill will be at this year's Ottawa Folk Festival to support the kids' build-your-own-ukulele project, along with instrument designer and builder Wolf Kater, and music educator Jennifer Giles. As well, the Ottawa Folklore Centre (OFC Music) is supporting the project with materials and guidance, and will offer individual and group ukulele lessons to allow kids to continue learning and playing their new ukuleles after the festival ends.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops

Again this year, a cross-cultural music creation and performance project will take place in conjunction with the Ottawa Folk Festival. The project will bring together 15 gifted musicians and dancers from different cultural and geographical backgrounds.

These artists will work together for three days prior to the Festival to find "common ground" and create new music and dance pieces to perform at the Festival. This will include three one-hour performances by smaller groups on various daytime stages, and a performance by the entire group on the Sunday evening Main Stage.

Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for supporting this intriguing project.

This year's project includes the following artists:

Anne Davison – Acoustic and electric cello and dance combining folk and classical influences
Benoit Bourque – Traditional Québécois accordion, singing, foot percussion and dance
The Carolina Chocolate Drops – Black American string band music with fiddle, banjo, jug, bones and voice
James Hill – Virtuosic ukulele performer and composer playing a wide range of styles
Jaxon Haldane – Alt-country and bluegrass with banjo, guitar, musical saw and voice
Mohamed Diarra – Dancer and drummer originally from Guinea, West Africa
Petr Cancura – Jazz and folk improvisation with Eastern European influences using saxophone, mandolin and voice
Radoslav Lorkovic – Versatile, joyful accordion and piano player
Shara Weaver – Dancer and choreographer with experience in West African, improvisational and mixed-ability styles
Timothy Mason – Boston-based spoken word artist once voted "most standardly deviated"