Vancouver Folk Music Festival

by VanGroovy | July 16, 2006 at 11:49 am | 1190 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

This is how The Straight described the line up:

This year’s Vancouver Folk Music Festival boasts a formidable lineup of South Asian talent. Included in this “InDiaspora”, as organizers are calling it, are musicians from here, Toronto, Montreal, and the U.K. Among the most impressive are Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and his son Salil Bhatt. Vishwa is the inventor of the mohan veena, a guitarlike instrument with 19 strings. He has played with Taj Mahal, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, and Eric Clapton. His 1993 record with Ry Cooder, A Meeting By the River, won a Grammy for World Music. And, as per usual, the three-day event (Friday to Sunday [July 14 to 16]) presents a range of talents from the more traditional (Utah Phillips, Tim Readman) to the far-out (Ganga Giri, the Grande Mothers).

The scene on Jericho this weekend was worth battling the traffic for. Outside the confines of the official event people hung around on the beach dancing. Impromptu drum circles formed. Lines of vendors offered up everything from clothing to drinks.

The organizers wrapped up the evening as they always do with a beautiful procession of lanterns that guided the crowds back to civilization when the music stopped.

If you get a chance you should definitely check it out next year.