I’d Love to Tell Somebody About This Dream: Folk Alliance Day 3

 

Nimki and the Niniis

My favorite little piece of technology—a wristwatch that monitors my vital signs and tells me how I slept last night—has either betrayed me or unlocked a secret of the universe. It tells me that I fell asleep about the time I sat down in the Bimiwizh (Ojibwe for “listen or carry”) International Indigenous Music Summit in the Pershing Place ballroom.

That makes some sense because there are never late night showcases in the ballrooms, and it also makes sense because, before I left that room, my friend Mike Warren and I were dancing in a great circle with magnificent Turtle Island traditional dancers and virtually everyone else in the ballroom. Those dancers provided kaleidoscopic percussion with their moves, but the driving sound came from the song and drum group, Nimki and the Niniis from Wiikwemkoong, Ontario.

Mikhail Laxton

I think the night’s dream actually started a bit earlier, with a bit of a white rabbit experience. Mike and I learned that this summit was happening because two singers, Ila Barker and Hera Nalam, handed us fliers in the otherwise almost empty lobby, telling us this gathering was about to start. They weren’t exactly checking a great pocket watch, but there was some sense of urgency.

We got there just in time to see a poignant, acoustic set by Mikhail Laxton. His country-soul songs cut close with thoughts on family relationships, love lost, and love cherished, sometimes all at the same time. https://mikhaillaxton.com/  

Barker and backing vocalist Nalam went someplace even more akin to straight soul music, Barker probing with her electric guitar and vocals, extending the heartaches to fundamental questions of self-worth. Nalam backed Barker’s vocals in her own unique way, occasionally offering trills that worked like bubbling punctuation. Barker mentioned newer musicians coming to her about their insecurities and uncertainty whether they should continue. She exclaimed, “Congratulations, you’re an artist,” before launching into “Intuition,” a song about trusting your gut. https://www.ilabarker.com/

Hera Nalam and Ila Barker

Nimki and the Niniis brought that part of the evening to an out-of-body crescendo, sometimes standing and singing with their drums and other times sitting in a drum circle to accompany the dancing. Nimki explained that the center drum in the circle was called the heart drum, drawing parallels between that sound and the heartbeat of our mothers—before we are born, our first teacher. He also acknowledged the full moon, which couldn’t have been more appropriate considering the energy in every room of the house last night. https://nimkiiandtheniniis.bandcamp.com/album/nimkii-the-niniis

We soon found ourselves upstairs in the British Underground acoustic room, catching the end of a set by Lady Nade. Her silky soprano warmed the room and demanded we catch a full set before this is all over. https://ladynade.co.uk/  

Lady Nade

The following set by instrumental duo, Hildaland (Scottish fiddler Louise Bichan and Indiana mandolinist Ethan Setiawan) brought a tapestry of wild, reeling rhythms and songs dedicated to silver wedding anniversaries, the sound of sleet, and the pleasures of sleeping in (which will be something to look forward to sometime near the end of these four days). https://www.hildaland.com/

Hildaland

Mike and I caught only three songs in what we decided would be the final set for the evening, Shakura S’Aida accompanied by Brooke Blackburn (of 2023 Juno award-winning The Blackburn Brothers). Blackburn generally sat and played the guitar, although sometimes his enthusiasm brought him out of his seat. He provided hard-driving rhythms to serve S’Aida’s commanding vocals.

And I mean commanding quite literally because, late to the room, we learned what it meant to take the front row. S’Aida wasted no time directing us to face off and illustrate that first song’s pledge to have each other’s backs. It was the ultimate ice breaker. S’Aida handled that room like a gracious host, greeting another late comer with all the information she needed to get settled, find a beverage and feel at home. 

Shakura S'Aida

The last song S’Aida did was “Clap Yo Hands and Moan.” She credited her old songwriting partner Keb Mo with part of the inspiration. She quoted him saying, “The devil can’t hear you when you moan,” and launched into a song with the powerful refrain, “If you need to call up heaven, and you’ve got the devil on the phone, stomp your feet…, clap your hands…, and moan.” Starting soft, the song built to one blues-shout and moan crescendo after another, the crowd clapping on point. https://www.shakurasaida.com/

 

 

 

 

 

Bimiwizh: Listen, Carry, Dance with Nimki and the Niniis

 

Love Comes Down: Finding Unity at Folk Alliance 2024, Day 2

 

Mireya Ramos & the Poor Choices

“I break your soul!” Mireya Ramos shouted and smiled as she delivered the translation of the Cuco Sanchez cover she sang with her current Kansas City-based band, The Poor Choices—Beau Bledsoe (acoustic guitar), Trevor Turla (trombone) Jeff Freling (electric guitar), Marco Pascolini (steel guitar), Ezgi Karakus (cello) and John Currey (drums). Ramos and the band delivered a sterling, rousing set rich with both the rancheras she loves and their cousins among rock and country classics such as Roy Orbison’s (always ranchera influenced) “Blue Bayou” and Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.” The brilliant set ended with a cumbia as exciting and joyous as Ramos’ soaring vocals. The night before, Puerto Rican Ramos sang Chilean Victor Jara’s movement defining “Manifesto,” and on this night, Ramos only further underscored the easy unity forged by musical forms that truly have more roots in common than the markets and national divisions that strive to keep them separate. https://mireyaramos.com/sin-fronteras/

Connie Kaldor

One beauty of Folk Alliance is the way it thrives on crossing such lines. Before Ramos’ set, Canadian songwriter Connie Kaldor explained that she’d always loved the kinds of sea shanties artists like Stan Rogers specialized in, but her home in Saskatchewan (“just about straight north [of Kansas City] and a little west”) was about as landlocked as she could get. So, she wrote a rousing “she shanty,” “Come All You Women,” directly inspired by an encounter with a friend at a previous Folk Alliance. It’s not only tempting but useful to connect the prairie origins of that song to the common ground between Kansas City’s Poor Choices and Ramos’s rancheras. https://www.conniekaldor.com/

Rayna Gellert and Joachim Cooder

And it’s not a big stretch to connect Tennessean Uncle Dave Macon’s influence on Ry Cooder’s son Joachim who covered and transformed Macon’s songs in the next set playing his electric mbira, a derivative of thumb pianos played in Zimbabwe. Joachim Cooder has played with musicians from all over, famously including the Cuban Buena Vista Social Club, but you couldn’t miss the excitement in his voice that he was sitting next to the great fiddler Rayna Gellert, who may be known for her work in Ashville and Nashville, but who notably also grew up in landlocked northern Indiana. 

https://www.joachimcooder.com/

And the songwriter’s circle in Aoife Scott’s Women of Note room pulled even more of the world together to collaborate. The circle featured Dusky Waters (Jennifer Jeffers), a banjo player from Little Rock, Arkansas who has also migrated to New Orleans; Thea Hopkins, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe of Martha’s Vineyard; and Grainne Hunt of Kilcock, Ireland. Waters opened the set singing “Pass It On,” the title track of her new album, a powerful song of communal responsibility that soon led to Hunt’s contemplation of intergenerational trauma, “So I Can Leave.” Scott and partner Andy Meany led a sing along including all the vocalists dedicated to a friend who lives half the world away from his old home in Pimlico Dublin, but Hopkins sing along just before served as a sort of spiritual crescendo to the evening. “Love Come Down.” The whole room sang those three words like a prayer, and something holy gathered all around us.

Thea Hopkins

https://www.theahopkins.com/

https://www.duskywaters.com/band

https://grainnehunt.com/

https://www.aoifescott.com/

Dusky Waters

Grainne Hunt

Andy Meaney and Aoife Scott

Moments of Silence and Risk: The Alchemy of Folk Alliance 2024 Day 1

 

Shabankareh Honoring Lopez-Galvan

The evening before the 36^th Annual Folk Alliance International Conference, Kansas City’s KKFI DJ Tommy Andrade hosted a special tribute episode of A Taste of Tejano dedicated to his co-host Lisa Lopez-Galvan (Lisa G). Lopez-Galvan’s death by gunfire—amidst twenty-two other victims of the mass shooting that took place during the Chiefs’ Superbowl celebration—stunned the world, but the loss could be palpably felt among the international community built by the music Lopez-Galvan and Andrade celebrated every Tuesday night on our community radio station. The tribute show was an outpouring of grief, yes, but also joy and love. Listen here: https://kkfi.org/program-episodes/tribute-to-lisa-lopez-galvan/

A shrine honoring the place where Lopez-Galvan lost her life formed just catty-cornered from the Westin Crown-Center Hotel, the place Folk Alliance International has held most of its annual conferences over the past decade. The event has always been a celebration of the community that surrounds music—fans, musicians, and DJs and community organizers like Lopez-Galvan. So, it was more than appropriate and extraordinarily important that FAI board president Ashley Shabankareh opened the first all-conference convocation, the awards show, by speaking of Lopez-Galvan, calling for a moment of silence, and then urging everyone in attendance to reach out, look after, and take care of each other over the next four days. 

Joy Clark Honors Tracy Chapman

The theme of the conference is “Alchemy: A Transformative Force,” and the night’s award recipients built their careers upon and underscored their commitment to the idea that music can change the world. First up was a lifetime achievement award for Tracy Chapman, whose appearance with Luke Combs last week at the Grammys said volumes about music’s desire to tear down the walls that separate us. Last night, New Orleans’ great songwriter and guitarist Joy Clark rocked the awards hall tearing into “Give Me One Reason” with the house band Steel Wheels.  

The other winners were a diverse list of world changers—Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter’s great great niece Terika Dean for her work in part as chair of the Blues Foundation, the LEAF Global Arts Festival for its efforts at environmental sustainability, and Victor Jara’s estate, for the great Chilean songwriter’s revolutionary career transforming his country’s music into a vital force that led to revolutionary change (and, as has too often been the cost) his martyrdom. Contemporary artists who won were as vital and diverse as popular music at its best—Guatamala’s great “rising tide” winner Sara Curruchich, as well as FAI favorites Iris DeMent, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, and Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra. Segarra used the moment to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

With the loss of Lopez-Galvan in mind, particularly poignant were the tributes to the DJs:  Folk Alley’s Linda Fahey, Just Us Folk’s Jan Vanderhorst, Mountain Stage’s Larry Groce, A Celtic Sojourn’s Brian O’Donovan, and Woody’s Children’s Bob Sherman.

Northern Resonance

After the awards ceremony, the event moved upstairs to the private showcases in the hotel rooms where guests had sheltered in place the week before during the events surrounding the shooting. It was in these rooms six years ago that an artist from my hometown, Chris Lee Becker, organized a performance in response to the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. I wrote about that here: https://takeemastheycome.blogspot.com/2018/02/once-was-blind-but-now-chris-lee-becker.html

In one room, the Scandinavian musical trio Northern Resonance built infectious reels out of instruments like the Swedish Nyckelharpa (a string instrument with 37 keys on its neck), the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, and the seven-stringed viola d’amore. In another, I heard such a jaw-dropping solo performance by Trinidad-born UK singer Michele Stodart that I hesitate to try to say more here. Stodart wields a voice and guitar as tough and ambitious as blues and pop get. https://www.northernresonance.se/

Michele Stodart 

https://www.michelestodart.com/home-1

But I find myself thinking about the smaller moments—the ones in which we did, indeed, seem to be taking care of one another. During his often-hilarious set which featured sing-a-longs to squirrel cookouts and bumper sticker wit, Kansan Sky Smeed decided to try out a new song to see if he could get any help figuring out “what’s wrong with it.” Before playing the song, he said, “This could be where it all goes south, and I’m okay with that.” What he played was heartbreaking and beautiful. https://www.skysmeed.com/

Similarly, Canadian singer Ken Presse stopped at one point and asked the small group gathered to hear him if he should play “a cover, the song I was going to play, or a French song.” We gave him carte blanche. His cover of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” managed to evoke a moving whisper of a sing-along, appropriate to the size of the room and the fact that he went acapella for the refrain. The audience happily encouraged the French song as a follow up.

Ken Presse

But it was an earlier moment that most stood out. Presse mentioned that he was about to have a child, and that he regretted how much of his life he’d spent working. He said the song, about another way of living, was called “Someday.” And he added, “Maybe I can learn from it.”

Of course, the unstated truth was we all could. On this night, perhaps more than ever before, Folk Alliance felt like a place where the music was there to teach, and we were there to learn.

https://www.kenpresse.com/

 https://www.rainbowgirlsmusic.com/

https://blues.org/about/terika-dean/

The Rainbow Girls Honor Terika Dean (and Leadbelly)