DaveWells.us

Zydeco Fid­dler

Last week­end, I returned from Seat­tle, where I’d been work­ing at the North­west Folk­life Fes­ti­val. For the last eight years, I’ve worked as the festival’s Sig­nage Coor­di­na­tor (see posts from pre­vi­ous fes­ti­vals here). The weather this year was pretty crappy — unsea­son­ably cold and rainy, even for Seat­tle. But, I still man­aged to have a great time. Many of my cowork­ers have been at the fes­ti­val for many years as well, so I was happy to get to hang out with many of them again. As always, most of my work takes place before and after the fes­ti­val, and while the event is hap­pen­ing I have plenty of time to lis­ten to music and take pic­tures. I’ve posted my best shots here; click on the photo above to see the whole gallery.

Samba Olywa Parade

I finally man­aged to have my pho­tos from the Folk­life Fes­ti­val in Seat­tle devel­oped. I’ve posted a few of them, and I’ll take this oppor­tu­nity to do a fes­ti­val wrap-up post. I didn’t take as many pho­tos as in pre­vi­ous years. This was largely due to the fact that it rained three out of the four days of the fes­ti­val. It wasn’t pour­ing that whole time, but it was cloudy and dark, mak­ing the light pretty crappy for flash-free photography.

Signs Galore

I guess I’ll start with what I was actu­ally doing at the fes­ti­val. This was my fourth year work­ing as the festival’s Sig­nage Coor­di­na­tor. What that means is that I’m respon­si­ble for hang­ing signs and ban­ners all over the cam­pus of Seat­tle Cen­ter (where the Space Nee­dle is). The pic at the left shows most of the pre­ex­ist­ing signs — all the signs along the wall are stacked 4–8 deep. Every year, there are also a bunch of new signs and ban­ners (which hadn’t yet arrived when I took the pic­ture, to cover new and dif­fer­ent venues and spe­cial one-year events or appear­ances. The first two years, I was pretty much on my own. In each of the last two years, I’ve had good help from Tahoma and one other person.

Funky Gospel Bass

The nice thing about work­ing sig­nage is that most of my work is done by Sat­ur­day after­noon (the fes­ti­val always starts on the Fri­day before Memo­r­ial Day, and runs through the Mon­day hol­i­day). So, I get plenty of (paid) time to walk around and enjoy the fes­ti­val. I have to carry a radio in case some­one needs me, but it clips nicely to my cam­era bag.

Peru­vian Buskers

I caught parts of quite a few shows. I saw a num­ber of dance groups: tango, fla­menco, salsa, Zim­bab­wean, Irish, belly, samba, etc. A num­ber of these used canned music, but the few who used live musi­cians were the most inter­est­ing. I heard a wide vari­ety of music (in no par­tic­u­lar order): Taiko drum­ming, jazz, Irish tra­di­tional, punk, klezmer, rock­a­billy, gospel, Afro-pop, reg­gae, blue­grass, folk, etc. Some groups were quite good, some were ok, and some were just down­right weird. One such group was a polka band who played noth­ing but Johnny Cash cov­ers. I didn’t catch their name, which may be for the best.

Artis the Spoonman

Aside from what’s hap­pen­ing on the var­i­ous stages (21 of them this year), there are always lots of inter­est­ing buskers dis­trib­uted through­out the grounds. Since the fes­ti­val doesn’t pay the per­form­ers (there’s also no required admis­sion charge, just a sug­gested dona­tion), alot of groups will set up on the side­walk to make some money before or after their shows. There are also pro­fes­sional buskers who usu­ally work down­town Seat­tle, groups or bands who aren’t actu­ally play­ing at the fes­ti­val, and high school (and some­times younger) kids who want to make a few extra bucks. Most buskers are musi­cians, but there’s always a vari­ety of inter­est­ing and bizarre per­for­mance art — human stat­ues, human video games, acro­bats, worm-eating, etc.

Boe Odd­ysey

Folk­life offers really good people-watching oppor­tu­ni­ties, as well. It being a free fes­ti­val, peo­ple of all sorts show up. You see peo­ple of all ages, eth­nic­i­ties, reli­gions, socio-economic sta­tuses, sex­u­al­i­ties, and var­i­ous other lifestyle choices. When­ever I tire of walk­ing around, I’ll just stand or sit some­place and watch the crowd. That can pro­vide hours of enter­tain­ment. One per­son who stands out in the crowd every year is Boe. I don’t know Boe’s whole story, but he vol­un­teers for Folk­life (dur­ing fes­ti­val set-up) every year, and I think he did too much of some­thing in the 60s. He always wears a brightly col­ored skirt, pas­tel scarves, and a bell around his waist. He can be seen at out­door shows of all descrip­tions wav­ing around bunches of his scarves, which he bungee-cords to each wrist. He’s bizarre, but he seems to always be hav­ing fun.

Well, that prob­a­bly should have been split up into mul­ti­ple posts, but I had to make up for post­ing almost noth­ing when I was actu­ally in Seat­tle. Each of the pic­tures above links to a larger ver­sion of that par­tic­u­lar pic, but you can see all my pho­tos from this year’s fes­ti­val here. Also, check out my gal­leries from past years: Folk­life 2003 Folk­life 2005. I worked the fes­ti­val in 2004 also, but I got strep and mono part-way through and had to go home. So, no pic­tures from that year.