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annathepiperI should have posted this a few days ago, but I am a big lamer spazz, not to mention being eaten alive by the effort to massively overhaul my web page (and I haven't even gotten to the part where I reformat my Livejournal to match). However, I wanted to get this post out of the way for those of y'all who are interested in Folklife. I suppose this really ought to be the Day 3 and Day 4 report, because it's for those two days of the Festival... but it was Day 2 and Day 3 as far as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird and I were concerned, so well hey.
Addendum to Day 1: Saturday
Something I forgot to add about the first day out was that during the Korean dancing, specifically during the part where they were doing the harvest dance performance, the music broke into this strange mutant version of "Battle Hymn of the Republic". It was pretty much that exact melody with the occasional chords sort of... for lack of a better word... Asianized. I was kind of startled by that!
Day 2: Sunday
This was going to be the day when Dar and I went to Irish Jam and Band Scramble. We did not make the latter, mostly because we were too busy doing the former. There was less Irish in the Jam than we'd hoped for, and in fact less direction since we had been given to understand that there was supposed to be some sort of formal, led thing going on, which didn't happen. At least not where we were. But before I get to that...
spazzkat decided to come with us on this particular day, so when we got there, the three of us started off the afternoon by hitting the Dixie's BBQ booth. This time I got a sandwich with actual Man on it, but I got too much and didn't mix it well enough into the sandwich! It definitely kicked my ass. I have met the Man, but he is a vicious bastard.
The major act we viewed on this particular day was Polynesian dancing--some Hawaiian, some Tahitian. I had to leave my bouzouki with one of the ushers near the door, but there was this big wooden thing behind her chair, and I was able to sort of hide my instrument behind that to make it less obvious, so I didn't mind that too much.
I think that I have decided that while Hawaiian dancing and music is okay and all, most of it is too sedate for my tastes. The Tahitian dancing, which involved lots more drums, was much more entertaining. Not to mention that the dance troupe's male members were a lot less clad for the Tahitian section of the performance, wearing red loincloths. ;)
That said, the whole performance was impressive at least in terms of watching the rhythmic ability of several of the children in the performance. One tiny little girl in front who couldn't have been more than four was particularly notable and dead on for rhythm every time she was out with the group. And one little boy with limbs like twigs did some amazing flips and somersaults during the Tahitian dancing.
One guy got a lot of cheers and teasing from backstage as well as a few squeals from the audience when he did a solo dance, and it was also revealed that it was his birthday.
But the real charmer of the act for me was this child who was only about one. The director of the group apparently teaches classes for children of all ages and the youngest person in her class was this little girl... possibly the child of one of her adult students, I wasn't sure. But the kid was the cutest thing. They had her in a tiny sarong and a flower in her hair, and helped her toddle out on the stage. They tried to encourage her to dance a bit, but mostly she looked confusedly around at everything. I am fairly sure she didn't quite get what was going on, and must surely have been thinking, "Ooh, the big people with the big thumpy things are back here"--she kept looking at the drummers instead of the audience. ;)
BUT, once the actual dancing started, the kid KEPT COMING BACK OUT ON THE STAGE. Toddling cutely about and wandering back and forth looking at people. Every so often she waggled an arm as if she was thinking about maybe trying to imitate the big people. I was ridiculously charmed.
After that it was time to go over to the Jam, and Paul parted company with us at that point. Dar and I headed over to Fiddler's Green to see what we could find out and to look for people who looked like they were in charge. We could not find anybody who looked like they were in charge, and apparently neither could anybody else. Several other musicians wandering around in little clumps asked us what was going on; they didn't know and we didn't either. So mostly everybody wound up pulling out their instruments and grouping up and playing whatever the heck came to mind.
Three different people asked me about my bouzouki, which was really neat. However, I was quite intimidated by the gentleman who whipped out an octave mandolin and proceeded to play the hell out of it! He did some really impressive rhythm lines on it, and it sounded very, very good from just behind me. I wouldn't give an arm to play like that--I need both my arms to play, after all--but I would and WILL give time! I've started trying again to work on some of the stuff in my mandolin fakebook just so I can try to get the fingerwork down and be able to sound that good at Folklife.
Most of what I wound up doing was playing rhythm chords, though Dar did some very nice improvised twiddling. And this one lady playing an accordion even tried to bring one of the songs we were playing around so that Dar could take a bridge. That was keen. :) Like I said, though, less Irish than I might have liked... we played things like Hank Williams' "Hey Good Lookin'" and one of Bob Dylan's songs, and the one with the chorus of "Jambalaya, crawfish pie, something something," I know the tune of the thing but not the words. But I don't know enough Irish ditties yet to really effectively jam on them, so this wasn't necessarily a problem.
About 4pm or so I blinked and turned to Dar and went, "Eek, we need to go sign up for Band Scramble!" Unfortunately, we were too late. Because by the time we got over there, they'd already sent folks off to practice for the actual Scramble performance at 5. DOH DOH DOH.
We waffled about whether to try to find any of the Scramble groups, but there were so many people wandering around with instruments--it's amazing how much I noticed that this year, way more than I have in previous years, now that I have started actively playing again and been specifically interested in playing at Folklife--that it was pretty much impossible to try to peg who was playing just to busk and who was actually rehearsing for the Scramble.
At that point I think we were both kind of bummed about not making the Scramble... so we did a bit of random wandering around until we finally decided to try to go see a bagpipe performance over in the Center House. But it was supposed to be in the Center House theater and we didn't know where that was... so mostly we just sat in the nice cool air-conditioned food court until Dar remarked that I had a tired, "PLEASE can we stop?!" sort of look, and I told her that I was tired but also didn't want her to call me lame.
She did the lame dance with her fingers. I hit her with my hat. ;)
So we trudged out to the bus, caught the 74, and came home.
Day 3: Monday
Paul decided to accompany us again on Monday, so the three of us once more caught the 74 just in front of our house and went pretty much straight to Seattle Center. I like that. Some things about Seattle may suck, but I have to admit that the Metro busses aren't really one of them, at least not in Seattle proper.
The first amusing thing about this day's excursion has already been mentioned in Dar's journal post about it: spotting a girl who looked like an uncannily close clone oflyonesse. We spotted her while I was in the line to get cash from the ATM near the Space Needle, and that little sojourn was also notable since they had a trio of women doing a capella three-part harmony performances out in front of the main entrance to the thing. They did "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B", which wasn't too terribly surprising. I pondered the amusement value of asking them to do "Go to Sleep Little Baby", but none of them were sufficiently wet and come-hither-y to do a proper O Brother Where Art Thou? rendition of that song. ;)
Lunch of the day: bratwurst for Paul, BBQ for Dar, piroshky for me. And a cookie. Because mmmm big warm soft chocolate chip cookie. As we ate we more or less hung out on the grass and people-watched, which was nice; then we went over to sit near the big fountain and people-watched some more, which was also nice. We could see all the kids and dogs frolicking in the fountain, and there were scads of each, of all sizes.
We even saw this one chick walking her CAT on a leash.
Not as many gorgeous shirtless guys as I might otherwise have liked, but I did see this one cute young fellow with... well, the best way I can describe him is that he looked like a cute, not-smeggy version of Lister in Red Dwarf, at least in terms of the color and texture of his hair and his general complexion. ;)
We saw a couple of noticeably, comfortably pregnant young women. And this one young woman wearing a floral-print dress of a slim, straight style that would work very well on Dar.
Paul asked me if I'd put on any sunblock. I hadn't. He warned me I'd sizzle like a sausage! I didn't... though I did get more sun than I'm used to, and I think that contributed to me being tired the last couple of days. Which possibly sounds wacky, but hey.
Once we got tired of people watching we decided to go check out a performance by this woman and her son on a pair of Japanese instruments called kotos. It turned out that this was scheduled to be in the Center House Theater that we couldn't find the day before, but at least this time we found it. And the performance was pretty cool at least for the "weird instrument I've never seen before" factor. A koto is this long, sort of curved-board-shape instrument with 13 strings on it, and a lot of levers that you slide up and down the length of the instrument to alter its tuning. You play it sitting on the floor with the instrument in front of you, and you have fingerpicks on your one hand and you sort of just strum at the strings with your other, apparently. Pretty much all of the music they played was of the gentle, lilting, meditative Japanese variety, which tends to make me think of massage therapy appointments, so between that and the small, stuffed confines of the performance area, I got kind of drowsy.
The next act I wanted to see was in the same place, so we didn't have to go very far. This was a performance by the Seattle Mandolin Orchestra, which I wanted to see since I'd glanced at their web page before and have occasionally considered investigating joining them. After seeing a performance I am less inclined to actually do that, just because the sorts of music they seem to play are heavily oriented to old-timey bluegrass. A lot of Stephen Foster in their repetoire, and "I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee" sorts of ditties. Plus:
After that, I scarfed a Stitch balloon at Paul's suggestion formamishka. I'd thought about getting her kettle corn, but she'd commented to me once that although she likes kettle corn it often winds up just lying around her space not getting eaten, so I thought the balloon would be a better choice. Turned out to be the right decision, as she'd spent most of her weekend watching movies and eating a pile of popcorn, so any more corn might have made her explode. :)
Then, more random wandering. We thought about hitting a Celtic performance around 4:20 or so, but we lamed out of it, mostly because we wandered away from the appropriate area beforehand and wound up hanging out again on Fisher's Green for a bit. Dar wanted to hang out there and see if she could twiddle with the musicians jamming... but Paul and I were more interested in heading over to the Broad Street Lawn and getting good viewing spots for the last act we wanted to see, which was the Seattle Kokon Taiko group.
Who, I believe, remain my favorite of the taiko acts we've seen perform at Folklife. They strike me as the most energetic and spirited, though they were also sort of screwed by the particular stage they were performing on. The Broad Street Lawn stage wasn't exactly acoustically ideal, plus, they were all sort of stuffed onto this stage that really boxed them in with the big speakers on either side in front, and the tent shelter of the stage to either side and behind. This meant that if you weren't pretty much dead on center in front of the stage, you couldn't really see what everybody in the group was doing. And they didn't have much room to do it, either, since a lot of taiko involves large arm movements and dancing around the drums.
Though I will also say that One World Taiko is also very, VERY good, and I was amused to note that Seattle Kokon Taiko did a couple of pieces that the taiko show on Saturday had covered. I liked Seattle Kokon Taiko's original pieces best, though, especially the one whose name translated to "Frog". It was very good invoking a whole herd of croaking bullfrogs. :)
After that... home again, since we were all getting pretty tired and Dar was beginning to feel the first signs of a bit of sickness coming on. En route to the bus stop I noted several children making hopeful eyes at the Stitch balloon--one kid even enthusiastically if mistakenly chirped "LILO!" at it. ;)
And it also provoked an amusing conversation between a couple of random adults on the bus as well, an older guy and an older lady who got into discussing Lilo & Stitch and also random Elvis movies. I couldn't resist jumping in on the conversation, just because they seemed confused about which Elvis movies had been filmed in Hawaii, and who am I to turn down an opportunity to provide Elvis movie trivia? ;)
The only other interesting thing about the bus ride home was this one kind of cute blond guy I ogled on the way. He had longish hair in a ponytail, and had that sort of cute, scruffy, rugged look about him I'm a sucker for. Not one word exchanged, but hey, looking at him was kind of fun. And a nice closing note to Folklife 2003.
solarbird and I were concerned, so well hey.Addendum to Day 1: Saturday
Something I forgot to add about the first day out was that during the Korean dancing, specifically during the part where they were doing the harvest dance performance, the music broke into this strange mutant version of "Battle Hymn of the Republic". It was pretty much that exact melody with the occasional chords sort of... for lack of a better word... Asianized. I was kind of startled by that!
Day 2: Sunday
This was going to be the day when Dar and I went to Irish Jam and Band Scramble. We did not make the latter, mostly because we were too busy doing the former. There was less Irish in the Jam than we'd hoped for, and in fact less direction since we had been given to understand that there was supposed to be some sort of formal, led thing going on, which didn't happen. At least not where we were. But before I get to that...
spazzkat decided to come with us on this particular day, so when we got there, the three of us started off the afternoon by hitting the Dixie's BBQ booth. This time I got a sandwich with actual Man on it, but I got too much and didn't mix it well enough into the sandwich! It definitely kicked my ass. I have met the Man, but he is a vicious bastard.The major act we viewed on this particular day was Polynesian dancing--some Hawaiian, some Tahitian. I had to leave my bouzouki with one of the ushers near the door, but there was this big wooden thing behind her chair, and I was able to sort of hide my instrument behind that to make it less obvious, so I didn't mind that too much.
I think that I have decided that while Hawaiian dancing and music is okay and all, most of it is too sedate for my tastes. The Tahitian dancing, which involved lots more drums, was much more entertaining. Not to mention that the dance troupe's male members were a lot less clad for the Tahitian section of the performance, wearing red loincloths. ;)
That said, the whole performance was impressive at least in terms of watching the rhythmic ability of several of the children in the performance. One tiny little girl in front who couldn't have been more than four was particularly notable and dead on for rhythm every time she was out with the group. And one little boy with limbs like twigs did some amazing flips and somersaults during the Tahitian dancing.
One guy got a lot of cheers and teasing from backstage as well as a few squeals from the audience when he did a solo dance, and it was also revealed that it was his birthday.
But the real charmer of the act for me was this child who was only about one. The director of the group apparently teaches classes for children of all ages and the youngest person in her class was this little girl... possibly the child of one of her adult students, I wasn't sure. But the kid was the cutest thing. They had her in a tiny sarong and a flower in her hair, and helped her toddle out on the stage. They tried to encourage her to dance a bit, but mostly she looked confusedly around at everything. I am fairly sure she didn't quite get what was going on, and must surely have been thinking, "Ooh, the big people with the big thumpy things are back here"--she kept looking at the drummers instead of the audience. ;)
BUT, once the actual dancing started, the kid KEPT COMING BACK OUT ON THE STAGE. Toddling cutely about and wandering back and forth looking at people. Every so often she waggled an arm as if she was thinking about maybe trying to imitate the big people. I was ridiculously charmed.
After that it was time to go over to the Jam, and Paul parted company with us at that point. Dar and I headed over to Fiddler's Green to see what we could find out and to look for people who looked like they were in charge. We could not find anybody who looked like they were in charge, and apparently neither could anybody else. Several other musicians wandering around in little clumps asked us what was going on; they didn't know and we didn't either. So mostly everybody wound up pulling out their instruments and grouping up and playing whatever the heck came to mind.
Three different people asked me about my bouzouki, which was really neat. However, I was quite intimidated by the gentleman who whipped out an octave mandolin and proceeded to play the hell out of it! He did some really impressive rhythm lines on it, and it sounded very, very good from just behind me. I wouldn't give an arm to play like that--I need both my arms to play, after all--but I would and WILL give time! I've started trying again to work on some of the stuff in my mandolin fakebook just so I can try to get the fingerwork down and be able to sound that good at Folklife.
Most of what I wound up doing was playing rhythm chords, though Dar did some very nice improvised twiddling. And this one lady playing an accordion even tried to bring one of the songs we were playing around so that Dar could take a bridge. That was keen. :) Like I said, though, less Irish than I might have liked... we played things like Hank Williams' "Hey Good Lookin'" and one of Bob Dylan's songs, and the one with the chorus of "Jambalaya, crawfish pie, something something," I know the tune of the thing but not the words. But I don't know enough Irish ditties yet to really effectively jam on them, so this wasn't necessarily a problem.
About 4pm or so I blinked and turned to Dar and went, "Eek, we need to go sign up for Band Scramble!" Unfortunately, we were too late. Because by the time we got over there, they'd already sent folks off to practice for the actual Scramble performance at 5. DOH DOH DOH.
We waffled about whether to try to find any of the Scramble groups, but there were so many people wandering around with instruments--it's amazing how much I noticed that this year, way more than I have in previous years, now that I have started actively playing again and been specifically interested in playing at Folklife--that it was pretty much impossible to try to peg who was playing just to busk and who was actually rehearsing for the Scramble.
At that point I think we were both kind of bummed about not making the Scramble... so we did a bit of random wandering around until we finally decided to try to go see a bagpipe performance over in the Center House. But it was supposed to be in the Center House theater and we didn't know where that was... so mostly we just sat in the nice cool air-conditioned food court until Dar remarked that I had a tired, "PLEASE can we stop?!" sort of look, and I told her that I was tired but also didn't want her to call me lame.
She did the lame dance with her fingers. I hit her with my hat. ;)
So we trudged out to the bus, caught the 74, and came home.
Day 3: Monday
Paul decided to accompany us again on Monday, so the three of us once more caught the 74 just in front of our house and went pretty much straight to Seattle Center. I like that. Some things about Seattle may suck, but I have to admit that the Metro busses aren't really one of them, at least not in Seattle proper.
The first amusing thing about this day's excursion has already been mentioned in Dar's journal post about it: spotting a girl who looked like an uncannily close clone of
lyonesse. We spotted her while I was in the line to get cash from the ATM near the Space Needle, and that little sojourn was also notable since they had a trio of women doing a capella three-part harmony performances out in front of the main entrance to the thing. They did "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B", which wasn't too terribly surprising. I pondered the amusement value of asking them to do "Go to Sleep Little Baby", but none of them were sufficiently wet and come-hither-y to do a proper O Brother Where Art Thou? rendition of that song. ;)Lunch of the day: bratwurst for Paul, BBQ for Dar, piroshky for me. And a cookie. Because mmmm big warm soft chocolate chip cookie. As we ate we more or less hung out on the grass and people-watched, which was nice; then we went over to sit near the big fountain and people-watched some more, which was also nice. We could see all the kids and dogs frolicking in the fountain, and there were scads of each, of all sizes.
We even saw this one chick walking her CAT on a leash.
Not as many gorgeous shirtless guys as I might otherwise have liked, but I did see this one cute young fellow with... well, the best way I can describe him is that he looked like a cute, not-smeggy version of Lister in Red Dwarf, at least in terms of the color and texture of his hair and his general complexion. ;)
We saw a couple of noticeably, comfortably pregnant young women. And this one young woman wearing a floral-print dress of a slim, straight style that would work very well on Dar.
Paul asked me if I'd put on any sunblock. I hadn't. He warned me I'd sizzle like a sausage! I didn't... though I did get more sun than I'm used to, and I think that contributed to me being tired the last couple of days. Which possibly sounds wacky, but hey.
Once we got tired of people watching we decided to go check out a performance by this woman and her son on a pair of Japanese instruments called kotos. It turned out that this was scheduled to be in the Center House Theater that we couldn't find the day before, but at least this time we found it. And the performance was pretty cool at least for the "weird instrument I've never seen before" factor. A koto is this long, sort of curved-board-shape instrument with 13 strings on it, and a lot of levers that you slide up and down the length of the instrument to alter its tuning. You play it sitting on the floor with the instrument in front of you, and you have fingerpicks on your one hand and you sort of just strum at the strings with your other, apparently. Pretty much all of the music they played was of the gentle, lilting, meditative Japanese variety, which tends to make me think of massage therapy appointments, so between that and the small, stuffed confines of the performance area, I got kind of drowsy.
The next act I wanted to see was in the same place, so we didn't have to go very far. This was a performance by the Seattle Mandolin Orchestra, which I wanted to see since I'd glanced at their web page before and have occasionally considered investigating joining them. After seeing a performance I am less inclined to actually do that, just because the sorts of music they seem to play are heavily oriented to old-timey bluegrass. A lot of Stephen Foster in their repetoire, and "I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee" sorts of ditties. Plus:
- They all used a FUCKLOAD of tremolo. For those of you who don't know what that is, that's when a mandolin player waggles the pick up and down the strings really fast and more or less does a hummingbird imitation. Not that I have much experience doing this myself, but I have at least an idea of how to do it. And the mandolin book I bought to start teaching myself suggests to the reader that tremolo should be used SPARINGLY. Done too much, it sounds syrupy and cheesy. Now that I've seen a live performance with too damned much tremolo, I agree with this assertion.
- Their collective playing style just... bored me. I don't have anything particularly against old-timey bluegrass; in fact, the performances in O Brother Where Art Thou? come to mind as really excellently performed old-timey bluegrass. But this bunch didn't have much in the way of energy or verve to their playing.
- I might have been less bored by their lack of energy, as well, if as a group they had used more musically complex arrangements. Unfortunately this was not the case. Most of what I heard them doing involved the mandolins and mandolas pretty much ALL playing the same thing; even though the program claimed they had first, second, and third mandolins, you couldn't tell that from where I was sitting, at least. Only on the last couple of songs they were playing was I able to catch the middle-level instruments coming through rather than just vanishing behind the higher-level ones.
- There wasn't enough on the lower end of things in this group. They had exactly one guy with an octave mandolin--though I did note that they referred to it as a "mandocello". I'd seen this on the web before but hadn't been certain whether that actually referred to an octave mandolin or to the biggest instrument of the mandolin family, the mandobass (more on this below). I will say that the guy with the mandocello did have a solo that was pretty good despite the mediocre tone on his instrument, which sounded like it had a lot less ring and power than mine, and I am NOT that much of a mandolinist yet. (I think though that if I joined this group I'd specifically HAVE to show up with the octave mand on general principle just because they really needed more deeper-voiced instruments.)
- They had one guy with a mandobass though, and that was cool. Just, again, for the "weird instrument I'd never seen before" factor. The thing was HUGE, and I was interested to note that it seemed to have only four strings on it, as opposed to the four pairs of strings that the other mandolin-flavored instruments have. It had a teardrop-shaped body, and a rounded back, and a neck that bent backwards past the player's head. Definitely a sort of sit-it-on-the-floor-and-lean-it-against-you sort of instrument, like a cello.
After that, I scarfed a Stitch balloon at Paul's suggestion for
mamishka. I'd thought about getting her kettle corn, but she'd commented to me once that although she likes kettle corn it often winds up just lying around her space not getting eaten, so I thought the balloon would be a better choice. Turned out to be the right decision, as she'd spent most of her weekend watching movies and eating a pile of popcorn, so any more corn might have made her explode. :)Then, more random wandering. We thought about hitting a Celtic performance around 4:20 or so, but we lamed out of it, mostly because we wandered away from the appropriate area beforehand and wound up hanging out again on Fisher's Green for a bit. Dar wanted to hang out there and see if she could twiddle with the musicians jamming... but Paul and I were more interested in heading over to the Broad Street Lawn and getting good viewing spots for the last act we wanted to see, which was the Seattle Kokon Taiko group.
Who, I believe, remain my favorite of the taiko acts we've seen perform at Folklife. They strike me as the most energetic and spirited, though they were also sort of screwed by the particular stage they were performing on. The Broad Street Lawn stage wasn't exactly acoustically ideal, plus, they were all sort of stuffed onto this stage that really boxed them in with the big speakers on either side in front, and the tent shelter of the stage to either side and behind. This meant that if you weren't pretty much dead on center in front of the stage, you couldn't really see what everybody in the group was doing. And they didn't have much room to do it, either, since a lot of taiko involves large arm movements and dancing around the drums.
Though I will also say that One World Taiko is also very, VERY good, and I was amused to note that Seattle Kokon Taiko did a couple of pieces that the taiko show on Saturday had covered. I liked Seattle Kokon Taiko's original pieces best, though, especially the one whose name translated to "Frog". It was very good invoking a whole herd of croaking bullfrogs. :)
After that... home again, since we were all getting pretty tired and Dar was beginning to feel the first signs of a bit of sickness coming on. En route to the bus stop I noted several children making hopeful eyes at the Stitch balloon--one kid even enthusiastically if mistakenly chirped "LILO!" at it. ;)
And it also provoked an amusing conversation between a couple of random adults on the bus as well, an older guy and an older lady who got into discussing Lilo & Stitch and also random Elvis movies. I couldn't resist jumping in on the conversation, just because they seemed confused about which Elvis movies had been filmed in Hawaii, and who am I to turn down an opportunity to provide Elvis movie trivia? ;)
The only other interesting thing about the bus ride home was this one kind of cute blond guy I ogled on the way. He had longish hair in a ponytail, and had that sort of cute, scruffy, rugged look about him I'm a sucker for. Not one word exchanged, but hey, looking at him was kind of fun. And a nice closing note to Folklife 2003.