What is Folk?

Over the last 10 or so years of attending Winnipeg Folk Festival, it’s been quite impressive to see the caliber and the quality of the music improve so consistently, which is quite a feat when you consider the festival has had the likes of the Cowboy Junkies, Ani DeFranco, Ibram Farer and far too many musical legends to mention in one story.

The Festival has taken great liberties in interpreting the term “folk” to include almost every musical genre. Take for instance this year’s mix with DJ Logic.

But what is folk? To answer that question you’d have to look in the depths of folk’s rich history and attempt to glimpse forward into its future. And what better place than the WFF? There are very few places you would see folk vets like Arlo Guthrie and Louden Wainwright III share a stage with the young, attractive and incredibly talented Serena Ryder. But that’s just it, folk music is a constantly changing and evolving art form.

The WFF’s embrace of new and world music convinces me that folk is not dead; it’s just changing. Which means it may not be your folk’s folk music, but it will always be a reflection of who we are. So toss away your expectations, and welcome folk in with open arms like a prodigal son. It’s not to say let’s forget the past and start over, but more like, change is good, so let’s never stop playing.

Niagara

If you listen to the Great Lake Swimmers, you might get a sense of Tony Dekker, the soft-spoken lead singer of the band. Tony is among a fresh breed of folk singers repaving the musical landscape of the festival this year. What is so striking about about him is for all his talent, Tony maintains a low profile. He has a sort of gentle, almost timid demeanor.

Humble is an understatement. Dekker seems to shrug off any praise he might be getting in the media, and when asked if his recent success has affected him, he looked down as he picked at the wooden table nervously and said, “I don’t know, I’m most concerned about being able to write songs. Touring and all this other stuff, it’s sort of a byproduct of this desire to write a good song.” He then looked up and said, “Everything else comes after that.”

It’s refreshing to see Tony’s genuine love of the craft. At times when he sings, he looks as if he’s someplace else, his voice an effortless echo of a deep personal experience.

“My folks always had the local radio station on,” he said. “Played old country and like rock-a-billy. It was Willy Nelson and also Buddy Holly and everything in between, like Hank Williams and stuff. It took me a while to get back to that because when I first started playing I was in a punk rock band. It took me a while to get around to it, but I did. I think that’s kind of the music that I feel in my bones.”

That feeling is mutual. Sitting in the audience you can see couples hugging and rocking back and forth in a scene from a high school prom, except they don’t seem to care if anyone is watching. The band’s most recent work “Lost Channels” maintains the altitude of the previous album “Ongiara,” not forgetting its roots.

Dekker recalls, “It [Ongiara] was the name of the boat that took us from Toronto Harbour to Toronto Island. There’s a fairy service, and as we were waiting the boat came up and it said Ongiara, and I thought, well that’s a great album title right there. It’s sounds mysterious. But ah, when I did the research on it, it was the native name for Niagara. It was in French, then in English and then rested on its final name. I grew up in the Niagara region; it’s where I’m from.”

Though now quite far from where he started, and as Tony puts it with “a little bit of rotating cast,” the band has had many incarnations.

“Well it started off as a solo project actually,” he said. “The first couple records I played most of the instruments on. I had a few friends on, the first and second record, kind of vehicle for my song writing at first and it sort of turned into more of a band, that I put together just with the people I sort of crossed paths with in Toronto. Friends of friends.”

The swimmer’s path seems to be brightly lit. You can now hear Tony’s voice in car commercials for Honda. I asked Tony flat out if he is writing crossover music. He played with his hair and said, “I don’t know if crossover is the right word. I’m not particularly trying to write any style, it’s just sort of how it comes together.”

I asked Tony how he would characterize his music. “I don’t know that I would actually prefer that any label be applied to it,” he said, “but if I had to sum it up, I like indie/folk, that’s kind of a nice way of putting it. We’re able to understand that it’s coming from a place, sort of a DIY style of music and applying that to folk music.”

We see so many self-proclaimed mavericks lately - all boasting their brave breaks from the flock. But actions are louder than words. Some mavericks don’t toot their own horn, they do what they do and it happens in spite of themselves. There is no agenda, just a need to do things for their own sake.