The Rockport Celtic Festival returns this September for its 4th year! We spoke with Co-Artistic Director Maeve Gilchrist about what to expect.
This year, the Festival celebrates the music of Eastern Canada, particularly French speaking Quebec and the Maritimes (Newfoundland, Cape Breton, etc.) musical traditions. What are some of the hallmarks of those traditions?
Over the last couple of centuries the folk music of Eastern Canada has been shaped by European settler culture and mass migration from the Celtic Isles, becoming a highly eclectic melting pot of musical influence from around the globe. This year’s festival is celebrating the idea that cross-cultural pollination results in richer communities, art-making and social evolution. We have Mathew Byrne from Newfoundland representing the influence of the Irish via the transatlantic fishing industry, and the strong Scottish connection is represented by Cape Breton musicians Kimberly Fraser and Troy MacGillivray. The strength of the Cape Breton traditional music scene is demonstrative of migrants bringing music directly from one culture (Scotland) and it morphing over time into a whole new genre (Cape Breton Music) that has subsequently traveled back to Scotland and had influence over a whole new generation of musicians and dancers.
The supergroup Genticorum draws on the heavily French influence in Quebecois music with their rich unison songs, unique foot-percussion and toe-tapping tunes. We’ll also have Winnipeg-native, Allison De Groot and her Old Time Fiddle colleague, Tatiana Hargreaves making a cameo — demonstrating that musical styles and influences continue to shift and evolve in this ever more globalized world. This concert represents what the Rockport Celtic Festival is all about— celebrating diversity through the lens of folk music and, in doing so, making the world seem a much smaller and more connected place!
This year there will be a new addition to the Festival, a Pub Sing…what made you want to try this out?
We wanted to create more community-oriented events that break down the stage/audience divide and reinforce our belief that folk music is a connecting device that serves to bring people together. This will be a free event and there’s simply nothing like the sound of voices raising a roof together regardless of age, experience or background. This event is for EVERYONE and we have our local Sea Shanty-star, David Coffin leading the sing with his unique, Cape-Ann inspired repertoire. We hope that this will become an annual event that friends and families will return to every year as the extended Festival community builds its own repertoire of memories and songs.
The phenomenal African-American guitarist Yasmin Williams will be making her Celtic Fest debut for the Global Strings concert. Do you see Celtic music diversifying, both in sound and in representation?
Celtic Music is folk music. Folk music has always been from the people, for the people and existed in communities across the globe. Intersections between the Irish and Black workers in America have existed and been documented for centuries. The Appalachian journey of the Scots Irish, the evolution of American Mountain Music, parallel working experiences and the organic cross-pollination that happens when struggling communities who live side-by-side have all contributed to these cultural intersections. However, what feels key to the ever-expanding curation at the Rockport Celtic Festival is the idea that folk music is and always has been an evolving culture.
Yasmin Williams is an incredible example of someone who draws on a variety of guitar styles but has developed her own, completely unique approach to the instrument. This groundbreaking step in the journey of Acoustic Guitar is relevant not just to music in America, but to acoustic music styles across the globe that will undoubtedly be shifted on their course because a new player like Yasmin Williams comes along. Think about the commonplace use of the Bouzouki in Irish music nowadays. A Greek instrument that caught the ear of an Irish musician and gradually changed the approach of accompanists within that style, eventually getting adopted as ‘of’ the tradition. We need to remain committed to using our platform at the Rockport Celtic Music to both showcase and preserve traditional Celtic Music but also to extend an arm to the connected musicians and styles of music that compliment, influence and change our path in the world.
The final concert features Irish vocalist Eilis Kennedy singing songs inspired by old letters from a fisherman at sea. Why do you think Celtic music and the ocean seem to always be inextricably linked?
Perhaps the best known of the Celtic countries, Scotland and Ireland are both tiny land masses surrounded by water. These are Island cultures that share an experience of struggle. In working and lower class communities, agriculture and fishing have always been a way to sustain life and work. It’s unsurprising that these themes are so woven into the fabric of traditional music and song as this music has always been about people and their lives, the land that sustains us, the spirit that moves us and the fish that feed us!
This is going to be a particularly moving concert. Eilis wrote her album So Ends This Day when she visited the New Bedford Whaling Museum and read a collection of letters, ships’ logs and journals from the sailors, often home to their wives. These songs are all connected by the ocean, some dating back to the 1800s and some are new compositions. Eilis writes: “A wife left behind, a wife on board, an adventurous young man, a brave and wise captain, an ill-fated voyage, a drowning, a rescue, an elegy, and a song of hope in times of despair.”
View the Rockport Celtic Festival schedule!
