By Will McGuirk
For two years festivals have been cancelled. And now they are back. On one level its a return to normal. There’s the normalcy of geography. Mariposa for example, the Grand Old Dame of Festivals, will take place July 8, 9 and 10 at Tudhope Park again, as it has for many years. There will be a familiarity to the infrastructure, but if you look closely you will see a difference. Things are not the same. It is subtle but it is there, just as it is in your own life. There’s change, a change you can’t quite put your finger on but you sense intuitively.
And if I may suggest if there was one place you want to go to to pause and consider and contemplate the passings of time, the passings of these pandemic times, it is without a doubt Mariposa. This folk fest in particular, is as entertaining as visiting an elder but also as enlightening. Mariposa has seen more than you have, it has been around longer, it has experience and wisdom and perspective and will be, no doubt about it, a balm for the past two years.
I have been fortunate to attend Mariposa for many years and this pop-up community of like-minded folkies, have always given me respite from my personal storms. And this year with 60-odd years of experience of providing respite Mariposa as a salve against all that all having been enduring for over two years will be invaluable, its impact incalculable, yet nevertheless felt. Mariposa is comfort food for the soul and right now the soul really really really needs some soul food.
And thus on stage the personification of soul salvation Mavis Staples. No-one should dismiss any one person’s suffering but it make take a civil rights activist born in 1939 to add some perspective to the hurt. She is a witness.
The hurt perspective runs through the output of Kathleen Edwards, one of the great artists but another unsung CDN singer/songwriter. Professional and personal hurt got her to the point where Edwards threw in the proverbial towel and took up the tea towel, opening her own coffee shop, poignantly called Quitters. But here we are, praise be whatever forces forced her out of retirement with a tour and an album ‘Total Freedom’. It would seem the restaurant rest did its job and time has tempered the fuck it but fortunately for us listeners not the fuck u attitude.
There’s a lot Kathleen Edwards independent streak also to Tami Neilson, plus a whole lotta of Mavis Staples, some Shirley Bassey, some Wanda Jackson and then again none of it. Neilson, a Canadian in the land of the Kiwi, combines all the edginess of roots music, with a take no prisoners voice as voluminous as her beehive. She is startling, subtle, traditional and wholly original - listen to Neilson duet with Nelson, the Willie is the ground to her electrifying vox.
The Weather Station has electrified her voice moving from the acoustic croon of her early recordings to an easy intensity on her self-titled, an intensity and self-determination that led to a determined take on the disasters looming just beyond the horizon on the next release. The world is changing, we are changing it, its not going to turn out well, but this dread gave up ‘Ignorance’, a sinewy dance on the doom and gloom, and perhaps we can weave our way out with art as material.
Kathleen Edwards, The Weather Station, and Tami Neilson, as artists are on different paths. I imagine however those paths will converge, should demands permit, right around the time Mavis Staples steps on the Main Stage. ’Respect Yourself’
