A digital window into Folk Fest’s past.
Collection offers glimpses of city’s past
“Welcome to the 1st annual Edmonton Folk Music Festival!”
So starts the letter from the festival’s founder, Don Whelan, on page three of the festival’s first program.
“Folk music has been enjoying a renaissance all over North America with summer festivals now being produced in major centres from coast to coast. The growing interest in folk music in the Edmonton area over the past few years, together with encouragement from Alberta Culture and the other western Canadian festivals, has given us the incentive to plan and produce the 1st major folk festival in Alberta.”
The year was 1980: Aug. 8, 9, 10. The location: Gold Bar Park. The 66-page program, with a guitar-playing flower on the cover, includes essays about volunteers, festivals and singer-songwriters. Ads for defunct companies such as Keen Kraft Music and Edmonton Magazine. Holistic hints, crossword puzzles, and of course, a hand-drawn map and schedule of the Folk Fest’s six stages. Plus brief bios of the 57 acts — including Stan Rogers, Tom Jackson, CBC Radio host Peter Gzowski, Odetta, Connie Kaldor, Sylvia Tyson & The Great Speckled Bird, and The McDades, Edmonton’s first family of folk.
Music fans, nostalgia buffs and researchers can now flip through the digital pages of all but one of the Folk Fest’s 33 programs — thanks to the University of Alberta Libraries. Its online collection, Peel’s Prairie Provinces, offers glimpses of the past — from early 20th century postcards of Edmonton to rural newspapers to the university’s student paper, The Gateway. Find the Folk Fest programs at peel.library.ualberta.ca/folkfest.html.
“Our goal is to collect and digitize as much western Canadiana as we can and make that available,” says Geoff Harder, associate librarian and digital initiatives co-ordinator. “It’s everything from images, maps, newspapers and all sorts of great literature.”
Digitizing the programs started with fellow librarian and musician Randy Reichardt, who he donated his personal collection of programs, from 1990 to 2009. The first 10 programs — 1980 to 1989 — came from the Folk Fest.
Vicki Fannon, the festival’s manager of volunteers, likes the idea of letting anyone access the event’s history with a touch of a few buttons. Before the programs were digitized, fans could only peruse photos and archival newspaper clippings set up in the festival’s merchandise tent or at the Provincial Archives of Alberta.
The online collection “gives us a very interesting way to look at our history,” she says. “It will be so much easier to access information — and some of my programs are getting a little bit dog-eared.
“I’ve got a couple from the 1980s and they’re getting really flimsy. The more you touch paper, the more it starts to come apart. By digitizing the programs, anyone can look at them as long as they want to without any harm coming to them.”
As an archive of performers, the digital programs are unbeatable. Who played the festival’s three “evening concerts” in 1983? Twenty-nine acts — including Loudon Wainwright III and Willie Dixon and The Chicago Blues Allstars.
Who was the last (pre-finale) performer in 1996? Consort native k.d. lang. Back then, the schedule of mainstage acts was printed on page 108 of the program. In 2011, the list was printed on page 19, which underlines our increasing obsession with headliners.
These digitized programs also offer a treasure trove of Edmonton and festival history. In 1980, for example, using park-and-ride (one way) cost 50 cents. (It was $3 last summer.)
In 1981, the year the Folk Fest moved to Gallagher Park, there were only four stages, either on or around the main hill. In 1989, Glenn Anderson’s Cell City advertised in the program. “The Ultimate Business Weapon,” read the blurb.
“You can see how, for example, Stage 3 got moved further west of the main hill,” says Reichardt. “It used to take up part of the main hill.
“You can also find out who was on the board (of directors) during a certain time period, who was sponsoring the festival, so it’s not just about the people who were playing. Of course, the focus is the music, but you get to understand more about the history of the management of it.
“I don’t know if this sets a precedent, but the obvious followup would be to digitize the Fringe’s programs.”
The Folk Fest programs are a new addition to Peel’s Prairie Provinces, which features more than five million digital items, mainly used by researchers and genealogists around the world.
Harder is excited to see what kind of projects stem from making the Folk Fest programs available online. (Only the 2012 edition has yet to be scanned.)
“There are so many unintended consequences of digitizing this stuff,” he says.
“That’s why collections like the Folk Fest programs become important — it’s one of the bigger festivals that Edmonton plays host to and it represents a significant part of our cultural history.”