SIMPLE FOLK
HOW SANDRA BUTEL TOOK A MUSIC FESTIVAL AND MADE IT SING.
Sandra Butel was finishing her honours degree in sociology at the University of Saskatchewan in 1990 when she realized there was more talk about problems than there was about solutions. Accessibility, for instance — it bothered Butel that not everyone could attend university.
“I got kind of disillusioned with school,” she said recently. “I wanted to be involved in something everybody has access to.”
Today, Butel is artistic director of the Regina Folk Festival. She started the job in 1999 with the curious designation of “paid volunteer.” From the start, accessibility was her priority.
Long before that, she was a fan of the event, along with her parents. It was the emotional connection with the artists that drew her in. She remembers sitting on the grass for workshops and being moved to tears at the music and its honesty.
“I really wanted to be able to share that with other people and build it to something that was more accessible and more appreciated than it was at the time.”
In the estimation of her colleagues, that’s what she’s accomplished.
“She’s done a really good job of mixing marquee artists and emerging artists, the icons and upstarts,” said Kerry Clarke, who has been artistic director of the Calgary Folk Festival for 18 years.
“When she started, it was running a deficit. She’s turned it around financially but she’s also opened it up for more age groups and demographics,” added Gerry Ruecker, a director on the festival board.
“Things have grown a lot,” said Butel. “There’s been a lot of support, a lot of excitement about it. It’s pretty fantastic to see how people embrace it, but that’s how it happened. Someone will ask you ‘how could you be an artistic director?’ and it’s like ‘I don’t know.’ There’s no straight line to it.” Butel grew up in Southey where artisit pursuits were limited.
“I did drama a couple years in school and there was no teacher who was interested in it, so it kind of fizzled out,” she said. Most of her cultural education came from her parents. Both were teachers and both were addicted to CBC Radio.
“I remember as a kid being really annoyed by it because my dad would have it on in three rooms of the house,” said Butel.
“I was a teenager going ‘ what is this stuff ?’ But some part of it got into me and opened me to a world other than what was available in a small-town environment.”
One benefit of small town life was the sense of community — church bake sales, people pulling together.
“That had an effect definitely on where my interests went, to work on projects with a bunch of people rather than doing isolated work,” said Butel. (Despite her job, she describes herself as an introvert).
Small-town life also meant working harder to achieve your goals. In Grade 10, her classmates decided they no longer wanted to study French, and the course was discontinued. So Butel did it herself, studying French through correspondence in Grades 11 and 12.
If she hadn’t persisted, she may never have met her partner, Radio-canada reporter Francis Marchildon. They met while working as social co-ordinators in an English immersion program for Quebecois students in Regina.
“We had to sign a contract that said we wouldn’t date anybody, and the first day we started dating, so we had to have this secret love affair. It was kind of cool,” said Butel.
They’ve been together 25 years and have an eight-year-old son, Nico.
Marchildon has been Butel’s primary support in 12 years of demanding, rewarding work, which all comes back to her belief in social responsibility: “You create the world you want to have, even if it’s just for a weekend where you have a group of people who are feeling really good together and feeling really safe and trusting of each other.”
It’s a feeling that can affect them for the rest of the year. It’s not unusual to hear stories from people who’ve been inspired by the festival to create their own art and events in the same spirit.
“To me, that’s incredible. I never really imagined it would be that far-reaching,” said Butel.
One such artist is Melanie Hankewich, the singer-songwriter who performs as Belle Plaine.
“As a performer it’s great to watch someone else at work and take what you will from that performance, good or bad, and learn how you can better your own craft. For me, that’s one of the main sources of inspiration,” she said.
Clearly, there’s more than music in the
air on festival weekend.
“It isn’t really about music,” Butel said. “There was a guy who did his PHD on Western folk festivals and the biggest thing he found from all his interviews was the music was not the experience, it was the soundtrack for the experience.
“To me, that’s the important part: What were you touched by? What moved you? What made you cry in front of the stage just like I used to?”
The result can be electrifying, as it was last summer when k.d. lang performed. The thrill of booking her (she charged less than her usual rate) and the financial boost of the sellout were secondary considerations when it came time for lang to sing Hallelujah.
“It was utter silence in the park. There was a magical moment there, for sure.”
Obviously, the festival has to be financially successful, and Butel has achieved that as well. She has taken the festival from a $100,000 budget and one poorly paid staff member to a $1 million budget with four full-time staff members and contract workers. Sellouts have become common. Last
year, the event sold 2,500 weekend passes and between 500 and 1,000 single-night tickets. The audience is a diverse mix of every age group.
Thing are more established behind the
scenes as well. Hankewich volunteered to work on the stage crew during the festival a few years ago and received some unexpected compensation. She and her coworkers were praised for their effort and given an honorarium. The next year, the positions were paid.
“It’s really exciting to see it grow every year,” Hankewich said. “I know when I’m able to pay people for the work they do for me, I feel more legitimate as an artist. And I can only imagine that that’s how it feels for the festival, that as you grow and as you’re able to help people who are helping you, by paying them, then of course you feel more legitimate, too.”
But Butel can’t help everyone. The nature of running a small festival is saying no to a lot of artists who want to perform. Butel gets between 1,000 and 1,500 submissions each year and only books 30-some artists.
“I feel sometimes like I’m a curator more, it’s like I’m picking pieces to put together. My job is to say no to a whole bunch of stuff in order to be left with the yeses,” she said.
It has affected the way she listens to music.
“It’s kind of that thing where they say the chef doesn’t eat very well or the cobbler wears (crappy) shoes; there’s a bit of that with me where it’s rare I can listen to music for the pure pleasure of listening to music because I’m always thinking, ‘I wonder if I could book them,’” said Butel. “I’m listening with a professional ear rather than just enjoying music the way that other people do.”
Though she still loves her job, Butel is realistic about her future. You stay relevant only so long, and folk festival heads have met nasty ends before, she said.
“There’s a history of coups happening and people getting taken out in not very diplomatic ways. There’s a history of people who have hung in there way after it was obvious it was their time to move on. So for me, I can assume that there’s some point in time where the time is right to move on and allow someone else the opportunity to do this.
Right now, however, it’s still a challenge and still enjoyable. Butel recalls a lesson from when she was a camp counsellor. The trick was to stop an activity while the kids were still having fun — so they’d want to do it again.
“So I think that’s a little bit of the reality, too. I want to stop it when I still love it.”