The hill is alive with the sound of music

Those performers run the gamut when it comes to musical genres. Not only, of course, folk, but Celtic, bluegrass, blues, gospel, roots and worldbeat. Past main stage performers include k.d lang, Joni Mitchell, Blue Rodeo, Stan Rogers, Loreena McKennitt, Norah Jones, Steve Earle, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Neko Case, Van Morrison, David Byrne and Michael Franti. The festival also showcases local performers. In addition to mainstage and sidestage concerts by individual artists, the festival has artists collaborate on shared stages.

For tens of thousands of Edmontonians, the Edmonton Folk Music Festival has become a highlight of the summer and an essential part of the city’s culture.

Edmonton historian Ken Tingley describes how the whole thing started in his book “Heart of the City: A History of Cloverdale from Gallagher Flats to Village in the Park.”

“It began as a much smaller, rather anarchic operation—the brainchild of a few unreconstructed Edmonton hippies,” he writes. “Inspired by the success of the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the Mariposa [Folk Festival] in Toronto, not to mention the iconic event of the 60s cultural revolution known as Woodstock—they figured the Alberta capital ought to have a major perennial outdoor musical gathering too. Amazingly, no less an authority than Rolling Stone magazine would eventually proclaim it the ‘hippest’ festival on the continent.”

“Hippest festival” it may be, but that isn’t to say there hasn’t been some friction with the Cloverdale neighbourhood over the years. First, the neighbourhood didn’t really have much say when the festival moved in. And every year after that, the residents witness this huge operation to mount the festival, starting with the lengthy set up: fences go up around the perimeter of the park and numerous trucks haul in tents, stages, huge speakers and porta-potties. 

Terry Wickham has been the Folk Fest’s producer since 1989. All things considered, he says the relationship between the festival and its neighbours has been pretty good.

“Generally I would describe it as good,” he says. “We are a fairly big imposition on the community. We understand that. And as a result, we give people in [the community] free tickets. Some people in the community weren’t keen on capping the amount. So that was a little bump in the road. But I think they’ve adjusted to it now. There are a few people down there that don’t like us. That’s always the way. There’s nothing we can do about that. But, in general, I think it’s a smooth relationship. We’re happy with it.”

Tingley writes that as things turned out, locating the festival in Cloverdale boosted the community’s profile and may have contributed to its survival:

“No one could sit on the hill listening to music and savouring the scene of the glorious river valley below and the city skyline above without gaining some understanding of why the people who lived there wanted to stay.”