Dulcimerhead & Spiritfest – Newmarket, ON

A few months ago I met this really cool artist & mountain dulcimer player, David Rankine, at the Owen Sound Celtic Festival. We were sitting next to each other in a “Tunesmithing” workshop where, you guessed it, we shared our tunes and talked about how we write them. We both liked each others stuff and chatted a bit. A few months went by, we chatted some more. Repeat. Then back in February David told me his group, Dulcimerhead, was going to be putting out a new CD and would I be interested in sitting in on the release concert. “Sure,” I said.

Said CD release happened yesterday in Newmarket, ON. And it was a blast.

David and his crew organized a day-long event celebrating all aspects of creativity, which they called Spiritfest, and set their concert at the capstone. Crafters,  environmental presenters, viking historical re-creationists, the York Food Bank…all kinds of folks were there. I even sat in on my first drum circle. It was a wonderful day, and had a very strong sense of community about it.

Spoken-word artist/chant-poet/drummer Daniela Godina opened the concert, hitting everyone with her dark, captivating voice.  She has some real power, and I can see why David has referred to Daniela as ”a female Jim Morrison.”  The energy coming off of Daniela was palpable.

 

Dulcimerhead’s material was great- an interesting mix of sounds, often sounding like an Appalachian thrash-band from Morocco. (Power chords on a lap dulcimer – who’d of thought that one? ) There was all kinds of room to stretch out musically, using very simple structures and a brilliant sense of improvisational communication.

 

Getting to play with these folks was a real treat. It’s been a while since I’ve been in such a strongly improvisational setting where anything goes. You just listen hard, watch each other and create from nothing but a groove,  a harmonic progression and your gut.

We’d planned to do only a couple of numbers together, but towards the end of the second set, David turned to Daniela and I and said, “Hey, wanna do something in D?” That was it. So we all got up on stage together and we were off.  No idea what was going to happen or how, but it all came together to the point where we were giddy afterwards. And based on the remarks from the folks who came out to hear the show, they liked it, too. 

David calls this kind of thing “open source creativity,” a basic structure where everything just flows and there’s space for everyone involved to contribute and grow - audience and performers, equally and alike. There’s a heavy community-building focus to it, though perhaps in a more intuitive way rather than as an explicitly planned goal. All of us who spent time at Spiritfest and the concert seemed to connect in one way or another, falling into helping roles, enjoying the gifts we had to offer, either as artists, cooks, merchants, performers. It was about the people being there, not about selling stuff.

It was about music functioning in a way other than simple entertainment, which I think is what its all about.

Yesterday was a great day. It was as simple as that.