|
Another year, she went for the reverse: a tearjerker song share.
"We put a box of Kleenex in the middle," Hopper said. "It was really fun, and really sad."
This year, she's back on the lighter side of the fence, co-hosting a parody and funny-song workshop with Ed Schoenfeld at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, April 17, in Centennial Hall.
"People sit around in a circle, and sometimes they come to listen, and sometimes they come to share," Hopper said. "You never know it all, and when you can sit in a workshop and hear other people's experience or other people's songs, your own perspective becomes sharper."
The workshops - now held Saturday and Sunday mornings and afternoons in Centennial Hall, the armory and parts of the Goldbelt Hotel - have been a festival tradition since 1975, the beginning. Open to all and informal as a rule, they're meant to represent the roots of folk musics: oral traditions passed down through generations.
"Education would be one way to phrase it," said Juneau fiddler and former festival board member Bob Banghart. "It's reinforcing traditional knowledge structure: how people learned this music in the past, how oral traditions function, how acoustic traditions function. You learn it by doing it, by being there. That's the biggest element of its regenerative process."
Juneau musicians and longtime festival volunteers Pat Henry and John Palmes organized this year's workshop schedule. The performer application includes a line, asking musicians what kind of workshop they would like to participate in or lead. The suggestions are usually obvious: guitar, old-time banjo, mandolin, etc. But often they are arcane.
|
"If someone is out there that can help us learn something, we're all for it," Palmes said. "Even if we didn't have a name to put on the workshop, if we just scheduled an old-time banjo workshop, a bunch of people would show up in a room and find something to talk about for an hour and a half."
Last year, the festival had so many workshops that the Goldbelt Hotel allowed the organizers to use a few rooms. That may happen again. As of March 13, the festival had an unusually high number of dances - six - Russian folk, African, family, contra, English country and jazz.
"We have this incredible talent in town, and it would be a waste if we didn't get to share it among each other," Palmes said.
"Neil Young or Joni Mitchell played a lot of their songs with their guitar tuned in non-standard ways," he said. "If you try to play those songs with your guitar tuned the regular way, you can't do it. You come to a workshop where the guy knows the tricks, and they can show you that tuning. And even though they've only given you 15 minutes or an hour of direction, you can take off with that and spend your next five to 10 years learning that style of guitar."
Palmes is scheduled to lead two workshops: a tutorial on mouthbow technique at 3 p.m. Saturday, April 17, at Centennial Hall and a demonstration in harmony singing at 3 p.m. Sunday. For the uninitiated, the mouth bow is essentially a short version of a hunting bow. It can be easily built, and as simple as a spruce stick and string. Palmes' bow is about 20 inches long. He's played for 40 years and led workshops in Seattle and Australia. The mouthbow workshop normally draws 10 to 12 people at the festival, he said.
"It's an instrument that's very accessible to people, and it also helps demonstrate what makes music work," Palmes said. "I can play Bach on it. It shows you even simple instruments are capable of playing great music."
Bellingham songwriter Vic Cano led a workshop in melody flatpicking last year.
"You can do a lot in an hour, and it always feels like people get a lot out of it," said Cano, who's visiting his father in Vermont this April. "When I was new to the game, it was easier to make mistakes."
The instrument swap, usually held in the Hickel Room at Centennial Hall, has been a popular-yet-hit-or-miss bartering spot for at least the last 10 years. This year's exchange is scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday, April 17.
"There are some great instruments that show up there, and some people have some good stuff," Palmes said. "You just might find something there that you didn't imagine was in town."
The Sunday morning Gospel Sing-Along has become one of the most popular workshops in spite of its early start, 10:30 a.m. Palmes tried to start it years ago when a church group, separate from the festival, was holding Sunday gospel sing-a-longs in town. The group was never folded into the festival to lead a workshop, but the idea eventually caught hold, with the help of group leaders Bob Pavitt and Buddy Tabor.
Skagway musician and semi-retired photography shop owner Barb Kalen is now a regular leader of gospel mornings. She's scheduled to return this year with Tabor and Eric McDowell.
"We always do 'Do Lord' and 'Amazing Grace,'" said Kalen, a festival regular since 1989. "We make some song sheets and pass them out. And then people just have a favorite that they suggest. If we can pull it off, then we try it."
Kalen has also inherited the autoharp workshop, another Pavitt tradition. She and Anne Fuller are scheduled to host this year's workshop at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, April 16.
"I always used to go to the autoharp workshop when Uncle Bob was around, and Annie and I took it over because we didn't want to see it fail," said Kalen, who's been playing for 30 years. "It's not a big crowd, but a crowd of people that are very interested. We teach them what we know and give them handy hints. And we've improved too. Autoharp is actually much easier than guitar. You just punch the buttons to get the chords. I tried to play guitar, and I failed. But I find with autoharp, I can play simple songs and even melodies that are not too simple."
   
|