Staff Picks: 2009 Wheatland Music Festival

The Wheatland Music Festival is my favorite festival of the year. I've been to many great festivals across the continent, but this one still stands out above the rest. There's always an enjoyable range of music on the stages and jam sessions in abundance throughout the campgrounds, a juried craft marketplace that's full of delightful creations, friends from across the region whom we never see often enough, workshops for various instruments and dance styles, and delicious food from the vendors (Happy Farmer potatoes are not to be missed!). The festival sprawls across a former farm, with over 10,000 people camping in everything from ratty old tents to big, fancy RVs. Many camps are personalized with flags, signs, flowers, or windcatchers, which makes just walking from our campsite in to the action an entertainment in itself! Over the last decade or so, they have built up the permanent infrastructure to include an impressive main stage, a classroom and office building, benches, playground equipment and more. The newest push is to improve the dance pavilion.

This year the programming committee outdid themselves. There aren't enough superlatives in the thesaurus to describe this year's line-up! The talents of Rhythm in Shoes and Ruthie Foster are familiar from the Cityfolk Festival, and both were in fine form. Add to that the groups I'd seen before: the energetic old-timey band The Wilders, the wonderful harmonies of Robin & Linda Williams, and the soul-raising pedal steel gospel of Aubrey Ghent. As if that wasn't enough, I finally had a chance to enjoy some groups that I've been excited to hear: the new French-Canadian trio De Temps Antan, the Cajun and honky tonk grooves of the Red Stick Ramblers, and the old-timey trio Big Hoedown. Not to mention bluegrass from The SteelDrivers and the hard-to-describe ensemble Crooked Still...well, suffice to say I hardly stopped smiling all weekend long.

And this year I had a whole new reason to appreciate the amazing festival that the largely-volunteer crew puts on at Wheatland: it's my first time there as a parent, to see from the inside the range of activities they have for kids. "Kid's Hill" is running non-stop with performances, workshops, craft projects and playground equipment. There are activities and performances for teens and pre-teens too, and a craft marketplace where budding young artists get a chance to sell their wares. It's impressive in it's variety, and all free to participate in (once you've bought your ticket to the festival of course).

All this and I've only scratched the surface of describing how great this festival is. Check it out some time, and you'll see what I mean.

King of the Queen City

Tomorrow is a long-awaited day for Jon Hartley Fox, who has written nearly all of the Cityfolk's concert program notes and Cityfolk Festival essays for the last 6 years. It's the day when his labor of love, King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records (Music in American Life) will finally be published by the University of Illinois Press.

Fox's musical taste has been eclectic from the beginning, thanks in large part to the incredible variety of artists who were recorded on King Records. From the time he started buying records in the fifth grade, he was in it for more than just the sounds--he read all the liner notes and paid attention to who was playing behind the Big Name on the label. As an adult, he's used that deep knowledge on the airwaves at WYSO and has made his living writing about music.

His first tribute to King Records was made at WYSO, in fact, with a four-part documentary that aired on NPR nationwide in 1987. Fox knew that the 'local' independent label--which was based in Cincinnati in the 40's and 50's--had made a deep impact on American musical history. Founder Syd Nathan looked at talent, rather than color, when he decided who should record on his label, which was a pretty radical idea at the time.

Read more about the evolution of the book in this feature about Fox by Marcus Crowder of The Sacramento Bee.

It Takes a Village, Part II: Coming to Our Community

by Tierra Blackwell
Graduate Community Fellow
Cityfolk/Culture Builds Community

With the success from last season, for both the community and the artists, CBC is excited to announce that the Prophecy Music Project (PMP) will return to the Edison and Fairview Neighborhood School Centers (NSCs) this month for a an extended residency! It Takes a Village, Part II: Coming to Our Community will consist of a week’s worth of youth and adult workshops, performances, and celebrations that are sure to enrich the lives of the attendees and further deepen the communities’ cultural exposure, experiences, and appreciation.

Continuing and expanding on the lessons based on the roots of traditional African song, drum, and dance, PMP will work more intimately with a greater number of school children to intensify their direct learning experience. Special youth events kick-off Monday, September 14th throughout the school day, followed by adult and youth workshops in the evening. Students will continue their first-hand experiences throughout the week, which will be concluded by all-school assemblies in both schools on Thursday, the 17th. Wednesday will mark the community performance and celebration. This fantastic event will begin with a community potluck followed by youth and artist participatory performances.

As the first Graduate Community Fellow (intern) for Cityfolk and the CBC program, this has been an amazing and inspiring year. Due to the past and perceived future success of this program, I am including this upcoming PMP residency in my Masters Thesis project, in which I will be measuring for ethnic identity status, pride and appreciation as an outcome from this residency. The goal is to operationally identify and account for some of the cultural benefits of programs like CBC in the lives of elementary school-aged children.

In addition to providing program evaluation opportunities to Cityfolk/CBC, the planning for this fall PMP artist residency is bringing members of the schools and communities closer together, which is indeed giving rise to new-found relationships and means of communication. This outcome is a perfect example of how the arts and culture can be utilized in the building and strengthening of our communities. CBC is certainly moving onward and upward in making a positive difference in the community. For more information or to volunteer your time or services to make this event even more special and memorable, feel free to contact us at 937-223-3655.