Stir Cheat Sheet: 5 acts to catch at the 2024 Vancouver Folk Music Festival

From the Saharan quartet of L’Etran de L’Aïr to Palestinian-Jordanian collective 47Soul, the lineup is as diverse as it is exciting

By alexander varty

L’Etran de L’Aïr. Photo by Larry Hirshowitz

The Vancouver Folk Music Festival takes place July 19 to 21 at Jericho Beach Park

IN CAT YEARS, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival looks set for a long and happy future—but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t used up two of its nine lives. After torrential rains led to low attendance in 2004, the long-running organization nearly closed its doors, but overcame nearly half a million dollars in debt to continue on, at least until the Covid pandemic hit. Again, the festival’s future seemed in doubt, especially when, in January of 2023, the festival’s board announced its intent to dissolve and cancel its summer programming—but once again private investors and the B.C. government stepped in to overturn that decision. The 2023 festival was revived, albeit in reduced form, and in September of that year long-time arts spark plug and concert booker Fiona Black was hired as the event’s new artistic director. From the looks of this year’s lineup she’s continuing with the clear vision and astute ear for talent that she showed as booker for the BlueShore Centre for the Performing Arts at Capilano University, and we hope that under her guidance the festival will purr on without further upset!

#1

Etran de L’Aïr (pictured at top)

Main stage, July 20, 10:20 pm

Anyone convinced that the familiar rock ’n’ roll format of two guitars, electric bass, and drums has little fresh to offer will be forced to reconsider after encountering Niger’s Etran De L’Aïr. The Saharan quartet’s music sings of vast desert landscapes; lives marked by hardship, heat, and resilience; and the many ways that a traditional culture can put modern tools—like electric guitars—to stirring, purposeful use.

#2

47SOUL

West stage, July 20, 2:50 pm.

If you still harbour doubts that hip-hop has become an international language, one listen to the Palestinian-Jordanian collective 47Soul will set you right. Representing a different kind of ghetto brings a fierce urgency to the group’s sound, and the four musicians never settle for merely imitating familiar African-American tropes; their deep roots in the Middle Eastern dance music known as dabke, along with politically pointed lyrics, make for inspired reportage from the conflict zone. We’re not sure who’s playing synthesizers on 47Soul’s debut, Shamstep, but they’re clearly aware of the late Parliament-Funkadelic and Talking Heads mainstay Bernie Worrell, and that’s a good thing too.

#3

Kevin Breit & Cyro Baptista

Main stage, July 19, 9:45 pm
South stage, July 20, 11:15 am

Full disclosure: I think I can call Kevin Breit a friend, and I’ve had a couple of great chats with Cyro Baptista as well. But that only allows me to say that they’re two of the most curious musicians I know, and you can take that in any way you want. Physically, both guitarist and mandolinist Breit and percussionist Baptista have the chops to play anything; intellectually, they’re willing to try anything; and on the personal level they share a similarly perverse sense of the absurd, which means that even at their most outré, they’ll be grinning. They can also kick up enough of a racket that you might think there must be more musicians hidden off-stage, but no: it’s just the two of them, having one hell of a good time.

Steve Dawson.

#4

Highway 61 Reimagined

Main stage, July 20, 6 pm

Legend has it that when Bob Dylan brought an amplified blues band to the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he was nearly booed off the stage and an outraged Pete Seeger took an axe to the PA system’s cables. Fifty-nine years later, Dylan’s early forays into amplification will find a much warmer welcome at our own version of the Newport fest when Vancouver’s man in Nashville, Steve Dawson, assembles an all-star cast to revisit Revisited. Barney Bentall, John Boutté, Jim Byrnes, Mick Flannery, Ndidi Onukwulu, Dawn Pemberton, Suzie Ungerleider,  Pharis and Jason Romero, and Alvin Youngblood Hart will be on hand to help Dawson revive the spirit of the 1960s, by way of some remarkable, timeless songs.

Iris DeMent.

#5

Iris DeMent

Main stage, July 20, 7:30 pm

We like global-fusion acts and a sweat-drenched dance party as much as anyone, but it’s also good to know that there’s space for good old American folk music at the VFMF. And the descendants of Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash have few finer representatives than Iris Dement, an utterly unpretentious but gifted observer of human foibles and societal failings. Always keenly observant, sometimes tender, and often insightful, she’s carrying the torch of the “three chords and the truth” approach in a way that would make her late mentor John Prine proud. 

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