Edmonton Folk Music Festival: A New Note
It's the Sunday morning after the August long weekend in Edmonton, and that means Gallagher Hill, the home bowl of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, beckons. I've got the program open on the dining room table. I think I'll start the day at the Stage 5 workshop. It's called Ancient Cultures, featuring the Mairtin O'Connor Band, Sidi Toure, Joanne Shenandoah, and the Masters of Hawaiian Music. I've never heard any of them before. And that's part of the point about the Folk Fest. Maybe it's the point. How do you find new music these days? It's still by word of mouth, for sure, but there is more and more of a role played by recommended picks. It's an algorithmic world. Buy a book on Amazon, and a computer program will send you five other books you might like, typically in the same genre or field of interest. Get a movie, get the same kind of pick. Or download some music, and iTunes will download into your thought process a few more suggestion...