On May 30, 2007, Terry Wickham of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival announced the Line Up for the 2007 festival on Galagher Hill August 9-12,, 2007. Appearing on MAINSTAGE this year will be bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys; Nanci Griffith; City & Colour, Blue Rodeo; Michael Franti & Spearhead; Mary Margaret O’Hara; Marty Stuart. Buffy Sainte-Marie will close out the festival on Sunday night August 12.
A thousand miles southeast of Tahiti lies the last piece of land before the South Pole. The island of Rapa Iti . It is home to approximately 320 people of Polynesian descent. Their church music has been influenced by Christian hymns but it remains very much an ancient polyphonic music that is sung in quarter-tones. This ancient music is kept very much alive by the whole population on Rapa Iti. The music on this CD is sung by the island’s 126 voice choir. Prior to this recording, the only one found by Pascal Nabet-meyer, the ethno-musicologist who did this recording, was a wax cylinder from 1906 found in the Bishop Museum in Hawaii. This form of Polynesian music is so unique it is almost impossible to describe. There are haunting similarities to an ancient unrhymical forms of Hebrew Cantillation which date back to the Temple in Jerusalem. And there is another early singing style called heterophony found in the Western Isles of Scotland. This is truly world music.
Trust in his gift is at the root Guiding Star, the latest album from South Africa’s Vusi Mahlasela. One of the hardest things to learn as a musician is when to not only recognize inspiration, but when to trust and follow it. This is exactly what Vusia Mahlasela has done with Guiding Star. Over his amazing musically and socially consequential career, Vusi Mahlasela is a singer-songwriter, poet and activist successfully following his muse. Mahlasela wrote and recorded this album as he toured the globe. Its soul-stirring title is very much a product of the new friends he’s met and experiences he’s had touring. Bearing the influences of various music and voices from throughout the world, Guding Star features guest appearances from friend Dave Matthews (‘Sower of Words’), band leader and Allman Brothers guitarist Derek Trucks (‘Tibidi Waka’), Australian didgeridoo star Xavier Rudd (‘Chamber of Justice’), singer-songwriter Jem (‘Everytime’) and longtime friends and touring mates Ladysmith Black Mambazo (‘Heaven In My Heart’). Mahlasela also drew on the talents of numerous South African guests, including the legendary ‘Black Moses’ Ngwenya of the Soul Brothers, the children’s choir from the Agnes Chidi School in his home Township, Mamelodi and the KCC Gospel, among many others.
