Folk frenzy in Montreal
Hundreds of acts vying for a break
Guerrilla gigs held almost in secret

GREG QUILL
ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST

MONTREAL-"It isn't Jesus, it's music that saves," New York songwriter Kenny White declares during a riveting performance of his epic chronicle of mid-life enlightenment, "In My Recurring Dream," just before a smile dripping with bemused irony crosses his otherwise tense features.

He's taking in his circumstances. Even as the song builds to a symphonic climax - a wonky electric piano with no amplification makes this quite a feat - White can't quite believe where he is. A New York studio session player and producer who, in his early 50s, has found within him the voice of a passionate and worldly poet, he was one of hundreds of unofficial, unlisted "guerrilla showcase" artists at last weekend's massive 17th annual International Folk Alliance/Strictly Mundial Conference in Montréal.

So White knows he's lucky to be performing here at all, even in a tiny room in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, jammed with a dozen guests snagged by his label boss, Wildflower Records president Katherine DePaul.

The three-day, three-night marketing convention and showcase is probably the largest and most chaotic gathering of its kind in the world, a meat market where folk music is sold by the pound, where artists climb over each other in the hope of being noticed, where fiddle-and-jig traditionalists rub shoulders with pierced-lip folk punks, Inuit throat singers with bluegrass/newgrass pickers, Australian country-folk twangers with Afro-Latin Cuban salsa orchestras, an urban poet-diva who sings about shaving her legs with a blond Icelandic goddess intoning haunting ancient Nordic chants.

They have little in common, other than acoustic instruments and a connection to some style of folk music, and an urge to perform whenever and wherever they can, if not in the official showcases at four Montreal clubs over the weekend, then in the "semi-official" Performance Alley, a never-ending round of 20-minute freeform showcases scheduled (for a fee) by Folk Alliance programmers in salons and meeting rooms in the hotel.

If not in Performance Alley, then in the Hyatt lobby 24 hours a day, or in privately curated sessions in jammed suites, or in elevator lobbies on every floor, or in the elevators themselves.

Each act has paid a minimum of $700 U.S. just to be an official registrant, and many have paid twice that amount secure a display booth at the cavernous Palais des Congrés nearby.

Providing 1,500 independent roots music acts from all over the world with the chance to be seen by up to 500 international talent buyers, agents, managers, festival directors and record companies, the Folk Alliance conference is staged in a different North American city every February. The Strictly Mundial conference, directed by Toronto's Derek Andrews, roams all over the world, and this year the events were combined in Montréal. The prevailing atmosphere is a confused and desperate joy.

If they're lucky, a small number of these people may go on to earn a living in music," "says Bruce Hayden, a California concert promoter, community radio operator, festival and arts council talent scout. "Not a great living, but something equivalent to an electrician or a plumber. That's the dream of the realists at this gathering."

Inside the cavernous exhibition hall in the Palais des Congrés, Darcy Gregoire, a member of the Oakville-based LiveTourArtists talent agency that represents many Canadian roots musicians, hands out leaflets and CDs from the booth his company has rented.

"Not much real business is done here," Gregoire confides. "Most buyers have already booked what they need for this year and next. The acts with a `buzz' are the ones that will get the action - not today, not next week, but maybe they'll get a phone call at the end of the summer.

"The buyers never identify themselves. They'd be eaten alive. You can do a sold-out showcase in one of the clubs and not attract a single buyer, or one in a hotel room for six people, all of them ready to give you work or a recording contract or both. But you'll never know till the call comes."

A clutch of concert bookers and agents from Texas and California who wish to remain anonymous exhibit an almost obscene interest in B.C. string band The Bills, Winnipeg folk trio The Wailin' Jennys, New York Cuban Afrobeat ensemble Yerba Buena and quirky Toronto songwriter Ember Swift. They follow these acts from showcase to showcase, oblivious of hundreds of others performing elsewhere in vain.

Throughout the weekend a solitary fiddler of indeterminate age sits on a leather banquette just outside the exhibition hall playing graceful, resonant and achingly beautiful music. He never tires, never stops. He's from New Brunswick, attends every regional and international folk conference he can afford, "because there's a lot of music here, and things to learn," he says.

Still, he never moves from the banquette. He's lost in an ethereal mystery of his own making.

"In the end, it's the music that matters," he sighs, handing me a calling card which has subsequently been lost amid sheaves of glossy promotional material.

"It's the music that saves you."

Back to Reviews