For a look back at previous year’s festival in pictures, check out these galleries by Festival photographers Lisa Luky and Ben Shaevitz. Rogue Folkie Steve Edge has posted his photos here.

Mission photos on site by Ben Shaevitz and Lisa Luky, copyright the photographers

22nd Annual
MISSION FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL
July 24, 25, 26 2009
Fraser River Heritage Park, Mission B.C.

www.missionfolkmusicfestival.ca
604-826-5937 / 1-866-494-FOLK (3655)

World-Wide Music / Small Town Heart!

From Viking ballads of the North Atlantic to Sardinian canto a tenore, Trinidadian steel pan to homespun bluegrass, cool Swiss alphenhorn to songs of the Canadian experience
the Mission Folk Music Festival brings you world-wide music with small-town heart!

Packed into a lineup of 20 artists and groups performing at the 2009 Mission Folk Music Festival is a startling range of music from nearby and around the world, and from varied music persuasions, backgrounds and genres. World-wide music comes to a festival with small town heart in a gorgeous tree-studded setting overlooking the Fraser River.

What better way could there be to spend a summer weekend?

This year’s roster includes: Tom Paxton, one of folk music’s most iconic and enduring voices; a rare appearance in North America – the amazing harmonic vocals of Sardinia’s Tenores di Neoneli accompanied by the Mascia Duo (launedass players, an ancient woodwind instrument); the rich voice and mystical ballads of the Faroe Islands’ Eivør; the high-energy jigs and reels of Quebec’s Les Tireux d’Roches; Canada’s folk sweetheart Connie Kaldor; the amazing vocal powers of Nunavut’s Tagaq; the new Celtic sounds of The Outside Track and the remarkable multiple award-winning Colin Linden.

From Switzerland, the stunning alpenhorn-playing, yodeling and overtone singing duo known as Stimmhorn; from Mexico, festival favourites Rastrillos also join the lineup, delivering a latino-reggae vibe that will have audiences jumping and; BC world music multi-instrumentalist Boris Sichon and the cutting edge sounds of Adham Shaikh add even more depth to the lineup.

Add to this, from BC’s hot acoustic music scene The Breakman and Headwater, multi-instrumentalist Michael Jerome Browne, legendary bluesman Tim Williams and the darlings of Bellingham and Mission, the Gallus Brothers.

The festival recognized and appreciates the support of:

The BC Arts Council and the Province of British Columbia; the Government of Canada; Canadian Heritage; CBC Radio One and Radio-Canada; the Mission Record and the Abbotsford News and; KVOS Television.

Thank you also to the Vancouver Sun & Province and Georgia Straight.

The 21st annual Mission Folk Music Festival ended July 27th with many of the festival’s artists on stage together in a festival encore, singing for peace in the world, and wishing the final act of the evening, Black Umfolosi, a safe journey back home to troubled Zimbabwe. With their collective voices raised to sing the appropriately titled “Shine On”, it was an evocative and emotional end to a festival that was, in every sense of the word, about harmony.

Over the weekend, throughout the site, artists and audiences were raving about festival 2008. Soul-stirring vocals and vocal harmonies were prominent this year, with groups like Umfolosi, Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem, Moira Smiley and VOCO, Yungchen Lhamo, Chic Gamine and The Gruff among others helping audiences rediscover how the power of the voice can send chills up your spine. Mary Gauthier, Roy Forbes and Nathan Rogers too, showed how a voice and insightful and keenly-wrought lyrics can move you to tears, laughter or new insight. Crowds learned to cha-cha-cha with Cuba’s Wil Campa and La Gran Union. Six wild and wonderful musicians from Finland, the boys of Alamaailman Vasarat, became one of the festival favourites, as new and enthusiastic fans trailed them around the site and scooped up every one of the CDs they brought. “Now we can get home to Finland”, they deadpanned.

These artists were but a few of the 21 soloists and groups, about 80 artists all told, who collectively delivered up one of the finest musical weekends in the festival’s history.

Looking back, Festival artistic director Francis Xavier Edwards is thrilled with how this year’s festival had gone. “I think we entered our third decade with one of our best weekends of music ever”, he said. “It bodes well for the future of the kind and variety of music we present, and for the future of this festival. Without so-called ‘headliners’ or ‘celebrities’ on the roster, our audience came out to hear and experience wonderful music from around the world in a beautiful, mellow and friendly setting – and we’re overjoyed and gratified by that. We thank the people of the Fraser Valley, and from those that traveled from further away, for their support and their enthusiasm for this music. It’s why we do this every year, and will continue as we start planning for festival 2009!”

Edwards estimates the attendance at this year’s festival will come close to 2007’s 20th Anniversary record-breaking numbers – between 6,000 and 7,000 people over the weekend. Helping make the festival happen were around 350 volunteers drawn primarily from the local Mission/Abbotsford area, with some coming as far away as Seattle to help build and operate the site, and to return Fraser River Heritage Park to its pristine beauty within a day or two of the festival’s final notes.

Around the festival site over the weekend, you could hear comments like “this is the best festival I’ve been to”, and people raving about the sheer technical quality of the sound (thanks to our crackerjack crew!). Artist Rani Arbo from New England, performing for the second time at Mission said, “I love the intimate feel of this festival – and combined with the astonishing quality of the artists performing here, it’s an incredible event to play at. Here at Mission, we really get to develop a relationship with the audience, as well as with other artists. As an American, the workshop day stages are just the best, and something you don’t find at festivals in the US – something new, fresh and exciting always happens when you’re on stage with artists you’ve just met. I’m sure the audience experiences the energy too”.

From the looks of the happy but tired faces of folks leaving the site at the festival’s end, energy and excitement were definitely experienced at the Mission Folk Music Festival in 2008. The tents have been folded up, the crowds and artists have gone to their homes down the street and across the province, to Vancouver, Bellingham, Winnipeg, L.A., New York City, Havana, Helsinki or Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. We wish them peace until we meet again.

With this year’s festival we enter our third decade of bringing music to Mission and the festival stage. The summer calendar of musical events was pretty well empty when the first artists walked onto the stage here in this lovely park back in 1988. Today, the calendar is awash in events. Headliners and celebrity artists are found everywhere, in festivals, clubs, casinos and events. For those looking for mere name recognition and popular music, the choices are easy. For those looking for something a little beyond ordinary horizons, Mission is the place. The roster is full of surprise, diversity, challenge, and is often beyond easy categorization and labeling. It is also a lot of fun. New sounds, languages and ideas filter through it all and our lives are richer. Here is music that resonates around the world and across time, music that rings deep within the human heart. It will continue to ring long after the last notes fade into the night air on Sunday, after the park empties out and we all return to our own worlds. It will linger somewhere in our ears and we will carry something of a larger world with us out of the park when we go to our homes, jobs, studies and other activities. Enjoy the weekend, take it all in and let it ring within as you leave the park on Sunday.

This weekend is many things; language, culture, music and the artists who make it. But it is also about you, dear audience. You are here this weekend because you share a desire for music made by people, for people, about people and the wonderful world we live in. Welcome, and thank you for joining us as we start this new decade of musical discovery and amazement. Together we can look forward to meeting new musical friends and encountering more of the musical world that lies so richly before us. We look forward to sharing it with you this weekend and in years to come.

Yours in music

Francis Xavier Edwards
Artistic Director and Producer

Welcome to our new website! Please visit often as we update the site with new info as we come closer to the festival weekend. The evening schedule has been posted and the daytime stages schedule will be posted as soon as it’s finalized.