(Excerpt)

Frances Wasserlein, the festival’s executive producer, told me she expects a truly all-ages, all-tastes crowd, building on last year’s success drawing young urban hipsters to see edgy artists like the American rappers Michael Franti and Spearhead.

It helps that folk is hot again, says Wasserlein: “It’s really important that the festival audience not just be people like us, in our 50s.  In order to grow, it has to be reflective of the whole community.”

The most recent audience survey shows promise, she says.  The median age is now 43, and dropping.  While boomers and hippy diehards are still the festival’s hardcore fans (they can be counted on to buy up thousands of early-bird passes before the lineup is even announced, being more interested in the event as a “happening” than in individual artists) the fastest growing segment is the under-30 crowd which comes for the music.

They won’t be disappointed this year.  Nor will their parents – at least, the more adventuresome among them who are willing to cross over from twirl to trance as long as there are folk roots showing.

Fiamma Fumana, for example, is a group of trendy and gorgeous young women from Italy who deliver danceable electronica based on ancient lullabies and bread-baking ballads from Emilia Romagna.

Mercan Dede is a 21^st Century whirling dervish who, according to the program, “blends acoustic virtuosity on ancient Turkish instruments and the rhythms of the race in a transcendental groove.”

See what I mean?

The Warsaw Village Band plays “fevered, hard-core acoustic music – a radical return to the deep traditions of Poland” – replete with anarchist themes and “bio-techno” dance beats and “melodic shouts” used by medieval shepherds to communicate across valleys.

Unable to imagine what any of that meant, I sampled the Warsaw band’s music on the folk festival’s website (www.thefestival.bc.ca) and found myself swept up in the oddest way: both into the past and the future, just like the European music press has reported.  “The sound of a tradition being reborn and doors opening to a new alternative.”

May the same be said about the Vancouver Folk Music Festival.