Festivals offer up a wide world of sounds
Lowell features folk performers from the Congo to Cape Breton
If you're running low on cash but are hungry to hear some music in the great outdoors before the summer is over, you're in luck. For the price of a Charlie card or the somewhat higher price of a tank of gas , you have several terrific options over the next two weekends.
Tonight the eighth annual GospelFest returns to City Hall Plaza. On Sunday from 5-8 p.m., sweet R&B can be had on the UMass - Boston campus. And next weekend the 21st annual Lowell Folk Festival offers a smorgasbord of musical and culinary treats, crafts demonstrations , and a variety of activities for the kids.
The Lowell event is the largest free folk festival in the country. And it's not just your garden variety coffeehouse confessors that are featured on the festival's six stages. Instead, two dozen acts -- from Congolese drummers to familiar honky-tonk artists -- take folk back to its dictionary origins and play the distinct regional music of their homelands handed down through the generations.
Here are a few to work into your schedule in Lowell (with performance locations in parentheses):
FRIDAY
Gonzalo Grau y La Clave Secreta (Dance Pavilion)
A 1998 summa cum laude graduate of Berklee, Grau is expanding his musical worldview with the renaming of his Hub-spawned but internationally populated band La Timba Loca to La Clave Secreta. Salsa, timba, flamenco, and all manner of styles now mesh, but the irresistible rhythms and festive vocals remain.
Eileen Ivers & Immigrant Soul (Boarding House Park)
A shining star of the traditional Irish music scene, Ivers was the original featured fiddler in "Riverdance"-- you may remember her electric blue violin -- and a founding member of Cherish the Ladies. Her latest band Immigrant Soul spices up the Celtic sounds with all manner of Latin and African percussion, blues harmonica , and bouzouki. Count on a big band making a big sound.
Lost Bayou Ramblers (Dance Pavilion)
Eschewing modernization, this Louisiana quintet revel s in a critically applauded old-timey Cajun sound that aims to recreate the intimate and loose feel of a back porch hootenanny.
SATURDAY
Steven Greenman & the Moldavish Ensemble (Lee Street Stage)
Some of the world's finest klezmer musicians team up with the internationally renowned Greenman to play the detailed and vibrant Jewish folk music.
Troy MacGillivray , Allan Dewar & Doug Lamey (St. Anne's Churchyard)
Cape Breton music has long been welcome in New England and this trio -- fiddler, pianist, and fiddler respectively -- represent the young blood that keeps replenishing the well of this lively Scottish-Gaelic music. While MacGillivray and Dewar are from the Great White North, Lamey is a homegrown talent from Stoneham.
Kevin Locke (Market Street Stage)
A hoop dancer, a master of the courting flute, and a storyteller, Locke aims to preserve not only his own Lakota Sioux traditions but the concept of preservation itself.
SUNDAY
James Hand and the Magic Band (Dance Pavilion)
A regional legend in Texas, Hand and his band make a rare foray east to play the plain - spoken honky tonk that has made fans of such fellow Lone Star Staters Willie Nelson and Ray Price. If you get up the temerity, request "In the Corner, At the Table, By the Jukebox."
Durga Krishnan and the New England School For Carnatic Music (Boarding House Park)
Indian native and Marlborough resident Krishnan has become a master of the veena, a seven-stringed 24 - fretted instrument that pre-dates the sitar and is a foundation of the sacred Carnatic music of southern India. She will be joined by students from her school as well as dancers from master dancer Jothi Raghavan's school Nrityanjali.
Wacongo Dance Company (Street Performance Area)
They may be based in Pittsburgh but the mission of this international performance troupe is to dazzle audiences with traditional drumming, songs , and dances that reflect the more than 400 ethnic groups that co-exist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 