BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - June 2016

VANCOUVER FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL
A look back in time with co-founder Gary Cristall.
by Susanne Tabata
Presented by
The Vancouver Folk Music Festival is in its
39th year. Success follows a format, but
for co-founder Gary Cristall, the earliest
festivals relied on gut instinct. In an homage
to the past, Cristall traces its roots, blending
politics, protest, and music.
“To some degree we didn’t know what we
were doing and to some degree we did,” says
Cristall, who co-founded the festival along with
Mitch Podolak.
The two drew on templates from their
predecessors, starting with the 1961 Mariposa
Festival in Orillia, ON, followed by Newport
Rhode Island Festival in 1969.
The two met in Toronto where Podolak was
running the now legendary 1960s, avant-garde
Bohemian Embassy Coffee Pot cafe. Both were
involved in far left politics; Vietnam had ended
May Day 1975. They were both fervently against
imperialist intervention in Central America.
Cristall had even studied Latin American
Courtesy of Vancouver Folk Music Festival
history at SFU and lived in Chili in 1972-73. His
secular Jewish background was tied to his love
of culture. His parents were communists and
the last generation to believe in the October
Revolution. This suited the times, the music,
and the Folk Festival.
Cristall credits Mitch Podolak for first doing
the Winnipeg Folk Festival, along with Colin
Gorrie. “He wanted to do one in Vancouver
and approached me. ‘I’ll book it and you run it.’
I thought he was bullshitting me. The easiest
way to deal with it was to say ‘sure.’ I was just
finishing a bachelor of arts and getting ready to
go to graduate school in Latin American history.
Mitch tracked me down at Stanford University
and said, ‘ok we’re on.’”
Ernie Fladdell was the social planner at the
City of Vancouver and had run the Habitat Festival
in 1977, which was a huge success.
“He meets with Mitch and Colin and buys the
idea of doing a children’s fest and Folk Fest.
The office was at the front of City Hall. There
we were. Today it would be impossible to do
what we did. Young kids running a couple of
festivals in City Hall. We went ahead with it. We
took a lot of things Mitch had taken from Mariposa
and invented a few of our own.”
The first year was held in Stanley Park. “Every
time we wanted to drive a tent peg we had
three engineers telling us that we were either
going to destroy the drainage tile for the cricket
club or blow up the gas line in the harbor.
The weather was terrible. After six hours of
rain they stood up and gave a standing ovation
to the artists on stage. We were on to something.
People were willing to pay good money
to sit in mud and listen to this music. And we
thought this was good and we got good reviews.
So we did it again and the first thing we
did was move the SOB to Jericho.”
Cristall continues, “We did 10K in the first
year and 16K in the second. The sun shone
the second year. The Sandinistas [Nicaraguan
Revolution] took power the weekend of
the second festival, July 19, 1979. While I was
running a festival I was also glued to the radio.
We presented many groups from Nicaragua, El
Salvador, Honduras, and other Latin American
artists.
“At that point we lost all of Ernie’s money and
he said ‘you guys have got to go independent.’
And Mitch went on to do other things. Ernie
said if you want it, it’s yours and if you don’t
that will be it. Then he went on to do the kids
fest and I ended up with the baby.
“I went out and traded some programming
for a little office at the Carnegie Centre. The
Chieftains – the Irish group – we had done a
show and their manager asked if we could do
the Western North American tour: ‘If you can
guarantee us 5K [sic] per night, you can take
the rest,’” Cristall recalls being told. “We made
a lot of money and were able to hire staff and
do the third fest. The first day it rained and I
thought that’s the end of this. The second day
was sunny and we sold so many tickets that
we had to turn people away at the gates. That’s
kind of how it began.”
Folk Music is a bit of an umbrella. On the
one hand real folk music can be described as
rural pre-literate music from a non-capitalist
society, passed on through the generations. On
the other hand, it can be contemporary songs
written outside of the music industry. This can
mean a lot of things.
“When I took over, Utah Philips — a great
American labor organizer, poet, and musician
— said two things to me: ‘Remember you stand
between the workers and their bread, [and]
never give the audience what it wants; give
them what you think they need.’ And that was
my programming. I was having fun. I was the
obnoxious asshole at the party who was playing
their records. There was a small group of
people internationally who knew each other and
were passionate about the music and we knew
each other. That’s also how it was booked.”
Cristall explains.
“My attitude used to be (and I think this is
true of any artistic director), ‘If you don’t like it,
go somewhere else.’ And if you like it, I get to
do it again. And I went on to do it for 15 years
and then I did other things.”
The Vancouver Folk Music
Festival runs July 15 to 17.
Courtesy of Vancouver Folk Music Festival
2nd Festival at Jericho Beach with Pied Pumpkin
Shari Ulrich, Rick Scott, Joe Mock
Hortensia Allende Widow of Salvador
Allende, right Gary Cristall
photo: Sharon Tamaro
June 2016 THE SKINNY
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