BeatRoute Magazine AB Edition March 2019

LiVE
MUSiC
Pokey Lafarge
BLOCK HEATER
MUSIC FEST
February 21 – 23
Calgary Folk Music Fest’s
3-day winter extravaganza
did not dissappoint
By MIKE DUNN
Photos by LENORA BENDER
THURSDAY NIGHT,
FESTIVAL HALL
Snotty Nose Rez Kids
and Cartel Madras
Calgary Folk Fest’s fourth annual Block
Heater winter festival kicked off at Festival
Hall with a blast of highly conscious
hip-hop from two of western Canada’s
best developing artists. Both Snotty
Nose Rez Kids from the Haisla Nation
on B.C.’s northern coast, and Calgary’s
Cartel Madras put the packed house in
Inglewood on blast, with not only jacked
up beats and thick bass grooves, but
with a consciousness that is often missing
in contemporary folk music.
Cartel Madras led off the night, and
their tight, harmonized flow was a
revelation. The ability to spit rhymes with
airtight phrasing was a demonstration of
the skills that have made Cartel Madras
Calgary’s most well-received hip-hop
export.
Snotty Nose Rez Kids hold nothing
back in a time where artists are increasingly
conscious of how their words will
be received. On tracks like “Savages”
and the rallying cry of “SKODEN,” their
straight-from-the-street hip-hop has
more than supplanted traditional folk
styles as the voice of the under-represented
and marginalized. SNRK’s beats
were big and infectious, and they laid
down blazing, pointed rhymes creating
one of the festival’s best moments
early on. Heading into the crowd, Yung
Trybez staged a sit down while Young D
let the crowd know that when the beat
dropped to hit their feet and bounce
hard. It brought the room together, a
visceral sharing of music and truth in the
line, “Y’all say we all look the same, and I
can’t remember my name.”
36 BEATROUTE MARCH 2019