HOPE Festival offers message of peace, unity

BREWER – Leah Wolfsong has spent most of her life doing what she loves, creating and sharing music. Through her swirling mix of folk guitar and primal rhythms, the Buckfield resident has a message to impart.

“Early on, I just wanted to make music,” Wolfsong said by phone from Buckfield. “Over the years, and particularly in the last 10 years, I’ve realized how important music is for me as a means of sharing my thoughts and communicating my processes of being a human and becoming a better human.”

Through her music, Wolfsong hopes to inspire others to be better citizens at the ninth annual HOPE – Help Organize Peace Earthwide – Festival 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, April 26, at the Brewer Auditorium. The Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine stages the festival as a celebration of Earth Day (April 19) and means to promote peace, human rights, community involvement and care of the environment. Admission is free.

At this year’s festival, more than 60 nonprofit organizations will be on hand to provide a wide range of information on subjects ranging from recycling to land conservation. Special events will include displays on solar-powered cars and renewable energy. Environmental art by local artist Wally Warren will be featured and there will be a 5-kilometer run.

Besides Wolfsong, the Mama Miriama Band will perform world music while Generations will play old-time folk. Making Tracks Dance Theatre and the UMaine Dance Company also will perform. Healthful food will be on sale and special children’s activities will take place throughout the day.

Wolfsong is a regular at the Common Ground Fair, The Maine Festival and the WERU Full Circle Fair.

“It gives the chance for people of like mind to be together in one place and look around and go, ‘Wow I’m not alone, there are a whole lot of people that are concerned,'” she said. “It also gives other people who don’t know a whole lot about what’s going on a chance to hear some different viewpoints.”

Wolfsong combines acoustic guitar with soulful vocals and primal percussion instruments. At the HOPE Festival, she will perform songs from her newly released album, “Great Turning.” She says the title is from a phrase coined by author and environmentalist Joanna Macy and refers to a time in the future when a life-sustaining, environmentally aware society might be created.

Behind each of the album’s songs, Wolfsong says, is her own concept of what she calls “right living.”

“I think that in our culture we’ve gotten turned around in terms of what’s important,” she said. “To me, ‘right living’ would be choices that allow life to continue for future generations. ‘Right living’ involves being more conscious in how what we’re doing affects the future of our species, rather than being interested in getting to the immediate goal. We’re very much in the habit of holding up as a high ideal the goal, becoming rich, or acquiring more stuff and thinking that’s the right way to go.”

For Wolfsong, the HOPE Festival, a volunteer-run event at which individuals, families and nonprofit organizations can connect, is the right venue for her musical and social idealism.

For more information about the HOPE Festival, contact the Peace and Justice Center at 942-9343.