March 29, 2024
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Cultures, music to mix in Bangor

BANGOR – Creole, Acadian, Chinese, Eastern European, Irish, Vietnamese, Arabic, Cajun, Scottish and African-Cuban are some of the international flavors music lovers will enjoy at the 66th annual National Folk Festival Friday through Sunday, Aug. 27-29, on the Bangor waterfront.

The Anah Shrine Highlanders Scottish pipe and drum band, established in 1976, is based in Bangor and led by pipe major Paul Hazard and drum major Tom Sawyer. They will perform 7 p.m. Saturday, leading the parade from the Heritage Stage to the Railroad Stage.

The band wears the traditional British Army Highland Regimental uniform. It adopted the MacIntosh tartan in honor of past Shrine Potentate Herschel MacIntosh of Houlton, who was a leading figure in the band’s formation.

Dexter Ardoin and the Creole Ramblers will bring the sound of black French Creole and zydeco to the festival. In 1929, Ardoin’s great uncle Amede Ardoin was the first Louisiana French musician to make recordings.

Dexter Ardoin’s grandfather Alphonse “Bois Sec” Ardoin received in 1986 a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in honor of his musicianship.

The Creole Ramblers play fiddle, accordion, guitar, bass and drums.

Grace Chang will perform on the guzheng, or Chinese zither, an instrument originating in China 2,500 years ago. The guzheng, a plucked instrument, has 13 to 25 strings. An expert player of the instrument, as Chang is, is said to be able to bring forth the sound of flowers blossoming or typhoons raging.

Chang came to the United States in 1984 and is the director of the Guzheng Music Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Harmonia, based in Cleveland, includes in its repertoire the sounds of Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania. They perform on traditional instruments styled after turn-of-the-century gypsy bands.

Solas, Gaelic for light, is an Irish-American band, which blends traditional Irish music with its own take on the form. Band leader Seamus Egan plays flute, tin whistle, mandolin, tenor banjo, low whistle, nylon string guitar, bodhran and uillean pipes.

The Phong Nguyen Trio will offer traditional Vietnamese music. Nguyen is trained in traditional music and Buddhist chant. He also studied with mountain tribal musicians and learned to play bamboo tubes and bamboo xylophone.

The day after the National Folk Festival ends, Nguyen, awarded a Fulbright Scholarship by the U.S. State Department, will travel to Vietnam to establish the country’s first ethnomusicology program at the National Conservatory of Music in Hanoi.

The Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble, based in Boston, crosses several geographic boundary lines in their repertoire which offers the songs of Andalusian Spain, the Ottoman Turkish Empire and Egyptian popular music of the 20th century.

Since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the group’s leader and percussionist, Karim Nagi Mohammed, has used the music to educate Americans about Arabic culture.

Those with a yen for the blues will be stopped in their tracks by 91-year-old legendary blues pianist Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins, the grand old music man of the Mississippi Delta. Perkins has played with anyone who is anyone in the world of blues music, including Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones. He has won seven W.C. Handy Instrumentalist of the Year awards.

Those with an ear for gospel music can tune in to The Birmingham Sunlights, an African-American a cappella gospel quartet and The Campbell Brothers who play music from the African-American Holiness-Pentecostal tradition on steel guitar. They perform music that until recently was only heard in church.

Bluegrass fans will find heroes in The Larry Gillis Band; ballad lovers will lean into the Appalachian harmonies of Bobby McMillon, and savor the 300-year-old French language melodies sung by Rachel LeBlanc and Lucie Ouellette from the St. John River Valley, and Jimmy Kelly who sings the traditional ballads of Shannon, Quebec.

Guitar music lovers may sample the Cajun flavor of David Doucet; flatpicking with Scot Fore; dobro with Jerry Douglas; and flatpicking with Buster B. Jones and Brooks E. Robertson.

No matter what the musical taste, the National Folk Festival will serve up a tuneful smorgasbord that will appeal to everyone.


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