Left In Lowell

It was a busy weekend of sunshine (and a little rain), fresh air, great live music, fried plantains, art exhibits, and making cultural connections at this year’s Lowell Folk Festival.

I’ve lived in the greater Lowell area for four years and managed to miss it until now. I’m rather kicking myself; I had a really good time. I know I gripe a lot about local politics-as-usual and sometimes it must seem like I really don’t enjoy living here…but Lowell puts on her best face for this, the largest free folk festival in the nation (or so it’s said), and that face is open, joyous, tolerant, celebratory, artistic, and fun.

My compliments to my friend, Mehmed Ali, the current director of the Folk Festival. Great job! You could have ordered better midday weather for today, but everything else went swimmingly.

More on my weekend at the Festival after the click:

I took lots of photos and I’ve set up a new photo gallery on Left in Lowell. You can see my Lowell Folk Festival photos here.

Yesterday, I spent a few hours at the table Greater Lowell for Peace and Justice shared with Merrimack Valley People for Peace. We focused on passing out information countering military recruitment, a campaign spearheaded by United for Justice with Peace and many of its member groups, which is also nationwide. We connected to a lot of people, it was fun. It’s always nice to affirm that there are so many people who hate war-mongering and its terrible costs as much as we do.

After my shift was done, I wandered off in search of food. This took some doing, as the crowd was large and the authentic ethnic food plentiful! I started out with a chicken empanada - I choose well. Then I stopped at the Jamaican tent (which, it turns out, was serving a lot of Indian food as the cooks had roots in both cultures) for a chicken curry, and ended at the Afro American tent for a very tasty sweet potato pie. I decided one dessert was not enough, and bought a baklava at the Greek tent. (You can’t say no to baklava!)

I then hiked to Market Street to hear the traditional Irish band, Solas. I’d heard they were good, and I love Celtic music. I was not disappointed. They were excellent. Someone in passing mentioned that this band, which has its roots in Lowell, would probably not be playing this festival again. That would be a shame. They were a huge draw both days that I saw them (I went back to listen again today), despite the rain at noon. People huddled under their umbrellas and clapped and stamped in time with the energetic violin of Winifred Horan and swayed to Deirdre Scanlan’s strong, soulful voice. I do need to pick up a few of their CDs.

Speaking of rain, I thought for sure it would keep people away today, and to some extent it did - it was far more crowded yesterday - but a lot of die-hards came for the noon shows, and as the weather cleared (or at least didn’t worsen) more people dared arrive. And I can see why the draw, now that I’ve actually managed to get there. If you’ve never been to the Lowell Folk Festival, definitely consider it next year! Even if you live an hour away or more.

After listening again to Solas again today at noon, I headed to the Market Mills where the Brush Art Gallery is located (figuring they’d be open for sure). I got in a nice chat with one of my fave local artists, Pamela Wamala (God, her pastels are exquisite). To my surprise, ALL (Arts League of Lowell) had an exhibition in the perpetually-empty space next door. I spent some more time talking with artists both local and not-so (Somerville seems to have an abundance of artists). I also reaffirmed that I need to get around to becoming a member of ALL and reconnect with my artistic side. And of course, I look forward to Lowell Open Studios September 24th and 25th (don’t miss it!). ALL also has a first-ever exhibition they are jurying for next June 10th-11th (I don’t expect to have anything for it, even if I got started right now, but if you are an artist in the northeast, here’s another brand new venue).

There’s some neat stuff going on in theatre locally as well. The Merrimack Repertory Theatre is continuing with its 05-06 season, despite their funding woes - please, feel free to donate to them. The Merrimack Rep is known for doing off-the-mainstream plays.

Also, I met Jerry Bisantz. A long-time local, he is starting a theatre company dedicated to performing all original works by local playwrights. The Image Theatre will kick off its season in mid-September with “Mill City Minutes”; a series of 10-minute plays and original songs. There will be two slates of these plays both running on both weekends on the 15th-17th and the 22nd-24th. Tickets will be $15 ($13 students and seniors) and Jerry says he will be getting the synopsis of the plays onto his website this week.

I thought I’d also give a plug to grassroots-published performance magazine OUtlET. On their website, they say: “We publish artwork, poetry, short fiction, essays, manifestos and articles about anything that falls under the intentionally chosen blanket term ‘performance.’ We see performance as things like music, theatre, dancing, and art but we are also sensitive to the idea that anything can be a performance: computer programming, driving, cooking, even the simple act of living can be a performance.”

I also talked at length with the representing members of the Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra (they need an oboist, I might have to try and dust mine off), the Lowell Opera Company (we have an opera company?? how cool is that???), the Gentlemen Songsters (they were offering free lessons, boys!), and stopped by the table of the Angkor Dance Troop (Cambodian traditional dance). I got on all the email lists I could, so that I can post more cultural and arts events on this blog.

One last word before I sign off…about the Folk Festival recycling program. Believe it or not, it blew me away. Yes, their recycling plan is that cool.

First, they are meticulous recyclers of plastic, glass, and metal bottles and cans. All right, that’s nothing too new, I suppose.

But they also compost every bit of waste that they possibly can. The vendors are under contract to use paper plates and biodegradable plastic utensils (which, by the way, were sturdier than the normal sort) which all ends up in the compost pile. As I left the park on both days, I was handed a zip lock bag full of rich, moist soil - from last year’s composting.

Now that is what I call a beautiful thing. And I know my poor sickly houseplant will absolutely love it.