The 28th annual Mission Folk Music Festival (MFMF) is coming to Fraser River Heritage Park from July 24 to 26.
Like festivals in the past, this year’s event features acts from around the world including:
• Voices of Africa – King Sunny Ade, Black Umfolosi and Bongoziwe Mabandla;
• New sounds from the Carpathian Mountains and Poland’s Volosi;
• The musical legacy of Sylvia Tyson;
• The Canadian-Irish venture of Pierre Schryer and Martin Nolan;
• Scotland’s Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson;
• Basque trikitixa with Eneko Dorronsoro;
• Music from the Camino de Santiago with Ialma and Quentin Dujardin;
• Lots more still to be announced.
One of the many groups the festival’s artistic director, Francis Edwards, is looking forward to is the Spanish group Ialma.
Ialma consists of five young women from Galicia who have gradually created a repertoire of songs and dances borrowed from the base of their origins but adapted to the need for transmitting a new reality – that of women enmeshed in many different languages, cultures and artistic expressions.
These five singers started in the Galician Cultural Centre in Brussels in order to accompany traditional dances.
Ialma quickly attracted the attention of professionals and the Zoku label created by EMI Music Belgium.
The greatly anticipated release of the first album was an act of liberation, a kind of transgression with respect to the traditional rules.
Refusing to overly exploit some folkloric songs and dances, while never denying their existence, they have shown that along these paths cultures coincide and cross over regions with traditional dances, violin, diatonic accordion, and thousands of other expressions just as rich and energizing as the original pieces.
For more about the festival and the artists,visit missionfolkmusicfestival.ca.
Tickets are available online, at the Shoppers Drug Mart in Mission or by phone at 1-866-943-8849.