Winnipeg Folk Festival: The Glastonbury of the Prairies

As an avowed eclectic music-lover, and a somewhat more closeted Anglophile, every June I find myself scouring The Guardian for coverage of the Glastonbury Festival—to see who the big acts are, the breakthrough artists, the background stories, and yes, to wallow in the almost inevitable photos of the drenched and bedraggled punters wearing their wellies as they trudge through the mud.

Glastonbury 2011: 'There's something for everyone, isn't there?' - video (The Guardian)

Despite the mud, every year I catch myself thinking “Wouldn’t it be ultra-cool to make the pilgrimage to Glastonbury someday?” I haven’t made it yet, but what I have done for the past 14 years is head up to Birds Hill Provincial Park for the annual Winnipeg Folk Festival, this year coming right up on July 6–10. It occurs to me that my Glastonbury envy might well be misplaced: wouldn’t anyone in the UK looking at the line-up for Winnipeg be drooling over the names, who this year include Tinariwen, Toots and the Maytals, The Jayhawks, Charlie Parr, k.d. lang, David Wax Museum, Lucinda Williams, M. Ward, Peter Rowan, Spiro (and these are just a few of the names that jump out at me; you’ll have different favorites, of course, since the selection is broad enough to satisfy all but the most narrowly-focused music-lover). No, Winnipeg doesn’t have the Wombles, or Beyoncé, or U2 (and accompanying tax protests) or Radiohead, or Coldplay, but I can live with that. And we can all surely do without anyone perishing in the porta-loos.

Just to get you oriented, here is one videographer’s portrait of the 2010 Winnipeg Folk Festival:

Part 2 available here, and a view through another set of lenses here. More similarities than differences between the Glastonbury experience and the Winnipeg experience, don’t you think? OK, far less mud at Winnipeg, and a ton more people at Glastonbury. In fairness, mud is sometimes a problem at Birds Hill Park, but it seems like a significant factor only about once every 6 or 7 years—and it is getting dramatically less of a problem with better site management and investment in better drainage (you can make donations here). The mud is not just an annoyance; The Independent reports that 1200 festival goers were injured at Glastonbury this year, attributed to the mud and slippery conditions.

Let’s take a closer look at how Winnipeg and Glastonbury compare. One of the obvious differences is size. Glastonbury reportedly had 180,000 attendees this year; Winnipeg says that festival attendance now exceeds 70,000. However the Winnipeg attendance is spread over the 5 days of the festival, making the maximum attendance on any one day well under 20,000. Size isn’t everything. Larger crowds means your distance from the musicians you want to see and hear are going to be correspondingly greater. You are going to have to travel longer distances over a larger site to move between stages. And spontaneous interactions between you and your friends are going to that much rarer in a larger crowd. Winnipeg feels big at times under that huge prairie sky, but not too big.

Size does convey one advantage: a bigger budget means bigger name acts can be booked. Personally, I’ve never been about chasing down the biggest names in music, and many of my most valued moments at Winnipeg and other festivals have been the artists I had never heard of before. Besides, with all that is going on at big festivals, there is no physical way to see ALL the names, let alone do them justice. In other words, and this is important, accept up front that any large festival is like a giant smorgasbord—gorging on all the dishes laid out could well be fatal, but pick out your favorites or best guesses, toss in some newcomers for variety, and you are set for a fine repast. Having grasped this concept, it ceases to matter when one sees a list of performers that is approximately 400-strong (Glastonbury) versus Winnipeg’s more modest 75 confirmed performers. In fact, on a per capita basis, Winnipeg appears to have a far better ratio of performers to attendees, and when one considers the various one-off collaborations that spring up at Winnipeg during the daytime stages, there is simply no shortage of talent, nor variety at the smaller Winnipeg festival.

Both Glastonbury and Winnipeg rely heavily on volunteers to make the wheels of the festival go round. Winnipeg has 2200 volunteers, whereas Glastonbury has 1300 recycling volunteers alone. Total volunteer numbers are harder to come by for Glastonbury, as they sub-contract out various functions. Regardless of numbers, each festival benefits enormously from the goodwill, hard work and energy of their large volunteer crew. It is hard to imagine either festival without the lifeblood of their volunteers.

Both Glastonbury and Winnipeg have emphasized environmental stewardship throughout their history, with Glastonbury showing quite remarkable foresight in using a wind turbine to generate some of the festival power as early as 1994 (Wikipedia). Winnipeg has earned accolades for their plate recycling scheme, which keeps 100,000 disposable plates out of landfill each year. This year they are introducing compostable cutlery to go alongside the compostable cups already in use, solar-heated hand-washing station, and expanding provision of public transportation options, including a free transit service from Winnipeg to and from the park. Challenges for both festivals remain, but, to state the obvious, carbon footprints will be far lower if North Americans attend Winnipeg, and the Poms go to Glastonbury.

Both Glastonbury and Winnipeg have become showcases for artwork of all kinds, not just music.

Both festivals actively provide facilities and entertainment for children, although I expect Glastonbury might be a considerably more challenging environment for young children, simply because of the size.

Both festivals actively nurture up-and-coming performers.

Both festivals offer great on-site camping, with quiet and noisy options.

Both festivals are in beautiful outdoor settings: Glastonbury on a working dairy farm in the “Vale of Avalon”, Somerset; Winnipeg in the wide open prairie of Birds Hill Provincial Park.

Both festivals have been around since the early 1970's; Glastonbury started in 1970, Winnipeg in 1974, but Winnipeg has racked up more events, as Glastonbury has not been held every year.

Both festivals are well and truly alive with creative energy.

If all that is not enough, this year there are at least three artists who were at Glastonbury last weekend and will be bringing their magic to Winnipeg: indie folk dynamo Dan Mangan; the wild man of New Brunswick, guitarist Matt Andersen; and Syrian wedding techno performer Omar Souleyman. Many, many more artists at Glastonbury this year have appeared at Winnipeg in previous years, and no doubt Winnipeg will pick up some of this year’s Glastonbury acts in future years.

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn’t turn down a trip to Glastonbury and I am quite sure it would be an amazing experience, but in the meantime, it is good to be able to do as one of the videoed Glastonbury attendees says and “live in the moment”, and take full advantage of the equally amazing music and spectacle that is Winnipeg Folk Festival, much closer to home.

If you want to check out The Glastonbury of the Prairies for yourself this year, advance tickets for Winnipeg Folk Festival are available here until June 30, or you can purchase tickets from the gate, although wisely there is an attendance cap in place, and it is possible that the festival will sell out on one or more days. If you absolutely can’t make it this year, then start making plans now for 2012. To make the decision-making easier, there will be no Glastonbury Festival in 2012, since the organizers are calling it a fallow year. And if you are staying home and close to Minneapolis this year, don’t despair: The Cedar has a full line-up of shows to console you with over the weekend and throughout summer, including two acts also appearing at Winnipeg, Tinariwen (7/8) and Mountain Man (a free show on the patio 7/10).

As for scratching the Anglophile itch, I’ll settle for swinging by a Manitoban supermarket and picking up a jar or two of marmalade that is more to my taste, some decent tea at a reasonable price, and perhaps replenishing the golden syrup supply. Better yet, the barely suppressed French gastronomic taste-buds will be tickled by the now obligatory visit to the French roadside eatery we discovered in past years en route to Birds Hill Park. After five days at a folk festival, nothing tastes quite as good as freshly made waffles with strawberries from the farm next door.

If you know of a North American festival that more closely matches the Glastonbury model, I'd love to know about it--please leave a comment.