I step off the train, the fiery heat of the day gives way to ominous, black clouds, the heavens open and it pours with rain.
Everyone working at the Illawarra Folk Festival registration desk is like your favourite aunty as a child. They smile soothingly at my frazzled and damp look, as I searched feverishly through bags for tickets and the like.
Image © Claire Antagonym
Day One
The weather is a cross between Mary Poppins and the apocalypse, so I ditch the futile tent-setting-up effort and go and follow the colourful, roaming, spontaneous and liberating horn collective that is the Honk Orchestra.
Image © Claire Antagonym
The Honk Jam is perfectly followed by the fiery, fantastic New Orleans style rhythms of the Junkadelic Brass Band. The arresting presence of Irish Mythen captivates the crowds from day one and all throughout the festival. The singer/ songwriter’s heartfelt set tugs at the heartstrings and claws at the crowd, pulling everyone across an emotional spectrum that spans joyous reverie and laughter to potent and awe-inspiring melancholy.
Day Two
Busking and collective jamming are at the heart of this festival. Snatches of horns and percussion drift towards the tent. My friend asks me whether the people are playing a set or just jamming together.This is the lovely thing about this festival. The lines between practiced performance and improvisation are beautifully blurry. I’ve only been here a day and I’ve stumbled across so many moments like this; people playing their instruments fluidly, joyously. It becomes impossible to tell whether this is a folk trio that have been playing music together since adolescence, or a group of strangers that just met in the Chai Cafe.
Handsome Young Strangers - Image © Claire Antagonym
The Handsome Young Strangers crowd quite literally broke the stage, stomping joyously to the quintessentially Australian ‘colonial-bush-pub' hijinks. Beery, full-bodied, raucous, raw; featuring lots of songs about sheep and ale, I would call this collective of awesomely talented musicians the steampunk of pub rock.
The high-energy-percussion collective Beatmeisters do further damage to the stage boards playing their fiery West African, Middle East, Indian and Latin beats, rousing the crowd and getting everyone dancing.
I accidentally stumble upon the potent and uplifting performance by Daniel Champagne and vow to revisit this incredible artist over the next two days.
Day Three
Something about this place that has really resonated with me is the collective feeling of being a participant, rather than a visitor. Everyone is an artist in some form and everyone has something to contribute.
Image © Claire Antagonym
So many times I have chatted to friendly strangers, then seen them later onstage giving virtuoso performances. It seems like everyone has something to give and everyone is willing to share.
Exotic refrains, voluptuous belly dancers, thumping percussion and a room full of contented musos set the scene for the Middle Eastern Jam. I venture back from that exotic space and head to hear the hauntingly beautiful sounds of guitarist, singer/ songwriter Frank Yamma, an initiated Pitjantjatjara man from Australia’s central desert who often sings in his native tongue.
Frank Yamma - Image © Claire Antagonym
His ethereal guitar and deeply arresting voice resonate through the stage as he plays songs about warming yourself by the campfire, the powerful resonance of his music momentarily transporting his rain-sodden audience to a different world.
The seven-piece Swing Booty packed out the Nag’s Lounge as people danced on chairs, swung off beams and kicked circles in the pit of dirt to their fusion of funk, soul, blues, Afrobeat and Latin rhythms
Swing Booty - Image © Claire Antagonym
Day Four
The sun arrives for the first time in days – there are soft, swirly clouds and the lush mountains surrounding the site are no longer shrouded in horror-movie mist.
Image © Claire Antagonym
The sunshine is making me happy, but hearing the acoustic version of 'Major Tom' from the David Bowie Tribute at the Tantric Turtle Café is making me kind of sad. Then I see a man in an amazing top hat riding a penny-farthing bicycle past a Chinese dragon (dance) so suddenly I’m ridiculously happy again.
The bass-heavy, fiddle-driven sounds of frenetic alt-folk outfit The Settlement momentarily makes all the rain-drenched sadness and festival tiredness dissipate. Ungus Ungus Ungus keep amping up the vibe with their distinctive psychedelic, gypsy, prog-rock feels; ‘so radical they named it thrice'. They contribute to getting everyone in the tent and greater surrounds dancing on the collective sensation of being drunk at the circus.
Keystone Angel - Image © Claire Antagonym
One of the last sets I catch is Keystone Angel. Her angelic voice doing a haunting cover of Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah' is indelibly stamped onto my mind as I step out into the sunshine and leave the festival for the last time.
To the gypsy in the wonderful bowler hat who offered me a lift when I wasn’t hitchhiking. To the crew at the Tantric Turtle Café who worked day and night, made me fantastic coffees in cyclonic weather and never without a smile. To the people on the train that offered to help me carry my ridiculously large bags and the couple that helped me pitch the tent in apocalyptic weather.
Image © Claire Antagonym
To the purple fairy, the Celtic pipe band, the Chinese dragon and the Sea Shanty crews. I feel like I just spent four days with 20,000 of the nicest, most chilled out people in Australia. This forever please.
The Illawarra Folk Festival took place 14-17 January, 2016.
