Mill Race Festival with Galitcha

Another late posting - This past July 30 and 31, I performed with Galitcha at the Mill Race Festival of Traditional Folk Music in Cambridge, Ontario. During the two days, we were kept quite busy! Two concerts on Saturday and a concert and workshop on Sunday. It's always a pleasure to play with Matt Smith, who joined us on mandolin and slide guitar.

Saturday evening concert with Galitcha
at the Mill Race Festival

In many folk festivals, 'workshops' tend to be more like jams. It's often musicians from a few bands, thrown together on stage based on some sort of theme. We usually end up playing a tune from each band, and jamming on each other's tunes. This was one of the first times where workshop actually meant workshop. For "Instruments of Mass Percussion," Kuljit and I were joined by amazingly talented percussionists Maninho Costa and Luis Orbegeso. We each presented our instruments and the music of their source cultures - Luis on cajon, Maninho on pandeiro, Kuljit on dholki, and myself on tabla. Everyone had such an interesting and engaging way of explaining their instruments and music. I later brought out a kanjira; who knew that it would spawn a samba jam! We also did some jamming on other traditional rhythms from India and South America. All in all, probably the best folk festival workshop that I have participated in to date!

Thanks to the Mill Race Festival for having invited us to perform!

Photos by Caroline Tabah.