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When The Roots first walked on stage at Prince’s Island Park Saturday night, rapper and lead MC Black Thought mentioned something about wanting to pay tribute to the 45-year history of the Calgary Folk Music Festival.
For the next two hours, the Philadelphia-based hip-hop band offered a dizzying number of tributes, although often to artists that probably never set foot on the festival stage. The inventive, critically adored act was part of the festival’s one-two punch alongside South African collective BCUC that ended Saturday night on a high note for a sold-out audience. The Roots are definitely this year’s biggest marquee act at the festival, offering a significant boost of energy after Thursday and Friday headliners — angsty singer-songwriters Ben Howard and James Vincent McMorrow — ended their respective nights with competent but somewhat snoozy sets.
The Roots, on the other hand, offered a non-stop (literally, it was non-stop) and super-charged set performed with an energy and instrumental prowess that never wavered. It all came fast and furious, with the six-piece act paying homage to everyone from Instant Funk, to Kool and the Gang, Manu Dibango, jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd, James Brown and even Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, albeit briefly. It all came together in a barrage of sly allusions, brilliant mashups and the virtuosic playing that dominated lengthy solos and instrumental excursions. To say the set was mesmerizing is accurate, although that description may not do justice to the sense of madcap fun that also defined the night, which included old-school choreographed dance sequences to a relentlessly twirling sousaphone player. Highlights included the band’s seamless blending of Bryd’s giddy Change (Makes You Want to Hustle) and a ferocious run through their own thundering 2004 gem Web and frantic takes on Dynamite!, Act Too (The Love of My Life) and the pummelling Here I Come.
With American blues artist Robert Finley cancelling on Saturday, the main-stage festivities on Saturday were opened by American indie-folk act, Y La Bamba, which draws upon leader Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos’ Mexican roots. It would probably require more knowledge about traditional Mexican music than most festival goers possess, myself included, to detect how they subtly inform the sound, which features lilting pop melodies presented mostly in Spanish and highlighting Ramos’ dulcet tones expertly harmonizing with her two backup singers. The flowing bass lines, combined with Ramos’ deft guitar flourishes, did create some mesmerizing grooves that eventually had the crowd swaying, particularly on the gorgeous English-language ballad Damned.
They were followed by KT Tunstall, whose remarkable performance lifted the somewhat sleepy audience from its slumber. Like Jeff Tweedy last year, Josh Ritter the year before and Richard Thompson every year and everywhere he has played, Tunstall proved that a solo performer can easily fill a main-stage if they have the songs. The Scottish singer-songwriter has those — particularly It Took Me So Long to Get Here, But Here I Am, Other Side of the World, Black Horse and the Cherry Tree and Suddenly I See — but she her between-song banter was also funnier than most stand-up comedians I’ve seen. Wrestling early on with sound gremlins that threatened to wipe our her looper-pedal setup. She likely would have persevered, but the beats she she generated were obviously a major part of her major set. She played with a busker’s energy and also threw in crowd-pleasing covers, or snippets of them, with wit and virtuosity. That included everything from a bits of The Bangles’ Walk Like and Egyptian to the blues standard Baby, Please Don’t Go to solid runs through the Talking Heads Psycho Killer and Tom Petty’s Won’t Back Down.
It was entertaining and beautifully played, but perhaps didn’t prepare the audience for what came next. South African collective South African collective BCUC may proved to be this year’s festival discovery for many in the audience.
“Are you ready to have fun? Are you ready to rock and roll?” demanded scowling lead vocalist Jovi Nkosi about midway through the act’s set. Is it rock ‘n’ roll? Is it fun? Well, it’s more complicated than that. With four vocalists, a bassist and five percussionists, it’s a difficult sound to define but does draw and is apparently a departure from South Africa’s rich musical heritage. Afropop.org gamely describes them But the band played with a cathartic punk urgency that offered more legitimate passion and power in 10 minutes than Motley Crue could ever produce in a hundred Saddledome shows. The harmonized chanting, Nkosi’s angry whistle-blasts and relentless energy offered a hypnotic, occasionally unsettling but rewarding hour-long set. It was a reminder of the festival programmers’ keen ears and willingness to bring in acts that we aren’t likely to hear anywhere else in Calgary.
As always, the main stage is just part of the festival. Calgary act Kue Varo and the Only Hopes played the Horizon Heating stage and gave a solid performance despite a light if annoyingly persistent drizzle. Playing most of the songs from their debut record, Cowboy Witchcraft, the act quickly laid waste to the dubious but oft-repeated claim that there are no rock bands anymore. Varo and her crew also lay waste to the idea that playing in a rock band requires generic songwriting. Varo’s shows are worth seeing just to hear those inventive and catchy songs from Cowboy Witchcraft. But, as with all great live acts, they present with a significant boost in energy on stage. The Pretenders-esque Just Don’t Care, endearing roots gem Yip Yip, and the dramatic Gates of Hell and Winter Lining were all exhilarating live, as was a new song that may or may not be called Step Back.
Another Saturday afternoon highlight was Toronto “super band” MOONRIIVRE. Led by Wooden Sky frontman Gavin Gardiner and Lindi Ortega’s guitarist James Robinson, they played a well-received set at the Field Law stage, offering a healthy sampling of their debut album, Vol. 1. Gardner’s well-polished croon and Robinson’s stinging guitar lines offer a cinematic sound, but the songs such as openers Flowers on the Fire Escape and the Midnight at the Garden Hotel. While bands that adopt obvious throwback sounds can occasionally sound overly-mannered and a bit like a novelty, that never seems to happen with MOONRIIVRE even when recalling Buddy Holly’s hiccup-vocals on the rockabilly tune Let the World Turn or offering the breezy ukulele-and-whistling ballad, The Hypnotist.
Given the significant buzz surrounding Nashville’s Sunny War, her spellbinding set Saturday afternoon the crowd seemed oddly sparse. It may be because she was tucked back in Stage 6, but those willing to take the trek were greatly rewarded. Although she did surprisingly little from 2023’s excellent Anarchist Gospel — an album that arguably took her to the next level of critical acclaim — she did fill the set with gems such as Soul Tramp, Big Baby and Got No Ride. The soft-spoken singer-songwriter has always been open about her battles with addiction and periods of homelessness. Prior to singing the harrowing Have Another Pill, she gently joked the song was about “being in the psych ward when I was 13. It soon became one of my favourite places to go.” She finished with three of the strongest tracks from Anarchist Gospel, including the heartbreakers New Day and His Love and the beautiful Whole.
The Calgary Folk Music Festival continues Sunday at Prince’s Island Park.