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“Why do I always have to be an entertainer?” said Fantastic Negrito at the midway point of his set Sunday night at the Calgary Folk Music Festival Sunday evening. “I just want to be a guy in red pants.”
It might have seemed sincere, but it was likely a bit. As the Oakland-based performer plopped down on a monitor in a fake sulk on the main stage at Prince’s Island Park, it was after he had blazed through a fearfully loud but expertly wrought half hour that found him channelling James Brown, Sly Stone, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. His band eventually launched into a hammy version of the gospel standard This Little Light of Mine, never losing momentum or the sense of near-campy rock ‘n’ roll exuberance.
The second-to-last act at the Calgary Folk Music Festival, Negrito returned to Prince’s Island Park as a main-stage performer after making his debut in 2023. Returns within a year of each other are a rarity for programmers at the Calgary Folk Festival. Oddly, when Negrito was in 2023,he had initially planned on playing as a solo act. Apparently, he thought that would be more of a folk thing. While it would have been interesting, it might not have led to his quick return. Because, as he proved Sunday night, Fantastic Negrito’s approach as a capital ‘R’ rock star is dependent on the tight, noisy and often wonderfully sleazy grooves he gets from his killer band,That was clear from the get-go, with Negrito and his act charged through the Zeppelin-esque Run Away and Working Poor, the funky workout I’m So Happy I Could Cry and the hard-soul ballad I Hope Somebody’s Loving You. They didn’t let up but soon hit a fevered peak with the creeping, sinister blues of Honest Man and added extra swampy menace to the Appalachian traditional In the Vines.
It was a study in contrasts Sunday night. The folk festival closed with two consummate showmen, albeit very different ones. The final act of the 2024 Calgary Folk Music Festival was Booker T. Presents a Stax Revue, where the iconic 79-year-old musician, songwriter and producer led a 10-piece collective featuring a horn section and three singers through a collection of hits from his Memphis-based label. Booker T. Jones had some relationship to a number of the songs, whether they were his own as leader of Booker T. and the MGs, or he co-wrote them or played on recordings as part of the house band for Stax. But the soft-spoken band leader spent most of the set quietly announcing the tunes and letting his three vocalists take the lead. That included New York singer Ayanna Irish, who did an admirable job with Carla Thomas’ Gee Whiz, Aretha Franklin’s Respect and Jean Knight’s spicy Mister Big Stuff. There were spirited runs through Sam and Dave’s Soul Man, Otis Redding’s Try and Little Tenderness and Eddie Floyd’s Knock On Wood. Jones even seemed a little surprised for some reason at the rousing response to his own Green Onions, an instrumental hit for Booker T. and the MGs that featured one of the most recognizable Hammond organ part in the history of music. When it was finished, he just grinned sheepishly at the cheers and said “Thank you, you’re kind” with a shy chuckle.
British songwriter Billie Marten opened up the main stage Sunday with similar low-key vibe, charming the audience with her low-key British humour and her aversion to mosquitos. At one point, the set was paused so a technician could coat her with bug spray. At 25, Marten is early into a career that began when her cover of Lucy Rose’s Middle of the Bed went viral. While she doesn’t offer a lot of variety, she is certainly developing chops as a songwriter. Her best songs such as Willows, Blue Sea, Red Sea and I Can’t Get My Head Around You recall the melodies of Aimee Mann. The deceptively pretty Cartoon People, is about Donald Trump. She said it was written “a very long time ago.” It probably wasn’t in the grand scheme of things, but it is a sharp song about “cartoon people fighting an American war.”
In the grand tradition of folk-fest eclecticism, the reserved and very British Marten was followed by the big-voiced and jubilant Miko Marks. She is an Oakland singer whose backstory involves abandoning Nashville after a few country-pop albums to pursue a more soulful sound. It didn’t take long into Marks’ set to recognize that Nashville’s unimaginative country-pop world would probably not know what to do with Marks, whose endearing energy could barely be contained on the main stage. She was joined, apparently in a somewhat impromptu manner, but soul singer and festival favourite Leon Timbo. Marks repeatedly told the audience she was taking them to “church” and there was more than spiritual exuberance to go around on gospel-fused numbers such as Ancestors, River, the mournful Peace of Mind and particularly Trouble, a stomping country-soul tribute to the late civil-rights leader John Lewis.
As always, Sunday offered a number of mellow concerts on side stages. If there is such a thing as a perfect folk-fest performer, it may be Winnipeg Anishinaabe singer-songwriter Leonard Sumner, who played an afternoon set that mixed poignant storytelling with poignant songs. He offered some interesting insight into the process of songwriting when discussing the mournful ballad, Resistance, which had him adopting the hook from the Wallis Willis-penned spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. As further evidence of the increasingly borderless landscape of folk music, Sumner said he was inspired to write the song while listening to Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. at 4 a.m. He started to research the life of Wallis Willis, who had been enslaved by the Choctaw before being freed. Sumner spoke about his family, intergenerational trauma, the dying of Indigenous language and rebirth of Indigenous culture and his past job helping troubled and suicidal youth. He also sang the urgent and harrowing Flooded for the first time, a song that chronicles his family home being flooded out Sumner grew up in Little Saskatchewan First Nation in Manitoba’s Interlake region. Ten years ago, the First Nation was among many in the region that were flooded our by the government in order to present spring flooding in Winnipeg. Not long afterwards at a different stage, folkie Portland, Ore. singer-songwriter Jeffrey Martin quietly explained some of his own process while applying his plaintiff baritone to songs such as the haunting character study Red Station Wagon and unsettlingly funny Just Like Me (Joseph Stalin Song).
On paper, Calgary act Ginger Beef do not fit into the confines of traditional folk, mostly because they are an all-instrumental band. They gave one of the earliest concerts on Sunday, which can be a thankless slot. But they seemed delighted by the attendance nonetheless.
“You guys are so hardcore,” said a cheerful Warren Tse, the multi-instrumentalist and producer who goes by the name MSG.
The band also feature’s Tse’s wife, classically-trained flutist Jiajia Li, and both were clearly channelling her inner rock stars Sunday morning. Ginger Beef offer mostly instrumental music, although the giddy numbers Dew and Kam, the latter was inspired pet dog, have some lyric-less vocals. As good as their self-titled debut is — and it is really good — some of the songs seem custom-built for the stage. That is especially true for Hocus Pocus, a hard-rocking guitar-drenched cover of the proggy 1971 song by Dutch act Focus.