We went up to the Lowell Folk Festival today. Arlene wore her T-shirt from the 1988 festival, one of the first years it was held. I kept saying to people that we hoped there was a contest for the oldest Lowell Folk Festival T-shirt, but there didn’t seem to be.
Almost as soon as we got there we saw Ilona Fried , the former treasurer of Koleinu, at the booth for her crafts business Beadventurous. She said she had done well with the booth yesterday and that the weather hadn’t been bad there. We had had a violent thundershower in Newton just about when we were driving home from the anniversary parth, and there were a couple of lightning bolts that sounded extremely close here.
We looked at the contemporary crafts booths, had a sample of a Starbucks raspberry mocha — I can’t remember those names, maybe it was a raspberry mocha frappucino extravaganza, who knows — went over to the traditional crafts and had a long talk with a woman demonstrating tapestry weaving, and went back to hear a set by a klezmer violinist and his group Moldovish. They were doing, of course, Moldavian tunes. I didn’t really know any of them, but sections sounded a lot like some songs I’ve played. They did one song from the Gyerman Goldensteyn collection. I guess he’s going to be a name I hear a lot of in the future.
We walked around the block again and came back to hear a couple of long numbers by an Armenian band from Philadelphia. When we got there four women were doing a line dance off to the side of the front. As the song went on more and more people joined in. By the time the song was over there were 20 people dancing.