The music was loud, the crowds were big and the people were happy as they danced along to three-days worth of music at this year’s Jasper Folk Music Festival, Sept. 9-11.
The festival’s organizers are still crunching the official numbers, but executive director Cristin Murphy said by all accounts it was another successful year, adding that while in-town tickets sales were lower than last year, online sales were up.
“All things considered weather-wise—I think we did really well. There were lots of people braving the cold and the rain to stick around,” Murphy said. “I think our line-up really spoke for itself and people were pleased with the variety of music we had to offer.”
This year’s festival had a slew of acts from across North America including California’s The Brevet, Halifax’s Hillsburn and Toronto’s Birds of Bellwoods.
“These were some of the bands that we had picked through our online application process and we had never seen some of them play live so sometimes you never know how that’s going to go, but it all worked out and people seemed pretty impressed.”
According to Murphy, a crowd favourite this year was Saturday night’s headlining act Delhi 2 Dublin.
“There was so much buzz around them and people even started crowd surfing when they played,” Murphy said. “The band put an end to that pretty quickly because it was getting a little dangerous, but for us we were like wow there’s crowd surfing happening at our little festival—it was kind of exciting.”
As organizers look to the future, Murphy said they might have to re-think their security strategy, adding that numerous people were caught sneaking into this year’s affair.
“Unfortunately most of them were locals,” Murphy said about the people who were caught. “It’s a little disheartening—this festival isn’t a given and it won’t continue forever if we don’t get support.
It costs money to bring bands of this caliber into town.”
If the situation isn’t rectified, Murphy said the festival will have to switch from volunteer security teams to hired help, which will increase ticket prices.
“Increased fees aren’t a win for anybody,” Murphy said. “That being said I don’t want that to cloud the fact that we know we have amazing local support—locals are out there dancing and having fun and really soaking up the atmosphere.”
Murphy also added that the location for next year’s festival is unknown. Since its resurrection in 2013, the festival has been held at Centennial Field, however, Murphy said she doesn’t know if that location will be available next year as the municipality plans to shut down the field for an undetermined amount of time to have it resurfaced in 2017.
“That will be a challenge, but we’re working things out and we’re confident that next year’s festival will be even bigger and better than ever.”
Kayla Byrne
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