| Aug 08, 2013


Time marches on, and we all march with it.

But once in a while there is an occasion to reflect on how past events have reverberated through time. As the Blue Skies Music Festival hit its 40 anniversary, the Festival’s Artistic Director, Julia Phillips, decided to leaven this year’s program with some of the musicians and bands that have had a major impact on the festival over the years.

Ken Whitely was at the first festival in 1974, and has been there at every significant anniversary ever since, and many other times as well. He was back this year, opening an eclectic Saturday evening show. He still performs a mix of roots, jazz and gospel tunes with an old time carnival feel, just as he has for about 50 years, but the Ken Whitely show is no relic. With support from the Levy Sisters, his singing partners of 19 years, his son Ben on bass and Brad Hart on drums the music is as vibrant today as it must have been 40 years ago.

That’s the way with the Blue Skies Festival itself. Camping passes for the two day festival are only available by lottery, although passes for each day are available in advance in Perth, Ottawa, and Kingston and at the gate. The seamless mix of generations that pack the otherwise quiet site on rural Clarendon road on the August long weekend attest to the continued interest that the festival generates in the region and beyond.

To mark the 40th anniversary, some black and white film footage was shown from the 1974 festival. Among the most resonant clips in the film was a shot of a small stage at the bottom of a relatively sparsely populated hill. Stan Dueck, the square dance caller was surveying a group of long-haired, shirtless young men in jeans and flowing skirted women as they attempted to allemande left and circle right. At the end of the song, Dueck pointed over the band, which was led by McDonald’s Corners fiddler Kenny Jackson, and said, “three cheers to the band, the best in the land”.

To this day, on the Saturday and Sunday of the festival, the same scene takes place, even if the demographics of the dancers and the fashions have broadened quite a bit in the intervening 40 years.

“When we started the festival we had no idea about all of this. We thought it could have been a one off,” said Oskar Graf when contacted on the Tuesday after this year’s festival. Oskar was the founder of the Festival, and he hosted it on his property for about 30 years until he severed off the festival site and sold it to the festival. He is still involved in the festival organizing each year and participates in meetings and helps out on festival site, and he has some personal reasons for looking back at what the festival has done over the years

“Without Blue Skies I would be a much poorer person. It opened so many different opportunities and connections for me. I look at all the time I’ve put into it over the years, and it’s a lot, but it’s nothing compared to what I’ve gained.”

The impact of the festival on a community level that is particularly gratifying for Graf, who builds guitars for a living. The festival had more of an overt political dimension in the early year.

“Those were different times,” said Graf, “we thought we could change the world back then, but I think that even though things have changed and people from all over southern Ontario are now involved in the organizing, the festival has somehow remained true to the spirit of those early years.”

Blue Skies remains an entirely volunteer, totally non-commercial event. There are no sponsors and no vendors. The only items for sale are festival clothing cd’s from the musicians who are hired each year.

It’s outreach arm, Blue Skies in the Community, runs an arts summer day camp for children, sponsors events in Frontenac and Lanark County on a year round basis, and helps fund a community Fiddle Orchestra.

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