How we all make magic at the Woodstove Festival
Festival attendees lined the sidewalks in front of all the food establishments on Dunsmuir Avenue, Cumberland’s main drag. It was November 9, late on the Sunday afternoon of the 2023 Woodstove Festival. Whether brilliant or bedraggled, fur and denim jackets still displayed a festival sheen. Over the weekend, the village had surely seen the highest number ever of mullets per capita in a two-block radius. The owners of Laneway Coffee anecdotally remember it as their busiest three days of the year. Hundreds of visiting artists and fans had mingled at all hours, bouncing from event to event.
In British Columbia, you could spend all summer music festival hopping: Haida Gwaii, Salmon Arm, Ymir, Cortes Island, and many more. This genre of event usually offers a blend of local and out-of-town musicians, artisans, and food trucks. But music festivals can be more than just buying a ticket to listen to shows. They can be magic.
Unique kinship
Maybe the magic comes from the feeling of kinship that grows over the course of a weekend. At the Woodstove Festival, you see the same folks at venues, workshops, or in line for volunteer meals. You can feel a small-town belonging. Like when you fall amid the sweaty bodies of a mosh pit ping-ponging across the sloshy wooden Waverley Hotel dance floor, and you are quickly hauled to your feet, caught by the crowd.
Or maybe it’s the wonder of The Parlour barbershop transformed into a cozy concert venue, with listeners spilling into the alley, huddling together to peer through the open window. The hushed harmonies and lyrics of the artist pull at something deep down, something you didn’t know still sat there.
Or it could be how good it feels to cry with strangers when squished into the pews of the Weird Church while folk singer/songwriter Scott Cook sings truths like: “We’ve got billions for bailouts, trillions for wars, but it’s hard for the working people to make a living anymore.”
We are a people starved for connection. Our attention spans have been stolen by the internet and social media, with the incessant comparisons and insecurities these industries draw from and prey on. But music heals. Laughter heals. Movement and writing heal.
When we are swaying, eyes closed, to the crooning of a clarinet in the Masonic Hall; looking around for a two-step partner at the Honky Tonk Dance; or clasping hands in the square dance circle as “Birdie hops in,” we are taking back what we ought not be giving away: human-to-human interaction, eye contact, safe touch, play. Consensual partner dancing, frolicking through the streets, and crushes across the audience. Fall in love, I dare you. And may the counterculture of In Real Life catch like wildfire and fan the fires of art and music and resistance. Perhaps the measure of a great performance is the absence of footage.
Lighting a creative spark
At Woodstove, the fire we are lighting is the creative spark that will carry us through a winter of darkness. The spark comes from the thrill of an aerial silk dancer dangling from the Abbey Studio’s ceiling that ignites something in you to dust off your old tap shoes to tippity-tap a rhythm for your cat watching from the living room couch. The fuel is improv workshops, poetry readings, and musicians tackling both the lightness and complexities of culture and human nature. May all our metaphorical woodpiles stay stocked so our art can find the light, and the warmth remind us of what it means to be moved.
On that Sunday afternoon of the Woodstove Festival, when a car drove down Dunsmuir Avenue bumping electronic music beats with a bubble machine blowing a wake of soapy circles, three of us ran down the sidewalk, arm in arm, and let the circles pop around us, like little magical dreams waiting to be set free. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Ways to get involved: Billet an artist! Volunteer! Be a vendor! Use the recycling bins! woodstovefestival.ca/participate
