This year’s Roots and Blues Festival is forging new trails.
Since his arrival on the scene five years ago, executive-director Hugo Rampen has taken the festival to the people arranging with a variety of partners to have artists perform downtown and at the wharf.
As well as contributing some $15,000 to $20,000 worth of tickets for fundraising purposes to community services organizations and non-profits, Rampen sees this new venture as another way to benefit the whole community and beyond.
This year, Folk Music Society board members agreed with Rampen’s proposal to partner with the Shuswap Trail Alliance to offer tourists (and locals) an off-the-beaten-track adventure that includes hiking, swimming, dining and a performance.
Rampen says the idea came to him when he was invited to the Celtic Colours Festival in Cape Breton last October.
“The festival has become the number-one economic generator for that part of the province,” he says. “What’s unique is it’s a festival basically spread out in a broad community and accesses remote places that normally don’t see the benefits of tourism.”
Rampen says he spent five days in the area and put in 1,300 kilometres going to five evening venues. On the way, he went to weaving and spinning studios, organic farms, and ate at community meals in churches.
“What this enabled me to do as a tourist was to go beneath the surface and really interact with the people,” he says, noting he met a member of the Rankin Family out on a dirt road and learned that the infiltration of coyotes had killed a once-thriving wool industry.
With the fishing industry also in demise, Rampen said the population there is 60 to 70 per cent female, something he wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t been able to penetrate the community facade.
Rampen says he noticed similarities between the Shuswap and Cape Breton – unique halls in remote locations.
“They don’t have the infrastructure to feed people so they developed unique community partnerships, and these partnerships turned into little economic generators to each community, providing much-needed income to develop community venues,” he says. “And that’s the goal of the festival, the communication between locals and the tourists.”
The major difference between the Shuswap and Cape Breton is that they have a very old musical tradition.
“We don’t have that, so in putting ours together we decided that our culture is a experiential culture – hiking, boating, fishing, cycling,” he says. “So, when we came to that conclusion, we sought a partnership with Shuswap Trail Alliance.”
Rampen says festival and trail alliance organizers are putting together creative jaunts that will include some hiking with visually stunning views, followed by perhaps a swim and a meal in a community hall, with an artist’s performance to cap the evening.
“These are little venues and little venues have wonderful vibes,” says Rampen, noting Kingfisher Hall and halls in Seymour Arm and Celista are already onboard, with more in the conversation stage. “We will be infiltrating the community and that will allow for some unique tourism relationships.”
As well as having the funding and partnerships, festival organizers are making use of the talents of Evo Kestens, a Dutch exchange student.
“He’s designing the website and meeting with communities, something that’s allowed him to get further into the Shuswap than I have in the last five years,” says Rampen, who suggests people visit www.rootsandblues.ca and take a 3D tour of the festival site.
