Haiku Fest & the DeKalb Bandshell
This past weekend included poetry and music and a good deal of travel. Friday night my partner and I enjoyed a rare night out together sans kiddos, dining out at a local seafood restaurant of some repute. Ottawa possesses a remarkably strong culinary scene for a town its size, owing to the popularity of nearby Starved Rock State Park. The weekend prior I unexpectedly came into a pecan pie from the former owner of the Cajun Connection, which closed a few years ago following a near legendary run at a humble little spot up on Route 6. I suppose every small town has its local favorites, but the options for eating out in the Illinois Valley sure seems like an embarrassment of riches sometimes.
The next day I woke early to attend the awards ceremony for the annual Haiku Festival at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago. Most people are familiar with the green gargoyles that adorn the library’s rooftop, and perhaps aware of their world-class collection of media, but did you know there’s an auditorium in the basement? Every April (Poetry Month, don’t you know), kids gather down there to read their poems and receive cash awards (and recognition) for their poetry.
I’ve served as a judge for the festival for close to a decade now. The job mostly entails reading about 1500 haiku in 3 or 4 days, looking for the two or three dozen that are really special. But we also get to write a response poem to one submission of our choice, and the organizers take us (the judges, I mean) out to lunch after the ceremony. It’s a fun gig! I lucked into it when I was recommended by a mentor of mine from grad school.
The contest has three main categories: 3rd and 4th graders, 5th and 6th graders, and 7th and 8th graders. There are also awards for best poem from Chicago Public Schools, founder’s choice, and so on. Regina Harris-Baiocchi, the founder and main organizing force, is a well-regarded composer and poet. She began the festival after the passing of the great Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks, who ran a poetry contest that Regina participated in herself as a child. It’s mostly a Chicago thing, but we get participants from all over – one of the awards this year went to a young man from Ghana, who recorded a video of himself reading his poem.
I left a little early, on account of having to attend to other matters downstate, and had to miss out on the annual judges luncheon, which was a bummer – all of my fellow judges are positively charming folks, funny and full of colorful stories. It’s been a huge honor to be included, and I look forward to participating every year.
The next day, after the after church coffee hour, we – my partner and our two children – packed up a bit of lunch and headed north to Hopkins Park in DeKalb. I’d never been there before, but it was a beautiful, warm day, and a couple dozen kids were romping about the playground as we arrived. We were there to meet Nick and Becky – a farming couple my partner knows from back when she was active in the Chicago farmer’s market scene, plus their kids. It had been awhile since we’d all gotten together, and it was good to see them. But the catalyst for our meeting was a post I’d put up on social media some weeks earlier, looking for a guitar player to work tunes with, to which Becky had responded enthusiastically.
Finding people to play music with can be challenging – you want to find someone who wants to play what you want to play, who’s skill level is roughly where your own is, and has the time and inclination to getting together. I had put it out there that I had been playing old-time fiddle and was looking for a guitarist to play tunes with, along with a short video of me playing “Nail that Catfish to a Tree,” Steve Rosen’s engaging little tune. And it turns out Becky grew up playing folk tunes with her banjo playing dad every weekend by the Oak Park farmer’s market. Although unfamiliar with my repertoire, she’s a competent guitarist and has a sense of the old-time style.
After we’d all visited a while and shared a bit of lunch, the kids had mostly all found their way over to the playground, Becky and I headed over to the band shell to jam. We didn’t have charts or anything, I’d just name the key and go. She caught on to changes admirably, even throwing in a few well chosen minor chords. I figure we jammed about 90 minutes or so, and recorded a couple of tunes towards the end. One we got a video of, but you couldn’t hear her at all – I was facing the camera, but she was facing me, which I suppose makes sense, Later we recorded a few tunes on my phone using the Easy Voice Recorder app – Becky related once recording an entire album of songs with it – and I posted one to my Soundcloud page, “Fat Meat and Dumplings,” a classic Missouri tune.
I don’t think I’ve always appreciated how useful it can be playing with different people. The folks I’ve jammed with in the last six months have all been really-into-old-time kind of people, which are the sort of people one wants to jam with when getting really into old-time music. And Midwestern back-up guitar, it turns out, is a whole style unto itself. The typical alternating bass style of guitar accompaniment is just a jumping-off point for seasoned old-time guitarists – the thing is to create a kind of contrapuntal line to the fiddle tune, with rising or falling progressions that emphasize the end of phrases. It’s one of those deceptively simple styles, kind of like rock drumming, where almost anyone can do it, but people who are genuinely good at it are rare.
Most of the time I spend playing fiddle is alone in practice rooms, and playing with just one or two others is always an interesting experience for me, because I hear my playing differently. That day I couldn’t help feeling like I have a long way to go – besides sometimes having to start tunes two or three times before I could get them going, I often noticed I was a little out of tune, and don’t (yet) have the graceful phrasing or rhythmic drive of other fiddle players. None of which is a big deal, I think I just need to spend more time practicing slowly. That’s hard to do when you just want to enjoy the tunes once you get them under your fingers, but I’m pretty sure its necessary if I want to keep moving forward.
On the other hand, we had a good old time playing tunes that day, which is what really matters. Becky had the idea that we should organize a square dance sometime, which sounds great to me. We’re both busy people, of course, so putting that together is a long term project, but it gives us a reason to keep getting together to play. I mean, besides it being fun to play tunes, obviously.