On the third day of Ottawa Folk Fest the main stage was prepped for a bit of a departure from traditional folk music acts as both Shad and Kendrick Lamar would be playing there tonight. I was quite excited at the proposition of these guys injecting a hefty dosage of hip hop into the festival, and I applaud the organizers for temporarily broadening the spiritual definition of folk music.
Shad is a Canadian rapper with multiple albums and Canadian music award nominations under his belt. I would even be so bold as to say that he is one of, if not the best, rapper to come out of Canada in recent years. My cohorts and I arrived just in time to see him take the stage with a rather simple setup of a DJ and a bass player.
Shad started off the set with a number of upbeat and warm tunes that kept the spirit of summer alive despite the encroaching fall weather. His interactions with the crowd were frequently amusing and heartfelt, a quality that loosened up the crowd and got them more into his set. Shad also showed his instrumental chops by picking up a number of instruments and rapping while playing them through a few songs.
He kept his performance as simple as his setup. There were very rarely any backing vocals or samples used, which can sometimes drown out the performance of a rapper at concerts. Shad merely relied on his voice and the strength of his rhymes to keep the audience engaged in the performance.
Shad finished off the set with one of his best known songs “The Old Prince Still Lives at Home,” which features an excellent barebones verse near the end where he used the audience to make the back beat for his rapping. All in all this was an excellent performance by a home-grown rapper and certainly warmed up the crowd for the hip-hop giant that was arriving later that evening.
One of the side stages at the festival seems to have been reserved for the more traditional singer-songwriter folk music acts, as this is where I got to watch the supremely talented Matt Andersen work his guitar magic. A no fuss, no frills kind of guy from the east coast, Matt Andersen performed with just him, his guitar, and his mighty bushy beard.
Andersen was a veritable guitar virtuoso. As he strummed and hammered away at those six strings he made it sound like he was playing with a much larger band than he actually was. His music was centered around the usual blues fare but with a bit of east coast spirit included for good measure, which lent his music a supremely warm and gentle feeling.
His songs conjured feelings and images of the east coast with ease. Crashing waves, hard working fishermen, and charming seaside villages lit up by the waning sunlight of the day. He played a long and hearty set that clearly satisfied the needs of a crowd that had gathered to see him and he finished it by saying he would be available in the merchandise tent for CD signings or hugs. I personally wanted to go for a hug.
It was such an amusing juxtaposition to see the crop of festival goers who were clearly there to see Matt Andersen, an older, chair-toting crowd, and those who were arriving in droves to see Kendrick Lamar, a younger, traditionally non-folk festival attending crowd. Hopefully the scores of people arriving for Kendrick’s set at least got a taste of Matt Andersen’s jauntier, folkier music as they walked by the smaller side stage en route to the main one.
That’s what music festivals are all about, giving people the chance to hear music they may not normally listen to, be it sea shanties or kick-ass rap music. Some of the older crowd began frantically scrambling to get away as soon as Kendrick’s set began, but surprisingly a few of them toughed it out in their lawn chairs to see what the Compton rapper had to offer.
