May 26th, 2007
We did our annual Folklife hadj today. It’s a four-day folk mash-up held every Memorial Day weekend at the Seattle Center. Fiddlers fiddle, jammers jam, banjos banj and djembes djemb from the crack of noon to the wee smalls; you can hardly blink an eyelash without brushing glitter off the cheek of a hurdy gurdy player. The first time you go it’s a wild, crazy, vibrant assault on the senses - Seattle’s most colorful oddballs crawl out of their winter cocoons and don their brightest fairy wings to alight on the grass - or light the grass - to, um, express themselves. But after a few years you realize it’s really the same cross-dressing, purple-mohawked pierceaholics and grizzle-bearded, tie-dye-overalled squeezeboxers every damn time.
Highlights this year:
- Us, of course
- A nine-year-old who balanced all day on a large ball twirling a hoola hoop while playing violin
- Lukkuul chicken from the Horn of Africa food booth. mmmmm
An amazing solo drummer busking on the sidewalk with nothing but buckets and junk- Cheap beers in the performers’ area
- Little kids gettin’ crazy in the fountain. The fountain is irresistable. It’s water porn for children.
Lowlights:
- Guerrilla Morris Dancing
- The sight of grown people who should know better stuffing greasy, Hummer-sized bricks of curly fries into their faces
- Djembes, djembes and more djembes
- Trying to move music gear through a solid, heaving wall of tattoed flesh and strollers
- Djembes
But getting back to fountains, here’s a collection of truly bizarre fountains. Hey, big boy, is that a nozzle in your pants… ?
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Eva Moon's main website is here.
