All the Damn Hippies, Part I
Memorial Day weekend in Seattle every year is the occasion for the Folklife Festival, a four-day hippie picnic at the Seattle Center. I'd never been before, but in my resolution to get out more, I thought I ought to check it out this year. Four days of folk music, arts and crafts, ethnic food, and a multi-cultural everything-is-beautiful mindset of course brings all the hippies out of their winter habitats. Now, I'm ambivalent toward hippies: I enjoy the open-mindedness, but find the resulting self-absorption to be irritating. So, I turn out for this sort of venue, preparing myself for the inevitable annoyance.
Don't get me wrong: some of my best friends are hippies. I'm often mistaken for a hippie myself. I'm not, though. I'm a beatnik. The difference, for me, is significant: hippies, for the most part, were droupouts, whereas beatniks graduated. I graduated.
Anyway, I'm not sure if that informs any of the current hippie experience here in Seattle, but I don't consider myself a hippie. Nevertheless, they're everywhere, and something like this brings them out in force. And here are some pictures I got:
This was some Brazilian dance company, I think. Couldn't really tell, but they sounded OK.
And this was some square-dancing, bluegrass sort-of deal. I couldn't help but notice the older age of all the folks on the dance floor.
And then there's this bunch. If they look pretty ad-hoc, I can tell you that they certainly sounded that way, as well. They looked like they were having fun, though. You should have seen the bunch that I couldn't get a photo of, since my disk was full. Some kind of garage band, I'm thinking, of electric guitar, violin, kid's drum set, and toy piano. Just as I was going for my camera to get a shot, they launched into what I would eventually realize to be a version of The White Stripes' "Hotel Derba". At that point, I knew that a simple photo of the scene wouldn't do it justice.
Don't get me wrong: some of my best friends are hippies. I'm often mistaken for a hippie myself. I'm not, though. I'm a beatnik. The difference, for me, is significant: hippies, for the most part, were droupouts, whereas beatniks graduated. I graduated.
Anyway, I'm not sure if that informs any of the current hippie experience here in Seattle, but I don't consider myself a hippie. Nevertheless, they're everywhere, and something like this brings them out in force. And here are some pictures I got:
This was in the Centerhouse. The board said something about Slavic dance: though this photo doesn't really do it justice, this is a shot of several concentric circles of dancers, anyone from the crowd seemingly, that would get into the groove.
This was some Brazilian dance company, I think. Couldn't really tell, but they sounded OK.
And this was some square-dancing, bluegrass sort-of deal. I couldn't help but notice the older age of all the folks on the dance floor.
And then there's this bunch. If they look pretty ad-hoc, I can tell you that they certainly sounded that way, as well. They looked like they were having fun, though. You should have seen the bunch that I couldn't get a photo of, since my disk was full. Some kind of garage band, I'm thinking, of electric guitar, violin, kid's drum set, and toy piano. Just as I was going for my camera to get a shot, they launched into what I would eventually realize to be a version of The White Stripes' "Hotel Derba". At that point, I knew that a simple photo of the scene wouldn't do it justice.
And then there's the Peruvian combo. What Seattle festival would be complete without?...
posted by Russ the Librarian at 12:14 AM
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