We're at the tail-end of a beautifully long weekend. This Monday in March marks not only the first Monday of autumn - season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and, in Melbourne, hailstones the size of lemons - but also happens to be Labour Day. Every year, the small town in which I live hosts a music festival - world roots and folk - with something like 130 acts involving 440 performers from around the world, across 22 venues.
While I'm not particularly into Folk music, the festival has something for everyone and so every once in a while we save for tickets, trudge along on the Friday evening and soak up one performance after another until it all winds down on Monday afternoon.
Managed to tuck in a few of those 130 concerts this year: Lulo Reinhardt (German gypsy jazz), Colin Hay (ex Men At Work), Narasirato Pan Pipers (Solomon Islands), Kelly Auty (Wild Women blues), Kim Churchill (acoustic guitar), The Badloves (rock), Dereb Desalegn & The Lion of Judah (Ethio-jazz and blues), Ganga Giri (world-beat dance), Mihirangi (loop music), Jaime Faulkner, Josh White Jr. (USA blues).
Courtesy of YouTube, I've included a small selection of some of the performers I enjoyed.
