Folk Festival making mark

May 15 2009 by Sara Bain, Dumfries Standard Friday

FOR such a small place, Moniaive is certainly making a big mark on Scotland’s arts and entertainments calendar.

With more musical events than anywhere in the UK per head of population, the little village nestling in the scenic and usually quiet Cairn Valley, is becoming a mecca for art and music lovers.

The eighth Moniaive Folk Festival was described by the organisers as “the most ambitious to date” and the weekend’s events did not disappoint their aspirations.

The festival took off with a whirl and a skirl on Friday night and continued well into Sunday evening with a line-up of celebrated musicians and dancers all giving tireless performance in pubs, tents and workshops keeping traditional music very much alive and kicking.

Workshops, and venues were all reported to be packed out with guest artistes giving unscheduled performances to surprise and delight the audiences.

Day-goers outside the cafés were treated to impromptu rehearsals by Edinburgh dance troupe Absolutely Legless and their energetic Irish dance routines were a real crowd puller on the Saturday night.

The Applejacks Appalachian Dancers set up their wooden dance floor at Moniaive Cross and did a few impromptu performances underneath the cherry tree.

Moniaive Primary School pupils were treated to a masterclass with Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year, Ruairidh Macmillan.

Exhausted from the organisation of the festival and, having stayed up to watch The Diehards’ final session on Sunday night, Hugh Taylor reported: “The festival was a huge success and most people attending were saying that they consider it to be the best small festival in Scotland.

“This year the first lot of people turned up on Thursday afternoon while we were just setting up. By 8pm there was a good session going on in one of the bars. On Sunday night there were four major sessions going on and both hotels were jammed until midnight when they shut.

“A very large crowd gathered to watch the Applejacks and I ended up directing traffic to keep it moving.

“But lots of villagers who have previously thought of the folk festival as some sort of alien spaceship that arrives once a year started to see what it was all about.”