If you ever needed a definition of folk music, you could find it at Kings County Playhouse Thursday night.
And if you ever wanted to know just why that form of music is popular you’d find it there too.
Seven songwriters took turns performing a couple songs each in a very simple and intimate setup. It felt more like a professional coffee house than a normal concert.
The songs talked about love for the most part, but also spoke to rural ideals.
A house in the woods isn’t just nice for the scenery, it’s a place to start a more fulfilling life. To encounter a homeless man is to be inspired by his hospitality.
And, in what drew some of the loudest applause of the night, the disappearance of family farms is more than modern agricultural economics at work.
For many people there’s a profound aesthetic value to small family farms that’s independent of how profitable they are.
For example, the fact the only beef plant in the Maritimes can’t seem to make a buck is less important than the fact it’s important to individual Island beef farmers.
The simple reality is, love for small family farms doesn’t pay the bills.
But aesthetic value does have value. It’s just that it’s found in tourism, not agriculture.
Instead of throwing buckets of money at big projects, such as Regis and Kelly, the province could spend a fraction of that setting up tours of farms for tourists.
A few tour guides in minivans could take a few groups of tourists a day to small farms across the Island, letting New Yorkers experience them first hand instead of just seeing them on post cards.
Farmers would then get paid to host the groups and show them around.
It may not bring in a huge amount of money but it could help, and help is sorely needed.
One gets the sense that in the not-to-distant future, we’ll only find small farms in folk songs.
Jonathan Charlton