Chrissie Mahaffy – Folk Fiddles – Hearsay – DanceSaturday, March 27th, 8pm, Twin Cities Friends Meeting, 1725 Grand Avenue, Saint Paul, suggested contribution: $12 adults, $6 children
I think you’ll enjoy this evening of stories, hearsay, folk fiddles and dance at one of the Twin Cities favorite and intimate performance arts venues.
• Chrissie Mahaffy is a charming autodidact who is writing a book about her adventures with children in her home daycare (my daughters attended), Greenspoon, in Uptown Minneapolis. She has great stories about children, their dramas, foibles and culture, and is a pleasure to listen to.
• Some of the best fiddlers from the American Swedish Institute Spelmanslag (http://www.asispelmanslag.org/) will be playing. If you’ve never heard flat-out folk fiddling like this, with the harmonies and chording, you’re in for a treat. This is a living tradition, passed down from family members, from Rattvik, Sweden. Fiddlers planning to appear include Daniel Dahlin, Bruce Johnson, Jennifer Olsen Loayza, Kristen Ottoson Niehaus and Jamie Harris.
• All the music played is dance music. Gifted folk dancers Mary Hegge and Craig Johnson will model Scandinavian dances and invite us to participate. Mary is also a fiddler and Artistic Director of the ASI Spelmanslag. Craig is active in the local Scandinavian folk dance scene.
• I will contribute hearsay, and the feature story, "Little Woman..." which is about a troubling encounter I had a few years ago.
• In addition, I will explore a few small bits of folk culture that I think have compelling social and psychological relevance (the "Fragments of the Gone World"), and that might represent what poet Derek Walcott called, in his 1992 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, “fragments of epic memory.”
Come prepared to have a good time. I look forward to seeing you!
– Stofer
