Fiddleheads Assemble!
Founded in 1998 by Trish Barclay, the Fiddleheads create original theatre productions, organize barn dances, host jams, work with youth…
Fiddle music
Celebrate the great outdoors!
Yukon Rendezvous Festival has planned four possible versions of the festival this year, to quickly adapt to changing health regulations.
The Fiddler in the North
Simon Crelli is a Yukon musician with quite an impressive resume, and a mentor to many of the territory’s young musicians.
Didee & Didoo: Message to Allan Benjamin
When you see Allan Benjamin, If you could please mention to him, I’d like to hear him play again. Tell him to come our way again. When he came down to play folklore, I’d never heard him play before. I didn’t know what to expect, Now I wonder what he’ll do next. Chorus: He plays …
Didee & Didoo: Good to be a Musician
‘Cause I can use my bass fiddle for a canoe. ‘Cause I can use my fiddle for a paddle. ‘Cause I can use my fiddle strings for snares. ‘Cause I can use my fiddle bow for a cane. ‘Cause I can use my guitar case for a suitcase. ‘Cause I can use my fiddle case …
One night, one stage, one amazing group of people…
As I was growing up in northern Canada, music was as much a staple as frying pan bannock.
Keepers of the Faith at the 98
You’ll either be told to avoid the 98 or it is a must go for an authentic Yukon experience. The 98 has the most colourful people in town.
Where Tradition and Youth Converge
The fiddling tradition is alive and well in the Yukon thanks to the Fiddleheads, a group of young fiddlers ranging in age from 7 to 14,
Didee & Didoo: I SNOWSHOED AT… I FIDDLED AT…
I Snowshoed at… ANCHORAGE – IDITASHOE FT YUKON – ICE KING CLASSIC DAWSON – AWG SNOWSHOE TRIALS OLD CROW – EASTER CARNIVAL FT MCPHERSON – PEEL RIVER JAMBOREE ARCTIC RED RIVER – MCKENZIE RIVER CARNIVAL INUVIK – MUSKRAT JAMBOREE AKLAVIK – MAD TRAPPER CARNIVAL YELLOWKNIFE – AWF SNOWSHOEING WHITEHORSE – MAD TRAPPER CONTEST I Fiddled …
2016 Adӓka Cultural Festival: An Exploration of Old and New
2016 Adӓka Cultural Festival: Kaska drummer Dennis Shorty , Gwich’in fiddler Boyd Benjamin, & Inuit throat-singer Kathleen Merritt
Fiddling Through Time
It was a visit to the Yukon Transportation Museum that got Whitehorse fiddler and music teacher Keitha Clark thinking about an ambitious project for the 25 young Whitehorse musicians known collectively as the Fiddleheads. “I thought this would be a funky place to put on a show. It’s an unusual, kind of unconventional space and …
Music for Fun and a Good Cause
“Ten years we’ve been doing this and we never quite know what’s going to happen each time.” Nijen Holland (usually just known as Nijen) was quite right when he said this at the conclusion of the latest Coffee House/Open Mic Saturday night at the KIAC Ballroom (formerly known as the Odd Fellows Hall ballroom). Lately …
That Gypsy Jazz Swing
Anyone contemplating starting a small musical group to perform on a cruise ship would be well-advised to contact Lache Cercel. The Romanian-born fiddler, who now lives in B.C., teaches a course in how to develop a successful repertoire for just such a venture. “This is something I know myself, because from when I was 18 …
An International Celebration of Talent
The Folk Society of Whitehorse has been hosting the famous Yukon-Alaska Coffee House for more than 25 years. This event features two coffee house evenings, back-to-back, in Skagway and Whitehorse. The Yukon evening of talent, which takes place on Saturday, will also serve as the finale to a series of Whitehorse coffee houses that happen …
Folk VERCH-uoso
If you’ve got a yen to hear some some good old-fashioned country fiddle playing, you won’t want to miss April Verch. Verch, along with bandmates Cody Walters (banjo and electric bass) and Alex Rubin (guitar and mandolin) will be stomping, singing, fiddling and strumming their way into Whitehorse Friday, March 4th. A self-described “Ottawa-Valley Girl,” …
Joyful Performance
Donnell Leahy remembers exactly how he felt when he made his stage debut as a fiddler at the age of four. “Mom and Dad had a band when we were growing up as kids. They played locally at round dances and square dances and weddings and things,” he says. “One night they took me up …
What’s on at Rendezvous
It’s that time of year again, when it’s totally normal to see girls walking around in period costume, when men compete in beauty pageants, when that guy with the really long beard who comes into the restaurant you work at starts talking about the medal he hopes to win. And this year is no …
Didee & Didoo: I MADE A FIDDLE
FIDDLES COST TOO MUCH THEY WOULDN’T LET ME TOUCH. SO WHEN I WAS LITTLE I MADE MY OWN FIDDLE. IT SOUNDED LIKE A LOON BUT I CAN PLAY A TUNE. I USED WOOD GUM TO MAKE IT HUM. I USED AL KINDS OF THINGS AN’ RABBIT SNARES FOR STRINGS. DIDOO GAVE ME SINEW AND I …
Making Plans for the Midnight Sun
Rumour has it the 2015 lineup is the Kluane Bluegrass Music Festival’s best yet. No shortage of interest in headlining 2 decades in.
Didee & Didoo: DIDOO AN’ POOR DIDEE
THEIR BACKS ARE BENT AN’ THEY STAY IN A TENT. THEY DON’T READ OR WRITE AN’ THEY USE CANDLE AT NIGHT. DIDOO WEAR LONG SKIRT AN’ DIDEE WEAR CHECKER SHIRT. THEIR AGES THEY ESTIMATE ‘CAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW THE DATE. DIDEE CHEW STRONG SNUFF BUT DIDOO LIKES TO PUFF. DIDEE MAKES SNOWSHOES WITH BIRCH AN’ …
An Old Crow Halloween
I looked out our window in Old Crow Halloween Day, 2014. It was -10ºC outside. Trees were shaking as the wind howled making it much colder.
Street Party
Nadine Landry describes Louisiana’s Cajun culture as a ‘holy trinity’ of food, music and dancing. “People invite you over to dinner, so there is food, and that’s hugely important in Cajun culture. And it takes so long for the food to get ready, you start playing tunes, and then people start dancing,” she says. “So …
Laurel Parry – Loud and Proud
On her first day as a government arts consultant in 1987, Laurel Parry was ushered to a desk that held a typewriter, a large black ceramic ashtray, and an in-box loaded with letters and materials from Yukon artists. “The job had been vacant for quite awhile and the sport consultant had been pinch-hitting, so I …
Talking in Tune
One of Canada’s busiest and most versatile violinists will perform in Whitehorse on May 17 as part of his collaboration with local composer Daniel Janke on an upcoming CD of contemporary string music. In a career spanning more than 20 years, Mark Fewer has been — among other things — a chamber musician, a symphony …
Dawson’s Community Dance
Tiss Clark, a local artist and music teacher, is the organizer of the Community Jigging Square Dance Project in Dawson City. She decided to start the project after hearing an elder in Fort MacPherson recount dance history in the North. “Dances used to be for meeting, talking, and socializing with the community,” says Clark. “There’s …
The fiddle remembers
Harold Routledge did not remember that he had built this fiddle with his own hands; but the tunes, and the skill to play it, were memories that had not yet been robbed by Alzheimer’s. “There is something about music that it is so deeply ingrained to memories from a long time ago,” says Keitha Clark, …
Dancing’s his thing
struck his family, and Vig started drinking heavily to cope. Then he got a job with an oil company, and hightailed to Inuvik to work on a rig. “I was trying to get away from myself, but myself came along.” But Vig didn’t have a drink the entire time he was in the Arctic, and …
Allan Benjamin and the origins of Didee & Didoo
Anyone who reads What’s up Yukon regularly will have come across the comic strip, Didee & Didoo. The comic was created by Old Crow resident, Allan Benjamin. It depicts a humourous take on the life of two Gwitchin elders. Along with his poetry, Didee & Didoo has been a fixture in WUY for the last …
Fiddle night at the 98 Hotel: The fiddle of Joe Loutchan rules
There is something about that lone fiddle playing in a room: The ambience, the mood, the emotions, all ride on its notes. There is something about that lone couple dancing in front of the band: Swept up in the music, comfortable in each other and oblivious to the chatter of the room. It is a …
Fiddle night at the 98 Hotel: The fiddle of Joe Loutchan rules Read More »
Music talk in surround sound
The Whitehorse United Church basement is filled – amidst chatter and laughter – with the sounds of setup. Somewhere a guitar is being tuned; elsewhere the “Check one, two; check, ch eck, check one, two” is heard as microphones are readied for the Folk Society night. What an appropriate setting for an interview about the …
What’s the ‘Rush’?
“I have a lot of fun with Dot,” says Trish Barclay, her eyes squinting into a voice that sounds like it belongs to a pirate. That needs an explanation. Barclay says her character and that of “Bert”, played by Marc Desormeaux, in the upcoming presentation of Fiddle Rush at the Old Fire Hall, July 3 …
Finding the Fiddle in the Yukon
Strains of lively, lilting fiddle melodies filter through classrooms up and down the Klondike Highway, played by children of all ages. This music has a long history in the territory: the jigs and reels of the fiddle have been documented in the North since 1847. In Old Crow, fiddles have been popular since Archie Linklater, …
Didee & Didoo – Poem “Trimble Gilbert”
My uncle Trimble Gilbert recorded a fiddle CD with Wilbert. Arctic Village is his home town where you’ ll hear his fiddle sound. Rev. Gilbert is a Gwichin fiddleman and his sons play in his backup band. When his fiddle he hold, Trimble plays tunes that’s old. Playing the fiddle he’s a master and in …
Jigging In
By taking her fiddle class online, one fiddle instructor is changing the music education community the in the north. Zavallennahh Huscroft (formorly known as Zav RT, here is another community event that she has helped with Here), from Victoria, has been teaching fiddle for 20 years, working in rural northern communities in the north for …