Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times

The Queensland festival space, ‘Woodfordia’ has become renowned throughout Australia and internationally for its celebration of folk and indigenous cultures.

Its guiding hand for the past two decades is Bill Hauritz, executive director of the Queensland Folk Federation. As he prepares for The Dreaming festival in June, the Hinterland Times asked Bill Hauritz about the source of Woodfordia’s success.

Bill, how did you get turned on to folk music?

For me it’s a tradition that I became aware of growing up with my brothers and sisters singing folk songs from the Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie era. That’s when I first heard the term folk music. Then, when I went to live in Ireland for nine months in 1973, I met Paul Lawler who introduced me to the Australian folk tradition and I also fell in love with Celtic music. The more I got into it the more I realised it wasn’t just the music. There was an underpinning of values that musicians and folk writers shared; a view of the world linked to our past.

How do you define the folk concept?

I think folklore can be described as living culture that has come from our forebears; it’s what we have learned in the school yard rather than in the school room … it’s that cultural strength of belief systems that Aborigines talk about and that’s what I see as part of the folk movement, rather than just folk music.

Do you think people take away anything more from a Woodford Folk Festival than the colour and music of that particular program?

I think it would be hard to miss a sense of environmentalism, a sense of social responsibility and social justice. Most people who go to Woodford or to The Dreaming would say that there’s an atmosphere that they don’t seem to feel in other events. One of the criticisms of Woodford is its large scale, the sheer size of the event since its more modest Maleny days. As an event Woodford needed to move on. We needed to strengthen what we were doing and we needed to survive commercially. I don’t believe we ever lost our values. Fundamentalist folkies say we were doing the wrong thing and being too commercial, too revolutionary. I still hear those criticisms. But it’s not getting bigger – our numbers are fairly stable – but it’s getting better, along with comfortable infrastructure. It has slowed down in its growth and I am pleased about that because that caused us our most financial stresses.

But is there a resistance to change from those who want to go on listening to Bob Dylan unplugged?

Well, times they are a’changin. But generations listen to different music and we kid ourselves if we think we’re all going to sit around listening to Bob Dylan for the next 50 years. Fashions change and our folk movement is as fashionable as any other element of society. The folk movement is a community bound by a certain set of values.

How do you assess the success of a particular festival at Woodfordia?

Look, I am too close to it to be critical. But when Woodford is on I walk around and try to look at all the errors we’ve made. And I plan next year’s festival by looking at things that we thought would work but didn’t, or could work better. I don’t ‘feel’ the festival like other people might.

You said you were attracted as a young man to Celtic music. Does that mean you have your own favourites for a festival program?

I still like the Celtic music more than anything, and I still play it for fun. At night over a glass of wine, out comes the mandolin sometimes, and I play some tunes, and I really love it. That’s never gone away. But my appreciation of other music has broadened, by listening to other musicians and being positive about it. But two years ago there wasn’t an Irish band in the festival, so it’s not simply because I like it that an act makes it to the program.

Does being a musician yourself help in assembling a festival program?

Being a musician is very helpful in assembling the lineup of other festival musicians. Almost 600 acts were booked at the Woodford Festival last year and we have a team of 12-15 people in various roles, assessing and directing where we go in the future.

So, how do you see your role these days within this increasingly sophisticated machine?

I am the facilitator of that group. The chairman of the board I guess. But apart from constantly listening to acts I am working out strategically how we can survive in the ever- changing world; trying to picture where we might be in five years out.

For example, when we first moved from Maleny to Woodford – at New Year’s eve time - there would be two or three other competitive events. Now there would be 20 or 30. So that’s changed the parameters of how we operate and how we survive.

Where does Woodfordia go from here … a giant theme park of folk music?

We’re certainly not going to build a big fiddle on the top of the hill. No, not a theme park for folk music, but tourism income in 20 years will certainly develop. One of the values that we all have here is a strong sense of environmental responsibility. We’ve planted 90,000 trees and we have gone deeply into our environmental footprint, with a plan for solving the problems of the site.

The bigger the place has become, those values have strengthened in a philosophical sense. There was less violence in the Woodford Folk Festival of 2009 than there was in 1993 in the Maleny Showgrounds, and now there are 5-10 times more people. This is a reflection of the strength of our values.

We do a lot of research of those who come and we measure how we’re going against performance indicators. And 77 per cent of visitors last year had been here before. The return visitation is very powerful and we are supported by many long term followers.

Folk traditions have been the core of the Woodford Folk Festival, but what is it that underlines The Dreaming Festival?

The Dreaming started as a showcase of top indigenous acts from around Australia. Fortunately, aboriginal people adopted it and what you now see is an astonishing complexity of cultures. Keep in mind there were 300 distinct nations here 200 years ago, most of which have disappeared. But the very different cultures amongst Aboriginal peoples remains very powerful. In my opinion Indigenous people are really our royal family. I appreciate that that level of respect is not widespread, but The Dreaming has helped spread that level of respect.

So, what is the thinking in bringing other multicultural acts from around the world. Doesn’t that dilute the Australian Indigenous theme of The Dreaming?

No. Actually it strengthens it, and multicultural is not the term I would use. The Dreaming remains an indigenous festival but it has broadened to be a rich international festival of many indigenous cultures. Multiculturalism is more a concept of different Western cultures. The Dreaming is about broad indigenous cultures of the world coming together. So, the common factor is their individual lore, the invisible cultural links and values that bind them all.

You’ve been guiding this folk tradition now for nearly three decades. What does it come down to for you?

The true notion of what we talked about in the early days was that we could build our movement through generations. It is very hard to capture that notion of lore in our lives. The world and folklore is continually changing and there is no doubt it is changing faster than it’s ever changed. If we could strengthen those core values, they will protect us into the future; of looking after the planet; looking after each other, and having a positive and generous view of the future instead of a negative one.