Ben Hall Folk Festival  Forbes, 1990
Channel: Rob Willis
Date: 2021-05-28

During the 1980s and 90's we held a series of Festivals in Forbes featuring some of the musicians and local dance variations we had recorded for the National Library. This video is from the 1990 Festival and more for reference than entertainment. A list of those featured is below along with the times.
.09 Lionel Pietsch playing his rare Wheatstone concertina, octagonal with pure silver buttons.

5.50 Ebb Wren, singer and player of many instruments. One of the finest musicians we have ever recorded he had an amazing repertoire of songs and tunes.

14.50 Paddy Godden played concertina and accordion.  Paddy also lilted his tunes at the same time and this is where we got most of the melodies from.

15.40 We distributed cassette tapes of collected tunes to musicians Australia wide and they would learn the tunes, bring them to the Festivals and join in, it worked well.  Here we play one of Paddy's tunes.

17.39 Dave Mathias, one of life's characters.  Dave was a champion mouth organ and accordion player.  Here he is in full flight.

19.37 Dances are like tunes in that they change from region to region and here are a couple of grabs from the dances we have collected in the Forbes area. A varsovienna and one figure of the Forbes Lancers which has some interesting variations.
Unfortunately most of the older people we recorded here have passed on, we owe them a lot for sharing their memories, songs and dances with us.
In my mind Forbes is the Folklore Centre of Australia - it even has a song about its streets!