A history of the Mariposa Folk Festival, from its humble roots in Orillia in 1961 to international acclaim and legendary status as a premier folk music gathering. Mariposa began in the heyday of the early 60s “folk boom.” In its more than fifty-five years, it has seen many of the world’s greatest performers grace its stages: Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jann Arden, and Serena Ryder. The festival has long held a musical mirror to popular culture in Canada. It thrived during the folk boom years and the singer-songwriter era of the early 70s. Its popularity dipped during the rise of disco and punk as the 70s wore into the early 80s. And it nearly died due to lack of interest in the 90s — the days of grunge and new country, and the golden age of CD sales. Thanks to a recent wave of independent, home-grown music, Mariposa is having a resurgence in the early twenty-first century. Audiences have always come and gone, but the festival has stayed true to its mandate: to promote and preserve folk art in Canada through song, story, dance, and craft.

In 2010, the Mariposa Folk Festival celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Founded in 1961, it later served as a model for future folk festivals in Canada, such as those in Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Edmonton. In addition to their financial success, many of these "offspring" events are known for promoting the work of domestic musicians as well as bringing a wide variety of international artists and audiences to Canada every summer. As a fifty-plus-year-old event, the MFF has lived through more shifts in industry trends, government policy, administrative personnel, and locale, than other festivals of its kind. Yet despite Mariposa's longevity, most written accounts (Usher and Page-Harpa 1977, Melbourne 2010, Mariposa: Celebrating Canadian Folk Music 2010, Bidini 2011) tend to emphasize its "heyday" years of the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, within their coverage of that time frame, these accounts do not attend to the long-term influence that the period's artistic programming had on the Canadian music scene. My research findings suggest a more nuanced perspective on the MFF's fifty-year history. This perspective encompasses its artistic and administrative developments from 1980 to the present, as well as a more detailed view of the long-term impact of its "heyday" years. This dissertation redresses the lacuna left by existing narratives about the Mariposa Folk Festival. After a detailed retelling of the MFF's musical and administrative history, I examine four facets of the event's significance that have been misunderstood, misrepresented, or simply left out by previous accounts. These are: 1) its artistic legacy (especially pertaining to its programming of Canadian content, 11 workshops/daytime concerts, ethnically-diverse musics, children's music, and a crafts area); 2) its relationship to social shifts of the 1960s and 1970s; 3) its contribution to our understanding of space, place and landscape; and 4) its contribution to our understanding of arts funding and sponsorship in Canada. In doing so I argue that the Mariposa Folk Festival is categorically different than other Canadian folk festivals, occupying a unique historical position in the context of similar events. These four aspects of its significance substantiate this argument.

Item consists of the 49 page Mariposa Folk Festival program for 1974, held on the Toronto Islands, Toronto, Ontario from 21-23 June, 1974. The program was designed and edited by the festival's Programme Book Committee, consisting of Joe Lewis, Enoch Kent, Paul Hornbeck, Marna Snitman, Shelley Spiegel, Ray Woodley, Eileen Keleher and Stew Cameron. Includes a schedule of evening and day concerts and workshops, a list of performer biographies, and ... Also includes several articles, including "Bluegrass Music" by Shelley Posen, "Notes on Accompaniment" by Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl (reprinted from "The Singing Island"), "Crafts at Mariposa" by Skye Morisson and short anonymous articles from Mariposa In The Schools and the festival's Ethnic Committee.

From acclaimed musician and author Dave Bidini comes a brilliantly original look at a folk-rock legend and the momentous week in 1972 that culminated in the Mariposa Folk Festival. July, 1972. As musicians across Canada prepare for the nation's biggest folk festival, held on Toronto Island, a series of events unfold that will transform the country politically, psychologically--and musically. As Bidini explores the remarkable week leading up to Mariposa, he also explores the life and times of one of the most enigmatic figures in Canadian music: Gordon Lightfoot, the reigning king of folk at the height of his career. Through a series of letters, Bidini addresses Lightfoot directly, questioning him, imagining his life, and weaving together a fascinating, highly original look at a musician at the top of his game. By the end of the week, the country is on the verge of massive change and the '72 Mariposa folk fest--complete with surprise appearances by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and yes, Lightfoot--is on its way to becoming legendary.

This work represents the first comparative study of the folk revival movement in Anglophone Canada and the United States and combines this with discussion of the way folk music intersected with, and was structured by, conceptions of national affinity and national identity. Based on original archival research carried out principally in Toronto, Washington and Ottawa, it is a thematic, rather than general, study of the movement which has been influenced by various academic disciplines, including history, musicology and folklore. Dr Gillian Mitchell begins with an introduction that provides vital context for the subject by tracing the development of the idea of 'the folk', folklore and folk music since the nineteenth century, and how that idea has been applied in the North American context, before going on to examine links forged by folksong collectors, artists and musicians between folk music and national identity during the early twentieth century. With the 'boom' of the revival in the early sixties came the ways in which the movement in both countries proudly promoted a vision of nation that was inclusive, pluralistic and eclectic. It was a vision which proved compatible with both Canada and America, enabling both countries to explore a diversity of music without exclusiveness or narrowness of focus. It was also closely linked to the idealism of the grassroots political movements of the early 1960s, such as integrationist civil rights, and the early student movement. After 1965 this inclusive vision of nation in folk music began to wane. While the celebrations of the Centennial in Canada led to a re-emphasis on the 'Canadianness' of Canadian folk music, the turbulent events in the United States led many ex-revivalists to turn away from politics and embrace new identities as introspective singer-songwriters. Many of those who remained interested in traditional folk music styles, such as Celtic or Klezmer music, tended to be very insular and conservative in their approach, rather than linking their chosen genre to a wider world of folk music; however, more recent attempts at 'fusion' or 'world' music suggest a return to the eclectic spirit of the 1960s folk revival. Thus, from 1945 to 1980, folk music in Canada and America experienced an evolving and complex relationship with the concepts of nation and national identity. Students will find the book useful as an introduction, not only to key themes in the folk revival, but also to concepts in the study of national identity and to topics in American and Canadian cultural history. Academic specialists will encounter an alternative perspective from the more general, broad approach offered by earlier histories of the folk revival movement.