Tradition of song, tradition of faith
CANDLER — A man from Ohio found his way back to the Catholic faith through music that spoke to his soul during a trip to the Kingfisher Folk Fest in the North Carolina mountains.
Now in its second year, the Kingfisher Folk Fest strives to harmonize Catholic and mountain culture through inspirational music while raising funds and awareness for Canongate High School in Arden, an independent Catholic high school affiliated with the Diocese of Charlotte.
The man’s decision to come back to the Church after years away came after he traveled hundreds of miles to give his family a fun vacation and see a performance by Chicago-based Kingfisher headliner Joe Pug, a recent convert to the faith.
Primary event organizer Andrew Tolkmith, a Canongate alumnus who lives in Hendersonville, learned of the festival’s profound impact in an email he received from the man three days later.
“That man had a bit of a conversion experience through the festival because he said he saw Catholicism through a new light and reignited his faith,” Tolkmith said. “This was always part of what the festival was designed to be, evangelical at heart. This was the impact we wanted it to have.”
This year’s Aug. 2 event featured six performers who offered diverse musical experiences for about 200 attendees who braved intermittent fog and rain: Childcraft Annual from Beaufort, S.C. ; Memphis-based poet, singer and musician Christian Lingner; Irish-born singer-songwriter Dylan Walshe, now a resident of Black Mountain; Memphis singer-songwriter Kelly Hunt; and Pug, a critically-acclaimed folk singer who has appeared at prestigious festivals such as Bonnaroo and the Newport Folk Festival.
Connecting cultures
Kingfisher emerged from a desire to raise awareness about Canongate while highlighting the connection between Catholic and traditional mountain cultures, Tolkmith said.
“This was a unique idea of a Catholic school doing a folk festival,” he said. “At Kingfisher, there are two main aspects – the folk and the music. Folk obviously means people, and the main goals we have tried to celebrate and cultivate at the festival are our understanding of what it means to be a human being, a Catholic creature of God and the art that we make.”
Appalachian folk music, characterized by its lilting, haunting ballads and story-songs, and the sounds of mandolin, fiddle, banjo and guitar, is not something traditionally associated with Catholicism, but it’s part of the heart of the mountain region that cradles Canongate and has been an aspect of the students’ experience since the school was founded in 2013.
The Celtic roots of the music are something many Catholics can identify with, even if the music is not traditionally heard in Catholic liturgy.
From its beginnings, Canongate has worked to engage its students not only with faith and the classics, but with their regional culture. Tolkmith described this movingly in a passage from an article he wrote for Dappled Things, an online Catholic arts journal, where he described how one faculty member taught students traditional Scottish and Irish ballads such as “Wild Mountain Thyme” that would echo down the hallways in between classes. Music became such an integral part of the school that faculty and students recorded an album in 2019.
The idea for a folk festival to promote the school and engage the larger community came after a survey of Canongate alumni revealed that time spent sharing music was among their most treasured memories. Tolkmith was part of the original festival planning committee and remains one of the primary organizers.
Sharing stories
Canongate’s focus on the classics led to the name of the festival, which comes from the poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” by 19th-century British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.
The work glorifies the presence of Christ in nature and is learned and loved by Canongate students.
This year’s event was designed to capture multiple facets of Catholic and mountain culture and featured Catholic arts-and-crafts vendors from the Carolinas and Georgia.
There was also an Appalachian storyteller, Elena Diana Miller from Fletcher, who spun traditional tales from the mountains.
“Catholicism at its heart is all about telling the greatest story of all – storytelling is part of what it means to be Catholic, so there was a clear complementarity to include folk stories,” Tolkmith said.
The goal going forward is for Kingfisher to continue to grow and evolve, weaving together the traditions of faith and the mountains, Tolkmith said.
“There is a massive complementarity between folk music and Catholicism specifically because of this idea of tradition, handing down what was given to you before and engaging it in your own time, while preserving the same essence from generation to generation.”
— Christina Lee Knauss
