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Jazz Fest day nine wasn't quite as hot, so that was good.

I arrived in time to catch the Choir! Choir! Choir! show at the TD stage at 19h. It was two men, both choir directors in times past, one of them playing acoustic guitar accompaniment, dividing us down the middle to create harmonies, words on the screen Kareoke style, singing songs we all know like Bon Jovi Living on a prayer, Karma Culture Club and Fleetwood Mac Dreams. The two of them encouraged everyone in the audience to sing and pretty much everyone did. At one point they asked for a raise of hands who had been to a CCC show before and it seemed about 3/7ths did, then he asked a raise of hands who hadn't, and it was about 4/7ths, me included. It was fun to sing along.

After that show I made my way to the Rogers stage, to get there I had to pass through reams of people - I guess on a good weather Friday night, the festival had a lot of extra people. Guy Bélanger and his band were performing. He has a special belt that has perhaps a dozen harmonicas, I suppose each one tuned a little differently. For most of the songs, he played one of his harmonicas, and/or he sung, or, his bassist sung two songs. Most of the songs were up tempo and many included both a harmonica solo and a lead electric guitar solo. It was okay as a band and performance, but it was a little too much harmonica for me.

I stayed at the Rogers stage so that I could be at the very front of the next show, even though it was 90 minutes later. About a half hour before the next show started I engaged in conversation with two people who were friends with each other, a young man and woman, talking about the festival, the shows we had attended, what this upcoming show was about and so on, so that was nice. The performer was Tanya Tagaq who, with a cellist and a drummer, filled about 50 continuous minutes with a wide variety of sounds, including some throat singing and mostly unintelligble sounds. The drummer and cellist contributed in their own wildly random ways to provide a show that is both bizarre and moving, odd and compelling. The light show added to the whole effect of this very peculiar performance.

There was a young woman right next to me at the front railing as close to the stage as possible whom Tanya seemed to recognize; in the end this young woman joined Tanya on stage and the two of them together did a short throat singing duo. I have video of this that I'll post later.