GOING UPRIVER: About the CROSSCURRENTS concert series

"Speaking of contraries,

See how the brook in that white wave runs counter to itself.

It is from this in water we are from

Long, long before we were from any living creature. …

It is this backward motion toward the source, against the current,

That most we see ourselves in

The tribute of the current toward the source.

It is from this in nature we are from.

It is most us."

-- Robert Frost, "West-Running Brook"

The CROSSCURRENTS concert series was developed at Gros Morne, Terra Nova, and Kouchibouguac National Parks (Atlantic Canada) in the summers of 1986-87, with support from the Canadian Parks Service and QLF/Atlantic Center for the Environment. Originally symbolizing the upwellings of water off Newfoundland's Grand Banks and the resulting flow of human migration, the title has come to stand for the crosscurrents of natural and cultural landscapes that is the focus of heritage conservation. Each program explores the "terrains of consciousness" expressed in music, literature, folklore, and historical narrative, to capture the heart of a region in the "spirit of place."

Each unique place or theme suggests its own program approach:

• CROSSCURRENTS illustrates traditional ballads with slides of the "Newfoundlandscape" L'ACADIE blends Acadian French songs into dramatic readings of Longfellow's Evangeline
• WILD THINGS captivates young audiences with singalongs and animal stories to illustrate concepts in wildlife ecology
• SWEET SEAS explores the Great Lakes with maps, nautical charts and shipwreck ballads
• the bilingual C'EST L'AVIRON animates the fur trade through the eyes of "Lisette Duval," a character drawn from historical accounts who draws her audience into dramatizations of French-Canadian songs and folktales. 

The latter was the first in the 1988 series, exploring eras in Great Lakes/St. Lawrence resource use and transportation: from the fur trade to lumbering (PINERY BOYS), canalling and westward homesteading (E-RIE TO O-HI-O), and the age of "steam and steel" in Great Lakes shipping (SWEET SEAS). The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently honored the original CROSSCURRENTS with its 1988 "Tree of Learning" Award.

Throughout each program runs the current of music, that river of sound flowing from past to future. By raising our voices together in song, we become participants in our common heritage, and creators of harmony. The songs and stories of CROSSCURRENTS are tributaries to the river of history: "the tribute of the current toward the source."As they carry us on their journey into the landscapes behind our eyes, we develop vision and imagination: critical skills for understanding the past, shaping the present, and creating the future.

On Fiction and Folklore

"When you become as accomplished a liar as I am, then you become troubled by inaccuracies in your lies. Because, you see,the reason that you tell lies about a wonderful place, is that you believe that if you get every detail right, absolutely right, and every character in that story has as many hairs on his or her head as she's supposed to have, or him -- that if you get it absolutely perfect, then you will be lifted up out of this life and you will be set down in that wonderful place that you told lies about, and all your lies become true. Now you see, what you don't realize, many of you, is that not only is Lake Wobegon made up -- but Minnesota is made up too."

-- Garrison Keillor, "Fiction," in News from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota Public Radio

The "concrete dimensions of the land" are the essential physical touchstone for the human landscape. It is the stories we tell, and the songs we sing, that tell us what that landscape means, what it "precipitates." It lies within our power to create the Great Lakes -- in landscapes of vision, and in real places with clean water and fresh air and free-running rivers. What a tragedy it would be if someday, the touchstone had vanished, and only way we could reach that place was to lie about it.