A long hearty clap for everyone who participated in the Crowsnest Pass Music Festival.

I was impressed. Really the whole thing was awesome, even that one time I was shushed by the adjudicator wasn’t so bad. And two claps for the participants. It couldn’t have been easy executing only to have the whole performance deconstructed by musical experts in front of all those people. You kept your cool and good job.

After coming to this town, it didn’t take me long to realize that there is an inordinate amount of musical talent in the valley. It’s not just at the music festival. The Wednesday jams at the Green Hill are something to see. Those are $100 performances there and they’re put on every week for free. Then there’s Rhonda who M.Cs karaoke at the Bellevue Inn on Friday and maybe Saturday; she can carry a tune.

One of the first Crowsnest Pass residents I ever met was our ad representative Cierra Shortreed, what a voice. Our editor Buddy is a talented sax player. I suspect he was prolific in the 1970s. Our former publisher was in a band and even our publisher Lisa Sygutek sings when she thinks no one is looking and plays a mean piano.

I was thinking that maybe the history of the place, all those mines and mining disasters, might have affected the people, giving them a soulfulness that translated into musical talent.

I asked the director of the music festival Deb Goldstein what she thought and she said it was the diversity of Europeans who first settled here. She said the Italians, Slavs, Brits and others who came here took musical training very seriously and that has trickled down through the ages. She also said that there were no CDs or records back in the day so to hear music, you had to make it yourself, which is good to know.

Watching those performers this week has given me the urge to pick up a guitar and try those C and G cords again after a years long hiatus.