Interview Transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Gail Norris
Interviewer: Jennifer Macey
Interview date: Unknown
Gail: I’m Gail Norris. I’m Illawarra Folk Festival Facebook manager and I also manage the Facebook page for Illawarra Folk Club, which is of course the parent organisation of Illawarra Folk Festival. Yep, and I live on the island of Maui in Hawaii.
Jennifer: So how are you doing this job from Hawaii?
Gail: Telecommuting; it’s the deal. And really, we’re not that far apart. We’re only about four hours apart but one day. It works; it works beautifully.
Jennifer: Tell me how on earth did you get involved?
Gail: Before I retired from my real job some years ago, I knew I wanted to stay involved with music. And I moved to Hawaii. My daughter lives in Sydney. I visit her and the grandkids. But I wanted something fun to do with music. So, I started volunteering up here at Illawarra and just fell in love with it and that was it. And I had also volunteered at Port Fairy: and at Blue Mountains a couple of years and as soon as I tried Illawarra, I knew it was the place I belonged. It’s wonderful well.
Jennifer: Why?
Gail: Because it’s volunteer run, it’s volunteer power, and for me it just represents everything great about folk music.
Jennifer: You know, Port Fairy is a folk festival too. So why is this one different?
Gail: There are a lot of volunteers; I thought it was too big. And the joy for me of Illawarra now that especially I’ve gotten to know so many people is to see old friends, to watch the youngsters grow up into young adults and become really lovely musicians and to enjoy the fellowship the goes along with a really nice folk festival.
Jennifer: It does have that feel, doesn’t it? It feels like community.
Gail: Absolutely, yes. And our international stars are wonderful, they bring people in, and I love seeing people I would never have a chance to see or people that I have seen somewhere else in the world, like Dougie Maclean. I have seen him in Cape Breton and in Scotland and in the USA and I’ve seen him here. That’s great. But I also love seeing the Water Runners, I love watching Shalani grow up to be a lovely musician. It’s just fine.
Jennifer: And so, did you, just to back track a little, were you living here in the Illawarra or in Sydney?
Gail: Neither, I live on Maui.
Jennifer: You have always lived on Maui?
Gail: Yeah, yeah. I’ve never lived here. My daughter lives here and I visit but I’ve never lived here. I know, but I’m in love with it. But it’s hard for a retired person to emigrate to Australia even on a parent visa because we haven’t paid into the system, and we would be taking out and that’s not right. So, after I retired from my mainland job in the US I said, how far can I or how close can I get to Australia and still be in the USA. Oh Hawaii.
Jennifer: So, you ended up there? Mm hm. Have you always enjoyed folk music?
Gail: Well, of course. I grew up in the sixties. Joan Baez was a friend and sucked into the whole coffee house thing very early on in my early teens, as so many of us were, and the protests and all the things that went around with awareness about environment and culture and politics, it just is going together. And then I learned that folk music was also a storytelling and it’s a way to connect to our pasts in a way that we have done forever, especially for women, you know. We haul firewood, we boil water and we sing while we do all these things. This is all this time. And for me Folk represents that very continuing of the storytelling way of life and now it’s everything. And working for a classical music festival, as I did for years, I found that although I love classical music, a classical music festival is boring. It’s just not moving. And everything is movement about folk. It’s all about movement, whether you’re moving on the stage or you’re moving into a new way of approaching your music or you’re moving your kids on the stage with you. It’s all about moving.
Jennifer: That is a really interesting analysis actually. Your day job was working at classical music festivals?
Gail: Yes, and oddly enough it’s 40 years old now, this festival, and ours here is 35. So, there are some real similarities and even in the few years I’ve been here, luckily able to participate, I have seen how the festival is also in movement all the time. Like this year we had almost 50 per cent of the acts were women and that’s marvellous. Never happened in a classical setting, ever.
Jennifer: Can I just ask briefly what you did at the classical music festival?
Gail: Absolutely, yes. It was the Oregon Bach Festival and it put on once a year a very deep and comprehensive festival. But we would have over the course of three weeks 13 concerts.
Jennifer: What did you do?
Gail: I was a volunteer coordinator and also operations coordinator, yep.
Jennifer: And that was your paid job?
Gail: Yep.
Jennifer: I don’t know what else to ask. We have talked about community and we’ve talked about, So I imagine a that you have made a lot of friends?
Gail: I love my festival friends. Seeing them every year is just such a treat. And, of course, because communications are what they are today I can talk to them or Facebook them or email them or message them anytime I need to and it has brought such joy to my life. I don’t know what I would do without it. It’s just wonderful.
Jennifer: And so, you plan your calendar also?
Gail: Oh yes, absolutely.
Jennifer: How early do you book your flight?
Gail: Well, the flights I usually wait until, oh, I wait until July ’cause I know when I want to come. And for example, this year I knew when I needed to be here and I knew what I needed to get done before I got here. But I still was able to grab my precious granddaughter and we skipped off to Bali for 10 days before I came here. She’s 21. I came here to rest. To rest, after, after spending 10 days in Bali with a 21-year-old, yes.
Jennifer: I really don’t have any other questions. That was super-fast and very great. But have I missed something? Is there anything about the music? Can I ask you a question about the intergenerational because when people think about folk music they often think about that very pure folk tradition.
Gail: That’s not what folk is for me.
Jennifer: Can you say it as a complete sentence?
Gail: Yes. What folk means to me is the growth of music and storytelling from the time the kid picks up a guitar or an ukelele till the time that the fingers simply won’t’ work on the keys anymore It’s a process of growth. It’s a wonderful way for older people to share with younger people. It’s a great way to model how we can be in the world conscious, communicative, cooperative, collaborative. All the things that I think folk music represents.
Jennifer: Do you feel, I just spoke to somebody who plays folk punk.
Gail: Great, why not? Because it’s an expression. It’s not static. It’s always moving and changing and we have no idea what it will look like in 20, 30, 50 years but the thread of storytelling will still be there; I really think so.
Jennifer: You are not a purist. You think that the clash of the genres and the mixing of the styles, that’s all part of folk.
Gail: Absolutely. I may not always like what I hear but I honour the fact that a musician has guts enough to give it a try and skill enough to bring it out. It’s just awesome.
Jennifer: Can I ask you about a highlight, or is that too hard?
Gail: I have not seen anything I didn’t like and I have been everywhere. Today I did see Zumpa and Michael Simic do a set. Cigany Weaver. Yes, I haven’t, I haven’t seen anything I didn’t like.
Jennifer: Do you ever get FOMO that you are going to miss out on one because 2 bands are on at the same time?
Gail: Yes and it drives me crazy. Because I really want to see the entire set, how the band makes their statement about what they’re doing on stage. They’re not just getting up there and doodling around, you know. They’re bringing me something. And I have to hop out in the middle because I think I’m missing something; I feel I have missed part of their story.
Jennifer: Do you play music?
Gail: Oddly enough, no. I played the oboe as a young woman. But nobody ever says, “Come on everybody. Let’s gather around the piano and sing with the oboe.” Never. You could join the Honk Band. Well, it’s not brass per se, an oboe; it’s a woodwind.
Jennifer: The clarinet?
Gail: Yeah, Ken would probably allow it but.
Jennifer: Thank you so much for your time.
Gail: You’re so welcome; what a pleasure. Here’s the Norris addendum: The making of music together and the enjoying of people who are making music is one of the most powerful things we’ve got going and I tell people, especially in the current divisive environment we live in, I don’t care whether it’s Australia or Uruguay, it’s the way of it and it’s no fun. But if you have made music with somebody in the morning chances are you are going to be able to discuss something with them later in the afternoon and have a common ground to start from. There, that’s it.
Jennifer: So, music bring us together?
Gail: Absolutely. Even people who say they don’t like experimental, you know, the purists, still, it’s not blood and flames, it’s just a different way of looking at the same process.
Jennifer: Do you want to say the magical, part of your job is to be stage manager?
Gail: Yes, that’s why I have to zip off. I get to do upstairs. I was MC last night for Cigany Weaver, one of the most electrifying performances I have seen in a while. They’re wonderful. The audience was dazzled And the virtuosic performance of those those musicians just had me blown away I peeked out the side of the tent and there’s a beautiful meadow out there and it was dusk, so it was just starting to get dark and I call them the festival sprites, that is the little ones of the festival, ages 3 through 8 probably, face paint, glitter in their hair, some of them had fairy wings and they were flitting around in the meadow like, truly like little sprites with the background of that glorious music. It just blew me away.
Jennifer: Thank you. Are you crying?
Gail: Yes, because it was that lovely.
Jennifer: Thank you very much.