folk


				draycott road folk



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ragna and arnt 50th wedding anniversay jam session

front line: holly arntzen, jenny arntzen, leif arntzen (gtr), garth (arntzen) rustand (flute)
floor: toddler nahanni pocock arntzen (jenny's daughter)
year: probably about 1975 or so.
where: burnaby, british columbia
backdrop: illustrated storyboard of ragna thomsen arntzen and arnt arntzen and their 50 years of married life together (by lloyd arntzen, son)

take one last look behind-folksong

"take one last lookl behind" is a folksong written and performed by lloyd arntzen, who was born on the canadian prairies in 1927. it's a song about his parents ragna and arnt packing up the family to leave their homestead in saskatchewan, leaving the prairies, leaving all they'd come to know and love, leaving all their dusty wornout hopes and dreams and hardships behind for shiny brand new ones on the west coast.

folk music

music has been a part of arntzen life for at least 7 generations that anyone seems to know of, and if you count all the friends, relatives, and ancestors, the list gets out of control in a heartbeat.

the collected arntzen-related works range from worksong singing depression-era prairie homesteaders and fisherman from the early 20th century, classic folksong back-to-the-cities revivals of the late fifties and early sixties, back-to-the-land alternative lifestyle folk movements of the sixties and seventies in the pacific northwest, the back-to-somewhere-in-between eighties, the back-to-front-and-back-again nineties, to the all-over-the-map 21st century.

throughout the years folk music has quietly survived all the changes in this musical neighborhood of family and friends spanning countries and continents...as it has in the past: by just being the musical expression of universal stories, feelings, and experiences of everyday folks, shared in the places where folks live. it all springs eternal from that universal family trait of believing in the goodness of anything to do with the heart. along with it comes the curiosity to understand any kind of music that makes you want to move and be alive and just possibly occasionally answer one or two of those endless burning questions why. somehow we live our lives in the melodies and sounds we create, in the voices and words of the stories we tell, and the images we fashion.

the internet is changing life for us all, a new kind of neighborhood, and this place is also now a place where many folks live a little every day, and so, of course, there's folk music.

each month on this page, we'll share selected folk work in song, art, and storytelling contained in www.draycottroad.com archives. today it's a song called "take one last look behind (bid saskatchewan goodbye)" by lloyd arntzen.