When I looked up the actual definition of “fait accompli” I learned that it originated in mid-19th century France and means an accomplished fact or a thing that has been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept. One example of its usage might be “in 28 days it is a fait accompli that the Nevada County Fairground will be taken over by a horde of happy humans to pick, play, jam, socialize, eat, drink, and be merry. An incorrect usage of “fait accompli” would be anything associated with the concept of getting sleep unless you wanted to say “it is fait accompli that sleep does not exist at the Father’s Day Festival”!
In 26 or 27 days, my dog, Batso, and I will pack the truck (250,000 miles on the odometer now!) and once more drive up to Grass Valley to set up Camp Carnage, help Janet and Peter prep for music camp, and start picking. In 28 days, I’ll drop Batso off at the kennel, (sorry Batso…you’re not allowed to stay where I camp, but at least the kennel is air conditioned), and open music camp with the first elective…the music camp registration jam. In 29 days I’ll be running my heiny ragged as a TA and general dogsbody for music camp and trying to avoid getting sucked into festival prep…I’m usually unsuccessful in the latter.
Since I’m on the CBA Board of Directors I can’t avoid getting sucked into various projects. There are actually two projects that I am participating in at the moment that have to do with the FDF week. One project is called the “Streaming Project” where we are doing the background work to see what it would take, and cost, to stream online parts of the festival. This project really appeals to the megalomaniac in me. Just imagine what we could do if we streamed the festival to the world…bluegrass, old time, and gospel could become the dominant musical art forms worldwide, our festival would become famous and the artists would want to come play for free, there would be an international holiday so everyone could stop what they are doing to listen to the FDF stream, and peace and 3-part harmonies would reign, no more war and no more poverty. Maybe I am a wee bit too ambitious on this prediction…but streaming parts of the festival would allow bluegrass fans from other parts of the world to sample the FDF and hopefully entice them to attend. It turns out that there are large Pacific Rim bluegrass communities in Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and we would really like to make connections with those communities. I personally think that streaming is fait accompli…we need to figure out how and when we would want to stream. It won’t happen this year, maybe even not next year, but I think we will be streaming parts of FDF in the for-see-able future. We might have to wait for the costs associated with streaming to come down, but in the mean time we are starting to lay the groundwork for when that time is right. We have a great group of CBA members working on this: another board member Maria Nadauld got this off the ground, Ron Esparza (Vern’s Stage coordinator), Peter Lude, and Mike Gubman. Peter and Mike are our experts in digital media and provide the reality checks that keep the digital naïfs (me, Maria, and Ron) glued to the ground.
The other project is called the “5-Year-Project” with a different group of equally well-qualified CBA members. The 5-Year-Project is our attempt to take a look at the festival from the ground up and think about how it might look 5 years in the future. The world is changing amazingly fast and we want to take advantage of some of the technological changes and manage changes that might have a negative impact on the festival. The goal here is not to change the vibe of the FDF, but try to anticipate changes that we might need to make and have a plan in place. We plan to have a report, a list of suggestions, to present to the board by the end of summer, to think about for future festivals. This is a really important project and I want to encourage you to give the 5-year-project input and you can do this by emailing me (geoffreysargent@gmail.com) or by starting some discussion threads on the message board, or by talking to us at the festival. Our 5-year-project committee members are me (I just can’t say no), Maria Nadauld, Jessica Furui, and Yoseff Tucker. Jessica and Yoseff should be known to many of you; they both have impressive business resumes, they are both CBA members, and both are pickers. Jessica is one of the founding members of the Handsome Ladies, an up and coming organization dedicated to encouraging women to play bluegrass, and Yoseff is one of our leading local bluegrass musicians playing with the Central Valley Boys, Supermule, and The Bow Ties. I can’t tell you how proud I am to be working with Maria, Jessica, and Yoseff on such an important project.
Change is not something we can avoid. All we can do is try to anticipate some obvious changes and manage how those changes affect us. Change is fait accompli.
Keep your instruments tuned, your singing high and lonesome, and your breaks powerful.
See you soon at the 16th Annual CBA Music Camp and the 41st Father’s Day Festival.
