Native Rhythms Festival, Melbourne, Florida

After leaving Falling Waters State Park I traveled east and stopped near Jacksonville to visit my friend Cindy for a few days before heading to the Native Rhythms Flute Festival which was almost halfway between where she lives and where I live. I have been to this event several times over the years and I love being there. I get to hear exceptional music and see my friends that are there as staff, or musicians, or vendors. The sad part was that it rained really hard on Saturday and Sunday. I feel bad for everyone there because the rain caused the crowd to be smaller than if the weather was good. The musicians and vendors came from all over the country for this event. And many of the performers have won awards for their music. Go to Native Rhythms Festival to read more about this event and the performers.

I arrived on Thursday afternoon and found out that they had a camp feed for the vendors and performers. I helped with setting up the food and serving items. There was so much food and the bar-b-que and cookies were wonderful. There was a large variety of food and so much left over that we were able to take a large plate of leftovers.

I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with my friends there who I have not seen since last year when I was at the event. Listening to the performers was a challenge. I had a plastic poncho on, and held an umbrella over me. It was windy and cold and all of us that were brave and toughed out the weather were doing the same thing trying to stay warm and dry which was not easy. We did have some breaks in the rain periodically. Saturday morning started out being sunny, that changed about midday.

Here is the album of my photos from the flute festival. I took lots of pictures, as I always do. There are albums of my previous visits to this event. You can search on my website to see the stories and pictures.

Not only are these extraordinary musicians, but many of them are wonderful storytellers. I always love to see these performers. There are so many wonderful performers, I am only posting a few pictures of a few performers below. I was wondering if Arvel Bird has a new fiddle, but it’s the same one he has had for a few years. This fiddle is painted to reflect his Scottish and Native heritage. I am always mesmerized watching the hoop dancer, it takes such skill to perform a hoop dance. It must take a lot of concentration and time to learn how to do this intricate dance.

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