Students share folk music performance

The stage at Sisters Elementary School became a platform for an old-fashioned hootenanny on Thursday, March 9, as students from the fifth-grade Americana Project performed for an audience of parents.

The students performed six classic American folk songs, each one introduced by student speakers. Soloists took verses while the choruses of the songs became sing-alongs for performers and audience alike — in the classic folk music tradition.

Students offered up Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” Pete Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer” and Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” among others.

The children played scaled-down guitars, xylophones and recorders.

They were accompanied by student teachers from the Sisters High School Americana Project.

The Americana Project is the educational outreach program of the Sisters Folk Festival. The object of the program is to introduce students to their musical heritage through performance and also through learning about the history and literary aspects of various forms of folk music.

The program is now in all three Sisters schools.