A TRIBUTE TO STEVE STARCHEV

by Karen Bennett

Steve Starchev was a folk musician (and so much more) who died in Toronto in February 2006, aged 51, of cancer.

Steve’s passing was mourned by hundreds upon hundreds of people—among them, of course, his family. His cousin Adrian Lebar posted a blog entry on February 22, 2006, shortly after Steve died.

Among the musical celebrations of Steve's life was one organized by international folk dancer and teacher David Yee and held October 21, 2006 at the Ralph Thornton Community Centre in Toronto. Many members of Steve's family attended, including his wife, Marie Diane; his parents; two uncles; and his sister Lili Brands of Calgary. The entertainment included music and songs by the Balkan Ensemble, led by Irene Markoff and joined by Kevin Budd; a performance by Kevin alone on the panpipes; and a Kathak dance performed by Rina Singha. I taught some French dances, accompanied on hurdy-gurdy by Andrea Haddad and Sandra Spencer, wearing a costume from Brittany that I had started buying piece by piece on eBay.fr in honour of Steve as soon as I knew of the October tribute. A little more than a week later was another tribute: "An Evening Steve Would Have Liked" at the Flying Cloud Folk Club on Brunswick Avenue, Toronto, on October 29, 2006. Some of the proceeds went towards the establishment of "Steve Starchev's Library" at CIUT community radio station, where for many years he hosted a show of world music from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturdays called "The World Is Sound."

I can't put it any better than Kevin Budd did when he wrote in the March 2006 issue of the Folk Dancer that Steve was a "Toronto folk musician, radio technician, raconteur, radio show host, humorist, and all-around great guy."

Nine years earlier in the Folk Dancer—on June 15, 1997—I had published the article below as part of a series called "How I Started ... Folk Dancing, Playing, Singing, Collecting..." As I recall, I obtained the article by phoning Steve, recording the interview, transcribing it and deleting my questions so the article was written in the first person, as the rest of the "How I Started" series was. Notes in italics in square brackets that end "—ed." were inserted by me as Editor of the Folk Dancer. Though no longer the Editor, I wanted to resurrect this article.

"How I Started...
"Folk Dancing, Playing, Singing, Collecting..."

by Steve Starchev (Toronto)

I started playing an instrument around the age of 8 or 9—just plucking guitar strings for the sound of it. It wasn't for the making of any music; it was just the physical, visceral sound. When I was a teenager I started with rock—Jimi Hendrix, Beatles, all that stuff—and then got into the folk thing—Gordon Lightfoot, that whole phase—then I went to classical music. That was during the '70s. I met a fiddle player named Laurence Stevenson and we got together, me bringing my classical guitar and he his Irish fiddle. I asked what key we were in, and Laurence said, "It goes something like this," and our styles didn't go together at all. So I had to dust off an old steel-string guitar, figure out what a jog was, what a reel was, and that kind of got me further along into folk music, away from the regular North American singer-songwriter thing. That led to the Irish and Scottish thing.

Then Laurence said that these two ladies, Andrea Haddad and Grace Morrison, had a group, and they were doing all this Celtic/French stuff. I went there and that was pretty well the start of my playing folk instruments in a public sense.

I've always liked folk music 'cause I grew up with it, especially Yugoslav stuff and Balkan, because of my parents' business [Caravan Imports, a Yugoslav books and music store—ed.]. So I was familiar with the music; I never actually tried it because it was so exotic.

When I got up to the group, Andrea had this hurdy-gurdy thing, and from the first second I saw it I thought, "Wow; one day I have to get one," and I eventually did. That was in the early 1980s—1981, 1982.

That led to a lot of other things. This [1997] is the 11th year in a row I've been to France. Every summer I go to the Saint-Chartier festival in Berry. That’s pretty well the biggie for this kind of instrument and/or French music—the whole bourrée/mazurka/schottische school and hurdy-gurdy/bagpipe/accordion thing. The bourrée milieu. The writer Georges Sand grew up in that area and the festival was started on an anniversary of her death.

The one thing that developed playing with those other guys—I loved the Celtic and French stuff, but there were also interesting Balkan rhythms, Middle Eastern stuff; I love medieval music, Renaissance music and above all else, dance music. I call it "dancing fingers" because your fingers do the dancing as you play, so to speak. I've gotten the security guys at the Royal Ontario Museum, where my band Pilgrim's Trail Mix [members: Steve Starchev, Michael Franklin and Ben Grossman—ed.] is sort of the house band, doing rondeaus and bourrées.

Dance really opened up for me when I had a girlfriend who had the Folk Ballet Theatre—Elizabeth Bedard, a ballet teacher. Folk Ballet Theatre was also in the early 1980s. Elizabeth was trying to incorporate international styles into this folk ballet. It was like a Les Sortilèges thing [Les Sortilèges National Folklore Ensemble is a professional group from Quebec—ed.] I was playing at a fund-raiser there and there was one Irish waltz that I couldn’t figure out how it went on the whistle, so I figured, “The hell with this,” and I jumped off the stage and took someone to dance, and all of a sudden everyone started dancing. I thought, “Hey, this works great,” so I kept it, instead of looking stupid on the stage.

I knew they were dancing at the International Folk Dance Club [IFDC] but I didn’t know anybody there. I used to go there and lean against the wall and watch everybody dance. For me, the music didn’t actually make sense without actually seeing or getting a sense of what the dance was. I was playing the music and it was just notes on the paper. I used to go by most Friday nights and lean in the corner very quietly and watch everyone move to the music. Eventually, Bill Baird and somebody else started saying, "Well, don't just stand there, joker," so I took part in some stuff and clunked around and it was great.

There's a great quote by Jesus Christ in the Gnostic Gospels: "Those who don’t dance cannot know." There's this whole thing about Jesus dancing, too, in the Gnostic Gospels. They say that Jesus with his disciples did dance, and that had a real effect on me—not because I'm overly religious or anything.

I have another quote, this time from the American writer Sam Keen: "Primitive religion is not believed; it is danced." It's true, too, because it was something you actively took part in; it wasn't such an intellectual thing like classical. It was like a day-to-day thing; part of your life experience.

The folk dance music at IFDC was so great—not everything was my favourite, but a lot of the stuff was just so terrific that I fed on that. I would go back looking for music from a certain area or a certain type or trying to learn the actual dance. I know there were some from Bulgaria. That Armenian piece [Daronee Yerker Yev Barer, a hauntingly beautiful song that’s part of a dance medley I learned from Tom Bozigian—ed.] was probably the most stunning thing I ever heard there, and seeing the dance at the same time—I still can't get over that. I think it has a sacred source; to me it sounds like more than just a traditional folk piece. I work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and I would love to have someone at the CBC play that.

I started buying CDs like mad just to capture more folk music at home. And with the group Pilgrim's Trail Mix, that was also taking dance music more than anything else, medieval to modern, and mixing it together, sometimes with different things. So it's not a pure thing; it's interpretive. It's just to give people a sense of what a Galician thing could sound like, what a French thing could sound like. There has been some Macedonian. I'm looking for other stuff. The band does Christmas gigs at the museum and throughout the holidays, and throughout the year little things. There's the odd festival and some private gigs. It has all been like word of mouth; we don't have a brochure and we haven't sent out any tapes.

I don't make a living at playing. If you pushed and tried you could make a living out of it, but it would be difficult. It's about like making your living folk dancing. If you make it your life's work you could do it, but it would still be without the benefits—dental plans and all that stuff.

I was the first generation born here from either side of the family. My father’s Serbian, from Vojvodina, and my mother's Slovenian. One question I always get is, "Don't you ever play music from Yugoslavia?" I say: "No, not much. I have the music; I just don't play it. I don't know why."

I play small flutes, guitars, bagpipes, the hurdy-gurdy, the cittern—which is like a very pregnant mandolin; I have a Russian balalaika I used to use a bit; a dulcimer. Some things you use regularly and other things are just bits and pieces. I had a harp, which I sold. It was great for parties, slicing cheese. It wasn't very good with cream cheese.