Featured Vermont artist: Bluegrass Gospel Project (BGP)

Happy Martin Luther King Day.

BGP: Down in the Valley to Pray (Live)
Blind Boys of Alabama: Free At Last (Down in New Orleans)
BGP: Wander On, Weary Soul (Wander On)
Radiohead: Bodysnatchers (In Rainbows)
BGP: Angel Band (On Our Way Home)
The Whigs: Right Hand On My Heart (Mission Control)
BGP: Revelation (Makes You Strong)
Sydney Wayser: Carousel (Silent Parade)
BGP: Blue Train (Wander On)
Doug Burr: Thing About Trouble (On Promenade)
BGP: Breath of the Devil (Wander On)
The Main Drag: Love During Wartime (Yours as Fast as Mine)
BGP: City on a Hill (Makes You Strong)

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WMRW “Green Mountain Globa-Local”
January 7, 2008
New Year’s All-Vermont Musicians Show

Tonight’s Featured Vermont Musicians: The Lindner Brothers (Banjo Dan; Sky Blue Boys; The Lindner Brothers)

Banjo Dan and the Midnight Plowboys/The Werewolf (Like A River)

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals/Ah Mary (This Is Somewhere)

Wagtail/When the Sun Goes Down (One Clear Moment)

The Sky Blue Boys/I Never See Maggie Alone (Music in the Air)

Susannah Blachly/The Boatman (Come on Home)

The Stone Cold Roosters/Gotta Learn How To Dance (Out of the Woods)

Syd/All Time High (The Way We Found It)

The Lindner Brothers/The Holy Hills of Heaven (With Friends Like These…)

Nothing About Grover/Running Through (Remain)

The Sky Blue Boys/I Heard the Bluebirds Sing (Music in the Air)

Kelly Joe Phelps/Crow’s Nest (Tunesmith Retrofit) – A non-Vermonter, but he just gigged here a few weeks back, and his residual musical mojo still lingers.

Grace Potter/Stop the Bus (This is Somewhere)

Wagtail/Honeyman (One Clear Moment)

Banjo Dan and the Midnight Plowboys/Snowfall (Like a River)

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Why Democracy? Exploring Hard Questions On MLK Day

By Rob Williams

Is any society in the world truly democratic?

Is capitalism good for democracy?

What kind of democracy can we build in the 21st century?

Is democracy good for everyone?

These are some of the central questions explored in the thirteen BBC- produced and Oscar shortlisted films featured at the fifth annual MountainTop Film Festival at Waitsfield’s Big Picture Theater this January 9-13.

In an age where global corporate capitalism holds sway, the attendant opportunity costs – the goods and the bads of such a system – are often hidden from U.S. citizens by a compliant corporately-owned press that present stories spotlighting the interests of the powerful, stories that often trump those of ordinary people fighting for a better life all around the world.

The good news - during the past decade, aspiring global filmmakers have used the democratization of digital media technology to craft documentaries that explore complex questions and reveal difficult truths about the nature of this world: about the tensions between the global struggle for human rights and the profit motive embedded in our global economy; about the quest of citizens around the globe to exercise their right to be truly free; and about the sacrifices ordinary people make to craft better lives for themselves.

Our thirteen films range across the globe – from South America to the Middle East to Asia and the West.

Here are but four examples:

Directors Sherief Elkatsha and Leila Menjou’s “Egypt, We Are Watching You” follows three women activists as they try to get to the bottom of their country’s flawed democracy.

Director Lalit Yachani goes “In Search of Gandhi,” using the Mahatma’s famed Dandi Salt March as a starting point, and explores the nuanced legacies of India’s most famous civil rights activist in the world’s largest democratic republic.

In China, director Weijun Chen’s “comic but profound” film “Please Vote For Me” chronicles the election of a class monitor in a Chinese school – with disturbing results.

And, in a particularly relevant film in the wake of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination last week, directors Sabina Sumar and Sachithananam Sathananathan sit down over dinner with Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf (and, oddly enough, his mother!) to discuss the nature of democracy in a country ruled by a military dictatorship.

What is astonishing about these thirteen films, however, is not their edginess - so often a hallmark of independent documentaries - but their intimacy and accessibility.

Many of the films clock in at under an hour in length, but still manage, remarkably, to create a personal tapestry of the countries in question. Vivid storytelling, tempered by a distinctly personal “feel” and approach, make the films at once refreshing, honest, “educational” (in the best sense of the word) and compelling “conversation starters” for interested citizens around the world.

Combine these films with a “democracy fair,” and a host of special guests, including “Democracy Now’s” Amy Goodman, “Control Room” director Jehane Noujaime, and author/professor Bob Jensen – and the MountainTop Film Festival promises to be the most compelling program in its five year history.

Be a part of the “Why Democracy?” conversation this week-end at the Big Picture Theater.

For more information, visit www.mountaintopfilmfestival.com or call 802.496.8994.

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